Past Events

Abstract: 

Seeing small things takes bright lights and great optics. But you still have to see something. This talk will discuss detectors for electron and X-ray microscopies: how they work, what are they challenges, and where are the opportunities. The competition is intense: the human eye has ~108 ‘pixels’ and a dynamic range of ~104 (and has a direct connection to a built-in neural processor). No camera today can match these specs (although we are getting close).

Abstract:

What happens if a main-sequence star orbits very close to a supermassive black hole in a galactic center? If the star approaches within tens of times the event horizon of the black hole, the black holes's intense tidal forces would tear the star apart in a matter of hours. This dramatic event, also known as a tidal disruption event, may sound like a Sci-Fi movie.

In this seminar talk, the speaker will begin with a brief overview of how quantum computation has led to an exciting new set of features for designing generative models, emphasizing that these features should be utilized with intention to help researchers obtain a better understanding of how quantum is useful and for what specific learning tasks.

Abstract: Imagine a world where communication doesn't depend on words, but on flashes of light, scents, and movement. In the extraordinary world of insects, this is a daily reality. This talk will take you on a journey into the secret lives of fireflies and bees, exploring how they convey information through visual and chemical signals. Drawing on concepts from physics, mathematics, and computer science, we will uncover the universal rules that insects obey to make their communication efficient and effective.

The modern perspective on the classification of phases of matter is given in terms of circuit complexity: two many-body quantum states belong to the same phase of matter if and only if they can be related by a finite-depth quant

Abstract: Gauge theories form the foundation of modern physics, with applications ranging from early-universe cosmology and heavy-ion collisions to condensed matter systems. However, simulating the real-time dynamics of such quantum many-body systems on classical computers is fraught with difficulties, motivating the pursuit of alternative venues. I will present recent experiments where we employ a large-scale Bose-Hubbard quantum simulator to emulate a U(1) lattice gauge theory, which couples charged matter fields through dynamical gauge fields.

Abstract: Our current understanding of planet formation is informed by ongoing observations of circumstellar disks around young stars.   The improving spatial resolution of these observations has revealed a variety of structures in these dusty gas disks, including gaps, spiral waves, warps, and lopsided distributions of dust particles.  These observations are restricted to a single viewing geometry from Earth and by limited spatial resolution.  Analogous structures are observed in Saturn’s rings with a multitude of viewing ge

Abstract: The solar corona is the hot and ionized outer atmosphere of the Sun.  It traces out the complex solar magnetic field and expands into interplanetary space as the supersonic solar wind.  In 1958, Eugene Parker theorized that the presence of a million-degree corona necessarily requires the outward acceleration of a wind.  However, despite many years of exploration of both phenomena, we still do not have a complete understanding of the processes that heat the coronal plasma to its bizarrely high temperatures.

Abstract:

Among all known isotopes, Thorium-229 has the lowest nuclear excited
state, only 8.4 eV above the ground state. This so-called "isomer" is
accessible to VUV laser excitation and has been proposed as a robust
clock transition for future frequency standards. The talk will present
most recent progress on measuring the exact nuclear excitation energy
and the isomer lifetime in a solid-state environment.

APS Facutly Candidate Colloquium Thursday 2/22/24 @3:30pm

Abstract: Solar hydrogen generation is pivotal to diversifying the global energy supply away from fossil fuels in the transportation sector and across major industries, including ammonia synthesis, process metallurgy, and hydrocarbon production [1,2].