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Thomas Catanach recipient of APS ScholarshipSophomore physics and classical languages major Thomas Catanach (pictured here with Director of Undergraduate Studies, Professor Anthony Hyder, and Chairman of the Department of Physics, Professor Mitchell Wayne), has received
a Minorities in Physics scholarship from the American Physical Society. This scholarship is aimed at fostering continued education in physics and undergraduate research. Catanach’s application included significant research he performed as a Notre Dame freshman in Project GRAND, Gamma Ray Astrophysics at Notre Dame, led by Physics professor John Poirier.
“I’ve been looking at long data sets of cosmic ray intensity,” Catanach said. “I’ve been studying long-term trends. The data comes from GRAND’s 64 detectors in a field north of campus. The analysis focuses on accounting for the effects on temperature and pressure on muon detection. That allows researchers to understand what the cosmic ray is doing, rather than what the muon, generated by the cosmic ray in the atmosphere, is doing.”
“Both temperature and pressure exhibit periodic variation. Temperature changes with the day-night rotation of the Earth and the yearly seasons. Pressures changes are the result of a two-cycle-a-day change in the atmosphere caused by solar tides. When the effects of pressure are excluded, the increase in the two cycles per day increases indicating that there is another two cycle variation in cosmic ray flux probably caused by the interplanetary magnetic field. You learn more about the cosmic rays themselves,” he said.
Last summer, Catanach did research at SNO lab in Canada with Queen’s University, looking at ultra high energy cosmic rays and helping with the development of the SNO+ detector. He has worked with cosmic rays since he was in high school in Dallas and became involved in a QuarkNet program at SMU, where he did research for several summers. QuarkNet is heavily involved in cosmic ray studies and maintains an online data repository from participating schools. The American Physical Society scholarship supports Catanach’s continued research. He said, “It’s to encourage you to be involved in research.”
Post date: 11/12/09
Wiescher named Kaneb FellowEach year, the Kaneb Center names eight faculty fellows in recognition of their
records of teaching excellence. Kaneb Faculty Fellows share their teaching abilities and experiences through workshops, discussion groups, research, and individual consultation. Michael Wiescher, Freimann Professor of Physics, was recently named a 2009-2010 Fellow.
Michael Wiescher received his PhD in Physics in Munster, Germany. He held research positions at Ohio State University, Caltech, and the University of Mainz, Germany before he joined the faculty of the University of Notre Dame in 1986. His research is focused on nuclear astrophysics, studying the origin of elements in our Universe and the nature of nuclear processes in stars and stellar explosions. He is the Freimann Chair of Physics and Director of the Institute for Structure and Nuclear Astrophysics, a university research center and accelerator laboratory. He is also Director of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics, a Physics Frontier Center of the National Science Foundation between Notre Dame, the University of Chicago, and Michigan State University as well as a number of other national and international research institutions.
Wiescher heads a large research group with a number of graduate and undergraduate students and over the years he has taught a large number of graduate and undergraduate courses. He is particularly interested in communicating science goals and concepts to non-science students since a basic knowledge of science and understanding of the role of science in society is important in today’s world. In this spirit, Wiescher revitalized and developed a number of interdisciplinary courses to attract non-physics major students and to pass this message to Notre Dame undergraduate students. These courses include Physics in Medicine, Physics Method in Art and Archaeology, and Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Warfare. For this effort Wiescher received the 2007 Joyce Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. He presently plans to develop a course on the Physics of Global Warming.
Post date: 11/6/09
Bunker elected Vice Chair and Chair Elect of the IXASBruce A. Bunker, Professor of Physics, has been elected Vice Chair and Chair
Elect of the International X-ray Absorption Society. Bunker is director of the Materials Research Collaborative Access Team, a consortium that develops and uses x-ray beamlines at the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago, one of the three most sophisticated x-ray synchrotron sources in the world.
The International X-ray Absorption Society (IXAS) is an international scientific organization representing all those working on the fine structure associated with inner shell excitation (near edge and extended) by various probes (e.g. x-rays and electrons), and related techniques for which the data is interpreted on the same physical basis.
The study of the fine structure of the absorption spectra is important for understanding fine details of the atomic and electron structure of matter in any aggregation state. The IXAS is the reference organization for scientists, students and practitioners using various x-ray based experimental techniques (XAS, EXAFS, XAFS, XANES, NESAFS citing just a few of them) usually conducted at synchrotron radiation facilities. One commonly used acronym, XAFS, stands for X-Ray Absorption Fine-Structure.
The purpose of the IXAS is to oversee activities which benefit the community as a whole, to establish operational committees, to provide for education in the field, to disseminate relevant information, to work with other related regional, national and professional organizations in promoting and developing XAS and related disciplines, and to act as representative for the community to other professional organizations.
Post date: 11/5/09
Chris Kennedy returns to department to discuss "Post Ph.D"Chris Kennedy (Notre Dame Ph.D. 1993) returned to campus on October 16 to
speak with a group of approximately 30 physics majors and graduate students about the reality that a significant number of Physics PhD’s go into the private sector rather than move toward an academic career. According to an NSF survey, between the years 1996 and 2000, 46% of Ph.D. recipients went into industry, 40% went into academe, and 13% into government, non-profit, and hospital work. Chris focused on the why and what to expect when they got there.
Why would you want to go into industry? Chris explained that the work can be fun. Many industries are in attractive locations, i.e. the Bay Area, Seattle, New York, Atlanta, Boston. Industry "allows you to get on with your life. It offers more stability than extended postdoctoral appointments and, of course, the money is generally better." As Chris said, "Someone has to donate to the Notre Dame Fund Drives and industry jobs tend to be paid higher than academic jobs." Chris concluded by stating that industry is a better fit for some, while academia is a better fit for others, and chances are you can survive in either place.
Of course, you have to decide what you love doing. If you love teaching, industry is not for you. The problems in academia are more elementary. "What are the fundamental laws of the universe vs. What am I going to be able to sell and, of course, the fact that companies don’t have college football teams. No matter what, you will still have budgets, bosses, human resource issues, politics, canceled projects, dead start-up, mergers, acquisitions, and spin-offs."
Chris Kennedy has a long association with the University of Notre Dame. His great grandfather was kicked out of the Moreau Seminary, his father received his Ph.D. from Notre Dame in 1966 (Chris was born while his father was in the Ph.D. program). Chris attended Creighton University as an Undergraduate and started Graduate School at Notre Dame in 1986 as a Schmidt Fellow. Chris worked in the High Energy Physics group under Professor Randy Ruchti and received his PhD in 1993. From 1993 to 1995 Chris worked as a Postdoc at Yale University. In 1995 Chris began working for AT&T. In 2002 the division that Chris was working for at AT&T was sold to Comcast where Chris is currently working as Director of Product Engineering.
Post date: 10/20/09
Ruggiero Named to Technical Advisory Committee of Global WaterPhysics Professor Steven T. Ruggiero has been named to the Technical Advisory
Committee of Global Water. Global Water is an international, non-profit humanitarian organization founded in 1982 by former US ambassador John McDonald and Dr. Peter Bourne. The Global Water philosophy is that lack of safe water and proper sanitation facilities are typically the most significant problems affecting rural populations of developing nations. Specifically, that the lack of safe drinking water and of access to sanitation facilities are the root causes of disease, hunger and poverty throughout the developing world today. The Committee will be advising them on and potentially providing a means to remotely monitor the pathogen content of water based on methodology developed by our group (Prof. Ruggiero and Prof. Carol Tanner) to count and identify nano-particles and organisms in water.
This association with Global Water reflects the general interest that many groups have in water, aquatic environments and global health, including the Center for Aquatic Conservation here on campus. Our valued partnerships with Global Water and other groups on and off campus stem from studies of the properties of nano-particles, proteins, viruses, and bacteria in solution by our group which also includes Frank Li and Bobby Schafer.
Post date: 10/13/09
Leading Astronomer Enlightens a Crowd on Our Accelerating UniverseRobert Kirshner, the Clowes Professor of Science at Harvard University, spoke
to a large crowd Thursday evening (October 8) in the Hesburgh Library Auditorium on "Exploding Stars and the Accelerating Cosmos: Einstein’s Blunder Undone."
Kirshner guided the audience through nearly 100 years of discovery on the universe. He discussed recent observations of exploding stars located half-way across the universe that reveal that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. It appears that the universe is dominated by a mysterious "dark energy" that drives cosmic acceleration. Kirshner explained the picture of the universe through a richly illustrated presentation, at times drawing on his own first-hand account of the discovery.
Kirshner is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Science, and the American Philosophical Society. In 2007, Kirshner and his colleagues of the High-Z Supernova Team (including Notre Dame Professor of Physics Peter Garnavich) shared the Gruber Prize in Cosmology. His award-winning book, The Extravagant Universe: Exploding Stars, Dark Energy, and the Accelerating Cosmos has been translated into four languages.
Kirshner’s lecture was part of the 2009 International Year of Astronomy events at the University of Notre Dame. The lecture was sponsored by the Charles Edison Lecture Fund.
Post date: 10/9/09
New study describes risk of mobile phone virus attacksTraditional cell phones have been immune to viruses because they lack
standardized operating systems. However, as smart phones rapidly increase in market share, viruses pose a serious threat to mobile communications.
A new study in the journal Science that is coauthored by University of Notre Dame physics doctoral student Pu Wang and researchers from Northeastern University suggests that the risk of mobile phone virus attacks will increase as a few operating systems gain more market share. The study also analyzes the pattern and speed of the spread of infection for Bluetooth and multimedia messaging services (MMS). The researchers used anonymous billing records of 6.2 million mobile subscribers and tracked calling patterns using the location of the closest mobile phone tower.
Smart phones, which can share programs and data, could attract virus writers at a level more disruptive than computer viruses. Mobile viruses can be spread by either Bluetooth or MMS communications protocols. Bluetooth viruses can infect phones with the technology within a local area, comparable to the spread of contact-based disease. The infected phone must be moved into another tower’s range in order to infect a new set of phones. The slow spread provides time to develop protection from the virus.
MMS viruses, like computer viruses, can send copies to everyone in the infected phone’s address book and copy themselves into a new handset in about two minutes, but the underlying call network is so fragmented that viruses can access only a fraction of susceptible phones. Since 2005, virus writers have developed hybrids that spread with both Bluetooth and MMS connections.
Wang, who is part of Notre Dame’s Center for Complex Network Research, notes that the increasing dominance of some operating systems for smart phones leaves the technology vulnerable to attacks by sophisticated virus writers. "We believe that the understanding of the basic spreading patterns presented here could help estimate the realistic risks carried by mobile phone viruses and aid in the development of proper measures so as to avoid the costly impact of future outbreaks," he said.
The other authors of the study are Marta C. González and Albert-László Barabási of the Center for Complex Network Research at Northeastern University.
Contact: Pu Wang, Department of Physics, 574-329-2113, pwang2@nd.edu
Post date: 9/29/09
Physics graduate students travel worldwide for researchThe department of physics recently compiled a list of the international research
activities of its graduate students. While the following list is not complete, it is certainly impressive.
Nuclear Physics Graduate Students
Mary Beard: Close collaboration with Russian scientists at the Joffe Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia and scientists in FZ Rossendorf Dresden, Germany. Advisor: Michael Wiescher
Paul LeBlanc: Experiments at the underground laboratory at Gran Sasso, Italy for exploring critical reactions for stellar hydrogen burning in a cosmic ray free environment. P.J. spent several months in Italy and Italian collaborators came to Notre Dame for complementary measurements at the NSL. Advisor: Michael Wiescher
Shawn O’Brien: Experiments at iThemba, Capetown South Africa, and RCNP Osaka, Japan in international collaborations between ND, Osaka, and KVI Netherlands to explore critical reactions for explosive hydrogen burning. Shawn spent several months abroad. Advisor: Michael Wiescher
Annalia Palumbo, Ph.D. 2009: Experiments at ATOMKI, Debrecen, Hungary for exploring reactions of the p-process in type II supernovae shockfronts. Annalia spent several weeks in Hungary and Hungarian researchers came for experiments with her to Notre Dame. Advisor: Michael Wiescher
Ethan Uberseder: Experiments at FZK, Karlsruhe and GSI Darmstadt, both National Laboratories in Germany. The purpose of these experiments is the study of critical reactions for the nucleosynthesis of 60Fe. Ethan spent several months abroad. Advisor: Michael Wiescher
Brian Bucher: Participated in a nuclear physics experiment in September of 2008 for two weeks at the University of Jyvaskyla in Jyvaskyla, Finland. Advisor: Xiaodong Tang
Darshana Patel: Participated in a US-Japan-Netherlands collaboration for her thesis research. Her experiments are performed at the Research Center for Nuclear Physics, Osaka University, in Osaka, Japan. Advisor: Umesh Garg
Among recent graduates, Tao Li, Ph.D. 2008, performed his thesis experiments at Osaka University and was also involved in experimental work at KVI, Groningen, the Netherlands. Advisor: Umesh Garg
Ian Bentley: Involved in the collaboration with the Institute for Radiation Physics, Research Center Dresden, Rossendorf. As part of his thesis work he studies shape fluctuations of transitional nuclei for application in astrophysical calculations (nuclear synthesis of elements). Ian was in Germany for one month in the summer of 2009. In the framework of this collaboration, he already spent two months there in 2006. A common publication is submitted. Advisor: Stefan Frauendorf
Jie Sun: Involved in the collaboration with Australian National University. As part of his thesis, he calculates magnetic moments of transitional nuclei with a new method (tidal wave approach). He is in the process of finishing a common paper. For this purpose he participated and presented a poster at the Gordon Research Conference on Nuclear Chemistry in New London (NH) in July 2009. The collaborators were there and planned to finalize the manuscript. Advisor: Stefan Frauendorf
Condensed Matter Physics Graduate Students
Pinaki Das: Involved in neutron scattering experiments carried out at two international facilities: Paul Scherrer Institut, Switzerland, and the Institut Laue-Langevin, France). The main focus is to study vortices in superconductors. The experiments are carried out in collaboration with people from Switzerland, France, UK, USA, and Canada. Advisor: Morten Eskildsen
Albert Lin: Albert is at the University of Antwerp in Belgium until December 2009, working with the condensed matter theory group lead by Prof. Francois Peters, and advised in Belgium by Prof. Milorad Milosevic. He is working on inhomogeneous superconductivity. Advisor: Boldizsar Janko
Astrophysics Graduate Students
Xinghai Zhao: Involved in an international collaboration involving cosmological simulations with researchers in Vietnam at the Hanoi University of Education. There is a memorandum of understanding with the Hanoi University and the Institute of Physics for international exchange. Advisor: Grant Mathews
Matt Meixner: Collaboration involving supernova simulations with researchers at the theory division of National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. Advisor: Grant Mathews
High Energy Physics Graduate Students
Ted Kolberg, Jamie Antonelli, Sean Lynch, and Doug Berry: At CERN, Geneva where they are helping commission the electromagnetic calorimeter and the trigger for the CMS detector at the LHC and preparing for data analysis once the experiment starts again in November. The CMS is a large international collaboration of 140 institutions from the US, Europe and Asia. Sean recently won an NSF award to help fund his stay in Geneva and is working on the data acquisition system. Doug is helping set up a data stream for outreach as part of the LHC. Ted is a “run field coordinator” for the calorimeter which means he is in charge of the operation as a part of the detector. Jamie is commissioning the trigger and writing software that automatically validates the data collected by the calorimeter. Each of them will analyze data to try to search for various new physics scenarios with the possibility of being a part of a major discovery. The CMS is a large international collaboration of 140 institutions from the US, Europe and Asia. Notre Dame is one of the founding members of the collaboration. Advisors: Colin Jessop and Mitchell Wayne
Tessa Pearson: At CERN for two months in the sumer of 2009 for research. Advisor: Randal Ruchti
Kyle Knoepfel: Stationed at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in Menlo Park, California working with the BaBar Collaboration. The BaBar Collaboration is formed of 50 institutions from the US and Europe and is named after the detector it constructed which studies in detail the rare decays of B mesons formed in electron positron collisions. Kyle is completing a precision measurement of a rare process that is particularly sensitive to new physics scenarios. He participated in the construction and data taking of the experiment and was an operations manager during data taking. He recently won an award for a poster presented at the Notre Dame graduate student conference.
Post date: 9/25/09
Physics graduate student comes up with game-changing ideaHyunju Kim, a graduate student under the direction of Professor Zoltán
Toroczkai, produced the key elements for a mathematical physics paper that was selected as a Fast Track Communication of Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and General. According to the journal’s page, "Fast Track Communications are outstanding short papers reporting new and timely developments in mathematical and theoretical physics."
Hyunju came up with crucial ideas and proofs needed to solve one of the fundamental problems in network research (degree based graph construction) which is important for network modeling with applications ranging from the study of epidemics spread, communication networks (Internet, peer-to-peer networks), social networks and chemistry (structural isomers). The co-authors of this paper, Hyunju Kim (University of Notre Dame), Zoltán Toroczkai (University of Notre Dame and Renyi Institute of Mathematics, Budapest, Hungary), Péter L. Erdos (Renyi Institute of Mathematics, Budapest, Hungary), István Miklós (Renyi Institute of Mathematics, Budapest, Hungary), and László A. Székely (University of South Carolina), were working on a different problem when they realized that this fundamental question needed to be tackled. It was Hyunju Kim who came up with the game-changing idea.
The paper "Degree-based graph construction" can be found here.
Post date: 9/24/09
Howk appointed to Large Binocular Telescope CommitteeAssistant Professor of Physics Jay Christopher Howk has been appointed to the
Science and Technology Advisory Committee (STC) for the Large Binocular Telescope Project (LBT). The LBT is a $200 Million telescope in southern Arizona, and the largest telescope on a single mount in the world. The LBT project is an international collaboration between Germany, Italy, University of Arizona, The Ohio State University, University of Notre Dame and other US institutions.
Dr. Howk has been a member of the Notre Dame faculty since 2005 and was previously at the Center for Astrophysics and Space Science at the University of California, San Diego. His research interests include the astrophysical origins of the elements and the role gas plays in the evolution of galaxies and the universe. His work on these issues has made use of data from the LBT and several NASA observatories, including the Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Space Telescope.
The STC advises the LBT Board of Directors on the current and future science directions of the LBT project. This includes selecting proposals for consortium-wide science programs and developing the future instrumentation for the facility. Recently the STC recommended that the project build an adaptive optics laser guide star system that will allow the twin telescopes to compensate for the turbulence in the Earth’s atmosphere, which normally limits the image quality. The corrected images should rival those from the Hubble Space Telescope. Other instruments due to be delivered to the telescope in the next few years are infrared and optical spectrographs for the study of stars, galaxies and cosmology. There will also be two instruments that combine the light from the pair of large mirrors and allow direct imaging of extra-solar planets.
"This is a great opportunity for Notre Dame to interact with the larger LBT community and for both to get to know each other better. I expect to learn a lot about the science other LBT astrophysicists are excited about," says Dr. Howk. "The LBT is a unique instrument in the world. It is Notre Dame’s principal laboratory for astrophysics, and I am excited to play a role in shaping its future."
Post date: 9/24/09
Wiescher discusses advances in measuring nuclear reactionsA paper by Michael Wiescher published in the American Physical Society’s Physics
journal recently traces development in research on nuclear reactions that happen in stars. The article titled “Cosmic alchemy in the laboratory” covers both theoretical and experimental advances in the field, as well as a discussion of the role of such reactions in creating the variety of physical elements. Wiescher is the Freimann Chair of Physics, Director of the Nuclear Science Laboratory and Director of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics.
The paper points forward to three major initiatives for the construction of new underground accelerator facilities, including the Dakota Ion Accelerators for Nuclear Astrophysics (DIANA) at Homestake mine in South Dakota, a collaboration among the University of Notre Dame, the University of North Carolina, Western Michigan University and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Other proposed underground accelerator facilities are at a salt mine in the United Kingdom and an abandoned train tunnel in Spain. Underground laboratories shield experiments from high-energy cosmic raise that are a distracting background.
The experiments grow out of theoretical advances in recent years in the field of stellar reactions and stellar evolution. Scientists have long known that fusion of hydrogen in stars produces helium, helium burning produces carbon, and subsequent burnings produce neon, oxygen, silicon, iron and nickel. The sequence depends on the mass of stars and leads variously to white dwarfs, red giants and other categories of stars in their life cycles. But because the process involves billions of years, researchers must find creative ways to conduct measurements that lead to more understanding of the evolution process and the associated nucleosynthesis. Complementary to the development of underground accelerator laboratories, equipment such as the newly designed St. George recoil mass separator at Notre Dame will offer alternative ways to study stellar reactions.
"Rapid developments in the study of low-energy nuclear reactions should help researchers overcome a number of the challenges that have hampered past work," Wiescher wrote. "Theoretical methods have been substantially improved and allow a much more reliable extrapolation of the existing data into the Gamow window of stellar burning (the range of energies of particles that fuse at a given temperature). However, theoretical models are often insufficient in describing the complex interaction and interference of the resonant and nonresonant reaction contributions in the Gamow range. There are also possible effects, which occur near the particle threshold, such as contributions from subthreshold resonances or additional nonresonant contributions that have to be taken into account but are only accessible to direct measurement."
Michael Wiescher is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the Humboldt Gesellschaft in Germany. In 2003, he was awarded the Bethe Prize of the Divisions of Nuclear Physics and Astrophysics of the American Physical Society. He has given more than 100 invited presentations at national and international conferences and nearly 100 seminars and colloquia and has published more than 200 refereed articles.
Link to American Physical Society journal article: http://physics.aps.org/articles/v2/69
Post date: 9/2/09
Middle School Students Present Science at Sensing Our World ProgramMiddle school students at Sensing our World Go Green, a longstanding summer
program at Notre Dame with an environmental emphasis this year, learned about ecologically sound approaches to urban space, the physics of energy, how chemists are developing biodegradable alternatives to various consumer goods, environmental philosophy and ecological adaptation. Teams of students demonstrated their projects in the Jordan Hall Galleria at the end of the camp in July.
At one table, seventh grader Julia Lohraff offered passers-by a "snow cone" made by adding water to polysodium acrylate obtained from baby diapers. She tinted the gelatinous result with a felt-tip marker, then added salt to show that the substance easily becomes an environmentally-friendly liquid.
Other exhibits included Levitating Trains, where a superconductor cooled with liquid nitrogen moved along a track of parallel magnets, and a greenhouse-effect demonstration, where thermometers in identical clear closed containers heated by lamps showed higher temperatures in the one where dry ice had been added.
At a display on malaria, a microscope showed visitors malaria parasites and white blood cells. Motors and Generators showed how electromagnetic energy increases when magnets are added. At Electrolysis with Solar Cells, light from a lamp generated electricity that divided water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, potentially providing power for hydrogen fuel cell cars. A model watershed showed how waste can slip into the river and flow into the ocean. "It becomes a global problem," ninth grader Victor Lu said.
Baugo Community Schools physical science teacher Kevin Johnston was the lead instructor at the camp, whose teachers included faculty, staff, and graduate students from Physics, Chemistry, Biological Sciences and other departments at the University of Notre Dame. The Joint Institute for Astrophysics (JINA), the Department of Physics, the Nuclear Structure Laboratory, individual faculty members and various research centers sponsored the camp.
For the complete story and more pictures.
Post date: 8/24/09
NDeRC and I2U2 Conduct Workshop to Train TeachersThe Notre Dame extended Research Community (NDeRC) and Interactions in
Understanding the Universe (I2U2@Notre Dame) hosted a National Science Foundation-sponsored workshop on August 10 and 11 in Jordan Hall. The workshop brought local middle and high school teachers together to study data from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in Washington State and to learn how to use online e-Labs in their classrooms.
Tom Loughran, professional specialist in the Department of Physics who works at the QuarkNet Center, led the pilot workshop, one of only two in the nation. The teachers used the LIGO e-Lab, but they will also be able to use an e-Lab on cosmic rays that has been ongoing. Next year, an e-Lab in development for CMS, the particle physics detection at CERN is expected to join the offerings.
LIGO, designed to directly observe gravitational waves that have been indicated by indirect evidence, has not yet detected such waves. Teachers were studying seismic data that LIGO has collected, background noise that must be accounted for when researchers attempt to demonstrate that they have detected gravitational waves.
Post date: 8/24/09
Philippe Collon named Associate Director of Center for Undergraduate Scholarly EngagementEffective July 1, Philippe Collon was named the Associate Director of the Center
for Undergraduate Scholarly Engagement (CUSE). CUSE is being launched in Fall 2009 under the direction of Dan Lindley, Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science. Its mission encompasses three important and interrelated functions: provide programming and mentoring experiences that encourage students to develop as scholars, promote undergraduate research experiences, and assist students in their successful application for post-baccalaureate fellowships. As Associate Director his primary responsibilities will be to work with faculty and departments, as well as with students directly, to develop and support innovative programming and mentoring experiences that encourage young students to pursue their own lines of inquiry and to inspire students to begin to view themselves as scholars.
Post date: 8/6/09
New Director of Undergraduate Studies in PhysicsEffective June 30, 2009, Professor Chris Kolda stepped down as Associate
Chair and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Physics. Professor Mitchell Wayne, Chairman of the Department of Physics, said "Chris Kolda has been a truly exceptional Director of Undergraduate Studies and he has given tremendous service to the department over the past three years. The undergraduate program has thrived under his leadership, as was evidenced by this year’s graduating class of senior physics majors – the largest and strongest group that anybody can recall."
Professor Tony Hyder has agreed to serve as our next Associate Chair and Director of Undergraduate Studies, effective July 1. Prof. Wayne said "Tony brings a great many assets to the position. He has years of high-level administrative experience, he is an excellent classroom instructor, and he has a deep affection for the university and our students. The undergraduate program will be in very good hands with Tony at the helm."
Post date: 7/30/09
Furdyna Awarded Copernicus Medal by Polish Academy of SciencesIn a ceremony on July 3, 2009 held in Warsaw, Professor of Physics Jacek
Furdyna was awarded the Nicolaus Copernicus Medal by the Polish Academy of Sciences. The medal is the Academy’s highest honor. Among its past recipients are renowned scientists and engineers in the fields of biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, computer science, engineering, and other areas of science and technology, including a number of Nobel Prize winners, whose work in the opinion of the Polish Academy of Sciences has had significant impact on science and technology in Poland.
Furdyna holds the Aurora and Thomas Marquez Chair of Information Theory and Computer Technology in the Department of Physics. He is world-renowned for the design and development of new semiconductor materials, including magnetic semiconductors aimed at performing new and extremely fast functions in computers. The new functionality of these materials is based on the use of the electron spin (in addition to its charge) in the design of electronic circuits, which is expected to lay the groundwork for non-volatile magnetic memories for the next generation of computing systems.
Born in Poland, Furdyna was deported to Siberia at age six by the Soviet government. After his release, he lived in the Middle East and England. Upon arriving in the U.S., he attended Holy Trinity High School in Chicago operated by the Congregation of Holy Cross. Interestingly, practically all his high school teachers were Notre Dame graduates, so that his first academic contact after arriving in this country was with Notre Dame. He graduated from Loyola University of Chicago with a bachelor’s degree in physics summa cum laude. He went on to complete his doctoral degree in physics at Northwestern University and joined the staff of the Francis Bitter National Magnet Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before moving to Purdue University, where he directed the Materials Research Laboratory.
Furdyna joined the Department of Physics of the University of Notre Dame in 1987. For his achievements in science he was awarded honorary doctorates by Warsaw University in 2003, and by Purdue University in 2007. Furdyna is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the Institute of Physics of the United Kingdom.
Post date: 7/21/09
Notre Dame launches new career services program for alumni
The University of Notre Dame Alumni Association, in collaboration with the University’s Career Center, Mendoza College of Business and Notre Dame Law School, has established ONWARD: Alumni Career Development, a comprehensive career and networking program.
The ONWARD web site http://alumni.nd.edu/career provides tools for job seekers and those looking to network with other alumni. It includes job postings, webinars on career topics, links to articles, and access to the alumni mentor program. In addition there are career advisors available to answer questions and provide guidance.
Post date: 7/20/09
2009 Reunion Weekend Open HouseThe College of Science hosted an open house on Friday, June 5, during the
2009 Reunion weekend. The event was held in the Jordan Hall of Science Galleria. College of Science graduates enjoyed refreshments, conversation with friends from the past, and tours of the hall during their visit. The Department of Physics graduates who attended that afternoon included: Paul Biebel, Class of 1949; John Poirier, Class of 1954; Peter Barnes, Class of 1959; Jim Maher, Stewart Ryan, and Bill Jones, all Class of 1964; Thomas Krick, Class of 1969; Bob Weber and Jim Leous, Class of 1984; and Robert Raphael, Class of 1989.
Pictured above are Dean Gregory Crawford, Stewart Ryan, Jim Maher, Bill Jones, Professor Emerson Funk (Emeritus), and Robert Raphael.
Post date: 7/6/09
Leiner Receives NSF Fellowship to Study in KoreaThird-year graduate student Jonathan Leiner is working this summer in Korea with
Sanghoon Lee, a professor at Korea University and longtime collaborator with researchers at the University of Notre Dame. Leiner wrote the proposal that won a fellowship for the National Science Foundation’s East Asia and Pacific Summer Institute.
"The project involves the interaction between magnetic quantum dots," said Leiner’s advisor, Malgorzata Dobrowolska-Furdyna, a professor in the Department of Physics. The title of his proposal was "A Study of Magnetic Anisotropy and Domain Formation in Gallium Manganese Arsenide (GaMnAs)-based Hetero Structures."
Leiner, who has studied Korean and went to a program orientation in Washington to prepare for the summer work, spent three weeks in a Notre Dame lab manufacturing samples of GaMnAs to take with him to Korea. He will study the material with Lee, who has developed a sophisticated experimental system. When he returns he will work on analysis of the data he collects. "It’s a very good symbiosis," Dobrowolska-Furdyna said.
Post date: 6/23/09
James L. Merz HonoredJames L. Merz, the Frank Freimann Professor of Electrical Engineering and
Concurrent Professor of Physics, is the recipient of the 2009 Presidential Award, an honor presented to those who have given distinguished service to the University over an extended period of time.
Merz, who was graduated from Notre Dame 50 years ago with a bachelor’s degree in physics, has spent his career mentoring young engineering and physics scholars, in addition to serving as vice president for graduate studies and research, dean of the Graduate School and interim dean of the College of Engineering.
Post date: 6/16/09
Mark Caprio research highlighted in APS journalThe American Physical Society (APS) has recently begun featuring synopses of
"interesting and important" articles published in its journals, through an online physics news publication Physics: Spotlighting Exceptional Research. The May 2009 issue highlights a new computational technique for modeling nuclear collective motion (vibrations and rotations of the nuclear surface) developed by physicists at the University of Toronto together with Mark Caprio of the University of Notre Dame. The original article was published in Physical Review C. From the APS synopsis:
The Bohr collective model assumes that the nucleus behaves like a liquid drop that can vibrate and rotate and that its surface can be characterized by five variables. ... In the algebraic collective model ... a group theoretical approach is used to separate the variables into a "radial" coordinate (β) and four angular variables. The radial wave functions can be chosen corresponding to a specific mean deformation in β while calculations involving the angular coordinates are made simple by group theoretical techniques. This leads to huge computational savings over calculations in a spherical basis (β=0), used in some previous models. ... The Bohr Hamiltonian can now be solved for virtually any assumed potential. ... [T]he ease of carrying out collective model calculations for a wide range of Hamiltonians can be used to quickly characterize a large body of nuclear phenomena and test for limitations of the Bohr model.
Post date: 5/13/09
Toroczkai Receives Alfred Renyi Institute of Mathematics FellowshipZoltan Toroczkai, professor of Physics, has received a fellowship to study for two
months this summer at the Alfred Renyi Institute of Mathematics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The fellowship is sponsored by the Hungarian Bioinformatics Marie Curie Host Fellowships program, financed by the European Union.
Toroczkai’s current research is on fundamental properties of large-scale networks, in particular social networks, using databases of cell-phone call trace-logs, with the callers’ identities concealed, to infer statistical patterns of social dynamics. Major sporting events or breaking news, such as the 9/11 terrorist attack, can cause visible changes in those patterns, the study indicates. That provides valuable information about how the social network responds as a whole, in case of disasters or global emergencies and could help develop mitigation strategies.
Toroczkai has also been involved in a nine-year, $30 million study at Los Alamos National Laboratory that studied the influence of social contact networks on disease spread. By using extended census data complemented by mobility diaries kept by thousands of people, an in-silico, virtual model of a city and its population was developed allowing to draft detailed quarantine and vaccination strategies in case of a smallpox outbreak, as it was partially presented in a 2004 Nature publication, by this group. The study has applications to present concerns about the spread of H1N1 flu.
The fellowship will enhance both his own research and Notre Dame’s relationship with the institute in Budapest, Toroczkai says. “This is a great opportunity for me since this institute is considered the Mecca of discrete mathematics in general and combinatorics and graph theory in particular,” he says. “As my research is in network science and its applications, graph theory and discrete mathematics are essential elements of it, and interacting with some of the most renowned experts in these fields will greatly benefit our research and spark new collaborations between the Interdisciplinary Center of Network Science and Applications (iCeNSA) at Notre Dame and the Renyi Institute.”
Post date: 5/11/09
2006 Nobel Laureate in Physics Presents at Notre Dame
John Mather, who shared the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics, presented a lecture on
April 23 in the Jordan Hall of Science. Mather, who is a senior astrophysicist in the Observational Cosmology Laboratory at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, spoke on the Cosmic Background Explorer Mission (COBE) and about his current work on the James Webb Space Telescope.
COBE measured the cosmic microwave background radiation of the universe, revealing its black body form and anisotropy – small but important uneven densities – and confirming the big-bang theory of the universe’s origin. The satellite orbited from 1989 to 1994. Mather shared the Nobel Prize with another principal investigator on COBE, George Smoot.
The James Webb Space Telescope, which is under construction and scheduled for launch in 2013, will collect infrared light (heat radiation) from the earliest galaxies in its 21.3-foot mirror. The ability to see infrared, outside the visible light spectrum, allows researchers to see stars forming inside the Eagle Nebula, for example, where clouds of dust block the view of ordinary telescopes. The telescope will enable study of planetary formation around new stars.
With shields to block the light from stars, the technology can be used to study planets in detail, looking for the presence of ozone, carbon dioxide and water necessary for life. While his work with COBE helped answer questions about the origins of the universe, Mather said, the new research also will help scientists learn more about our own place in the universe. "Why is there matter and not antimatter? " he said. "What is dark matter? What is dark energy? How did we get here? And are we alone? "
Post date: 4/30/09
Merz elected fellow of Materials Research SocietyJames L. Merz, the University of Notre Dame’s Frank M. Freimann Professor of
Electrical Engineering and Concurrent Professor of Physics, has been named a fellow of the Materials Research Society (MRS). He was cited for his “outstanding achievements in electronic materials, particularly compound semiconductors…and for intellectual leadership in advancing materials research in the U.S. and internationally.
The Materials Research Society is a nonprofit association of more than 14,000 scientists, researchers and engineers engaged in interdisciplinary research on materials of technological importance. A lifetime appointment, election as a fellow in the MRS is limited to less than .2 percent of the membership of the society each year (approximately 30 researchers.
Merz, a internationally recognized scholar in the field of optoelectronic materials and devices, previously served the University as interim dean of the College of Engineering and vice president for graduate studies and research. A Notre Dame alumnus, he returned to the University in 1994 to direct a team of researchers investigating Quantum Cellular Automata, a transistorless approach to computing sometimes called Notre Dame logic.
Post date: 3/17/09
Students in Physics Course Craft New U.S. Energy PolicyUndergraduate students in Professor of Physics Ani Aprahamian’s course,
Concepts of Energy and Environment, are spending part of the semester crafting a new energy policy for the United States. Class members are divided into teams that report on specific energy resources plus a 10-person policy committee that checks affected regulations and a 10-person panel that will draft the conclusions.
The goal, Aprahamian says, is to engage the students, mostly business majors, in real-life issues that involve science, so they will be prepared to consider such issues in society. “They’re not interested in deep science issues, equations, and derivations,” she says. “Today, nobody can afford not to be involved in the deep science issues. It affects all of us. It is so timely. There are new policies and a new administration.” The popular course, based in the Department of Physics, fulfills the University’s science requirement for non-physics majors.
Teams are giving PowerPoint presentations on petroleum, natural gas, coal, nuclear energy, solar energy, wind power, geothermal and bio-fuels, and answering questions from the class, the policy group, and the panel. The policy group keeps the class alert to regulations that govern such fields as the construction industry, transportation, appliances, workforce education, and risks/benefits for the exploitation of various resources. An architecture student on the policy team, for example, is checking to make sure that proposals line up with building codes and building materials.
Groups must consider availability; past, present and projected future uses of the resource; costs; security; workforce; political and environmental risks; benefits; international context and efficiency issues for each resource. Voting on the policy will be in early April. “You see what you can negotiate on, what you can’t negotiate on,” Aprahamian says. “It’s not just a one-sided issue. I think this kind of learning you never forget.”
Post date: 3/5/09
Hop-over diffusion
In the 2008 December 21 issue of Physical Review Letters (Bussmann et al.), from the STM (Scanning Tunneling Microscope) group of Sandia National Laboratory lead by Swartzentruber in collaboration with Franz Himpsel of the Synchrotron Radiation Center at Wisconsin-Madison University have explicitly shown the existence of defect-mediated hop-over diffusion of Si adatoms along Si(111)-(5x2)-Au surface. Hop-over diffusion is the process where the displacements of the adatom (hops) are initiated by the random arrival of a defect, such as a vacancy. It has markedly different properties from classical diffusion, which were first determined in a 1998 Journal of Physics A: Theoretical and General publication (vol. 31, pp. 9667-83) by Royce Zia and Zoltan Toroczkai (ND physics). Understanding adatom dynamics is crucial for the design of nanoscale devices, since they cause nanoscale fluctuations in surface electronic states. Individual Si adatoms have been used as computational bits in atomic scale memory devices (Bennewitz et al., Nanotechnology (2002) ).
Figure: STM visualized hop-over diffusion. From Bussmann et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 266101 (2008). (a) The (5x2)-Au surface, with bright spots representing adatoms; (b)-(e) snapshots from an STM movie capturing the Si hopover diffusion process.
Post date: 2/20/09
Is God a Mathematician?Mario Livio, senior astrophysicist and head of the office of public outreach at the
Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute (STSci), presented a lecture titled “Is God a Mathematician?” on January 21 in the Carey Auditorium of the University of Notre Dame’s Hesburgh Library. The lecture was sponsored by the University’s Department of Physics.
In a book with the same title as his lecture, Livio notes that for centuries mathematical theories have proven uncannily accurate at describing and predicting the physical world. During his talk, he examined what it is that gives mathematics such powers.
Livio’s lecture spanned such fields as cosmology, physics and the cognitive sciences, and offered an accessible and lively account of the lives and thoughts of some of the greatest mathematicians and scientists in history, from Archimedes to Galileo and Descartes, and from Newton to Goedel. He also discussed whether mathematics was ultimately invented or discovered.
Livio received his doctorate in theoretical astrophysics from Tel Aviv University and served as a professor in the physics department of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology from 1981 to 1991, when he joined STSci. His interests span a broad range of topics in astrophysics, from cosmology to the emergence of intelligent life. He has published more than 400 scientific papers and is a frequent lecturer at such venues as the Smithsonian Institution and the Hayden Planetarium. Livio is the author of three previous books: “The Equation That Couldn’t Be Solved,” “The Golden Ratio,” and “The Accelerating Universe.” He signed copies of “Is God a Mathematician?” prior to and after the lecture in the Carey Auditorium.
Post date: 1/29/09
Interdisciplinary Group Releases Study Explaining Bacterial SwarmsA study involving physics graduate student Yilin Wu and Mark Alber, professor
of mathematics, has explained why some bacteria regularly reverse direction as they swarm in search of nutrients. The research, with both experimentation and computational simulation, revealed that the movement of myxobacteria is an advantage to the swarm even though it is a costly energy use for individual cells. Results were published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, with Yilin Wu as lead author, and reviewed in Nature News. Other participants were Dale Kaiser of Stanford University and Yi Jiang of Los Alamos National Laboratory.
"Going back and forth is beneficial, " says Alber, the Notre Dame Chair in Applied Mathematics, concurrent professor of physics and director of the Center for the Study of Biocomplexity. "If you’re looking at individual bacteria, you can think that the beneficial behavior for one bacterium would be to keep on moving in one direction. But it’s going to interfere with the swarming behavior of the population because behavior results in the formation of traffic jams. " The myxobacteria are elongated and move by propelling themselves with slime from the back and reaching out with pili in front to grasp other cells and pull. They reverse the direction of their motion every eight minutes by cutting pili at one end and re-growing them at the other and starting producing slime at the opposite end.
The team developed a computational model to simulate the swarming of myxobacteria and demonstrated that a reversal every eight minutes was optimal to coordinate the movement of the cells that would avoid traffic jams, resulting in the maximal swarming rate. Reversals with other periods would leave the cells interfering with each other. Experimentation showed that the myxobacteria do conduct the reversal every eight minutes, suggesting that the biochemical circuit regulating reversals evolved under selection to maximize the swarming rate. The simulation was necessary because no mutant that always moves in one direction exists.
The study shows that periodic reversal of individual bacteria gives myxobacterial colonies the capacity to build complex, orderly, multicellular structures and to optimize their swarming ability. The research, supported by the National Science Foundation, could provide insight on similar movements of individuals in groups – the schooling of fish, the flocking of birds, the swarming of insects and even human and robotic traffic. The researchers point out that these fundamental problems have yet to be solved for any organism, and new results obtained for bacterial swarming would interest a broad range of biological and physical scientists as well as traffic and robotics engineers.
Post date: 1/27/09
Partnership for Education and Research ForumSome 230 K-12 teachers and parents attended the second Partnership for
Education and Research Forum on January 24 at the Jordan Hall of Science – nearly twice as many as the initial forum drew in 2007, with many of them returning after successful application of forum ideas and activities in their classrooms. The event was part of the University’s increasing efforts to connect faculty and graduate students to local educators and students in K-12.
The Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics (JINA), Expanding Your Horizons career conference for middle school girls, the Indiana AP Bridge Project, the Northern Indiana Regional Science and Engineering Fair, RET@ND and EngRET@ND, NDeRC, the Notre Dame QuarkNet program, Interactions in Understanding the Universe (I2U2), the Northern Indiana Science Mathematics & Engineering Collaborative (NISMEC), and the Hoosier Environmental Council’s Our Place: Place-Based Education Program promoted their programs for students and teachers.
Tim Hardt, science department chair at Washington High School, said the opportunities offered by Notre Dame and allied agencies have renewed enthusiasm for the subject among teachers. Some parents, invited to the forum for the first time, said they see a difference in their children’s approach to science because of Notre Dame’s involvement in the classroom, and they expect to participate in more of the extracurricular programs.
Much of the one-day meeting, which included demonstrations of the Digital Visualization Theater and tours of the Museum of Biodiversity in Jordan Hall, also involved lively discussions among participants. Teachers talked about how to meet the challenges in their classrooms, including unprepared students, large classes, varying abilities and inadequate equipment.
“What we’re here for is to foster science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), community and culture,” said Tom Loughran, a specialist at Notre Dame’s QuarkNet program. “This is not about finishing something. It’s about starting something.”
The forum was sponsored by the Office of Public Affairs and Communication, the Office of Research, the Graduate School, the College of Science, the College of Engineering, the Department of Physics, the Department of Biology and several National Science Foundation supported programs. Further information is available at: http://michianastem.wikispaces.com/.
Post date: 1/27/09
Aprahamian named AAAS Fellow
Two University of Notre Dame faculty members have been named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in honor of their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications. AAAS, founded in 1848 as a nonprofit association, is the world's largest scientific society and the publisher of the prestigious journal Science. The new Notre Dame AAAS fellows are: Ani Aprahamian, professor of physics, and James J. McKenna, Rev. Edmund P. Joyce Chair in Anthropology.
Aprahamian, a member of the Notre Dame faculty since 1989, was cited for "distinguished contributions to understanding the structure of atomic nuclei and the origin of elements and for communicating the excitement of science to diverse audiences."
Aprahamian's research is aimed at gaining an understanding of the origin of the elements of the universe. In her laboratory, she attempts to duplicate the nuclear processes in the universe that control stellar evolution, trigger supernova events, and lead to thermonuclear explosions observed as novae and X-ray bursts.
Aprahamian previously served as director of the nuclear structure laboratory at Notre Dame, which is the longest continuously funded research effort at the University. A fellow of the American Physical Society, Aprahamian is chair of the scientific council of GANIL, a prominent nuclear physics laboratory in France. She has served as program director for nuclear physics and nuclear astrophysics at the National Science Foundation for the past two years and is currently co-chairing the study for the use of isotopes in the U.S. for applications as broad as medicine, the environment and homeland security.
Post date: 1/13/09
Ani Aprahamian recognized at Notre Dame gameProvost Tom Burish recognized Professor of Physics Ani Aprahamian during the
third quarter of the Notre Dame vs. University of Pittsburgh football game on November 1, 2008. A member of the Notre Dame faculty since 1989, Aprahamian was one of six faculty chosen to be recognized for their research accomplishments this academic year. She received a football autographed by coach Charlie Weiss. Pictured left to right, Jeff Samardzija, Ani Aprahamian, Tom Burish.
"We are all made of star stuff," the astronomer Carl Sagan once said.
From an early age, Ani Aprahamian has been intrigued by "star stuff," particularly the nuclear reactions at the heart of stars, supernovae and other cosmic events. And that passion has led to groundbreaking research, and a leading role in shaping physics higher education.
Aprahamian's research is aimed at gaining an understanding of the origin of the elements of the universe. In her laboratory, she attempts to duplicate the nuclear processes in the universe that control stellar evolution, trigger supernova events, and lead to thermonuclear explosions observed as novae, and X-ray bursts. Aprahamian has been the director of the Nuclear Science Laboratory at Notre Dame which is the longest continuously funded research effort at Notre Dame. Aprahamian also was instrumental in gaining a $10 million grant from the National Science Foundation to establish a physics frontier center at Notre Dame named JINA — The Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics — a collaborative effort between researchers at Notre Dame, Michigan State University and the University of Chicago. Housed at Notre Dame, the institute joins together the research efforts in separate disciplines ranging from astronomy to astrophysics to nuclear physics to study the broad range of nuclear processes in the universe.
Post date:11/13/08
Center for Complex Network Research receives NSF grant.
A multidisciplinary research grant of $700K has been awarded by the National Science Foundation's program on Human and Social Dynamics to a group of faculty from the colleges of Science, Engineering and Arts and Letters. The award will fund co-principal investigators David Hachen, Omar Lizardo (sociology), Nitesh V. Chawla (computer science), Mark Alber (mathematics, physics) and principal investigator Zoltan Toroczkai (physics) to develop novel computational and analytic approaches to social network data analysis, using advanced nonlinear time- series methods, community detection algorithms, probabilistic relational models and statistical mechanics.
The developed methodology will directly impact commercial and non-commercial applications related to targeted information propagation in large-scale social networks. The team's hope that this will lead to novel efficient technologies in supply-chain management, product placement and delivery systems, health-care services and resource management and emergency alert systems. All the five investigators are part of the Center for Complex Network Research located on the third floor of NSH.
Post date: 10/16/08
Notre Dame particle physicists have strong connection to Nobel Prize-winning researchThe October 7 announcement of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics also served as a
reminder of the prominent role three University of Notre Dame researchers have played in the field of particle physics.
The Nobel Foundation honored Yoichiro Nambu of the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago for the “discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic particles.” Makoto Kobayashi of the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization in Tsukuba, Japan, and Toshihide Maskawa of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics at Kyoto University were recognized for their discovery of “the origin of broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature.”
Notre Dame physicists Ikaros Bigi, John LoSecco, and Colin Jessop have joined Kobayashi and Maskawa in making key contributions to the understanding of how matter gained the upper hand over antimatter in the universe.
Post date: 10/10/08
Notre Dame particle physicists will help probe mysteries of the universe as part of LHC project
The massive Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which will smash together particles at nearly the speed of light in an effort to understand the makeup of the universe, began test operations Wednesday (Sept. 10) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland, and University of Notre Dame particle physicists are key participants in what has been termed the largest experiment ever conducted.
Almost 20 years in the making, the LHC is the largest and most complex machine ever made and was built, at a cost of $10 billion, to study elementary particles, the smallest known building blocks of all things. It lies 330 feet underground and has a circumference of 17 miles, straddling the French and Swiss border.
At full power, trillions of counter-rotating protons will race around the LHC accelerator ring, traveling at 99.9999991 percent of the speed of light, generating 600 million collisions every second. the most violent of these collisions will generate the heat, energy and densities that existed just a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang.
Notre Dame particle physicists have long been at the forefront of the effort to gain an understanding of the fundamental constituents of matter and the forces with which they interact. They now are key participants in the CERN experiment as well. Notre Dame physicists Mitchell Wayne, Randal Ruchti, Michael Hildreth, Colin Jessop and Kevin Lannon are responsible for the development of the optical readout for the hadron calorimeter in the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector, one of two large, all-purpose detectors that will be utilized in the LHC experiments. A research faculty member, a postdoctoral fellow and three graduate students from the University were at the LHC on September 10 as test operations began.
Post date: 9/10/08
High School Teachers and Students Present at QuarkNet Symposium
In early June, fifteen high school physics teachers and 14 high school students arrived at the Notre Dame QuarkNet Center for the summer physics Research Experience for Teachers (RET) Program and the Research Experience for High School Students (REHS). Both groups came to do physics research over an eight week period. The students who have finished their junior year in high school were chosen by their physics teachers to participate in the program. The teachers were chosen through an application and review process. They represented schools in the South Bend area as well as Florida, New York, and New Jersey.
During their eight weeks of research, the students and teachers worked together on projects involving cutting-edge research into the testing of materials for future particle physics detectors, analysis of data for a variety of scientific purposes and computer programming involving a wide range of topics. This research is an on-going extension of the particle physics research that takes place year-round at the lab adjacent to the QuarkNet Center.
The two programs ended with a symposium on July 31, 2008 at the Jordan Hall of Science. There the high school physics teachers gave presentations about their summer research experiences. The talks ranged from “Cosmic Ray Detectors for the Classroom” to “CMS Monte Carlo e-Lab” to “Eclipsing Binary Stars.” Following lunch, 12 high school students presented posters on their summer research, including “Genetic Algorithm Applied to Quark Mixing” and “Scintillating and Waveshifting Materials.” Some of the students have indicated an interest in applying to the Siemen’s Competition (formerly Westinghouse). In order to qualify for the competition they will produce a 20-page research paper describing their research.
Post date: 8/14/08
Seed fund projects focus on clean energyIn support of its mission to pursue the development of abundant and inexpensive
energy sources that do not harm the environment, the University of Notre Dame’s Energy Center has announced that three projects pursuing novel concepts in clean energy will be supported through the center’s new Seed Fund program.
According to Joan F. Brennecke, center director and Keating-Crawford Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular engineering, the Seed Fund program sponsors early-stage research related to energy production, delivery ad use.
The first project, “Toward Simulating Chemical and Photochemical Reactions for Clean Energy: Methodologies for the Solid-Aqueous Interface” is led by Steven A. Corcelli, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry. Corcelli and collaborators – Kathie E. Newman, professor of physics, pictured here, and William F. Schneider, associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering – are addressing the modern energy infrastructure, which is built around the extraction and refining of fossil fuels through gas-solid chemical reactions. They are working to contribute to a new set of chemical transformations, processes and materials by developing accurate and computationally efficient models that will predict chemical reactions at the solid-aqueous interface, a need highlighted in a recent report sponsored by the American Chemical Society, Department of Energy and National Science Foundation. Specifically, they will be studying the structure and reactivity of transition metal oxides in water as it related to converting light into chemical energy.
Prashant V. Kamat, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, Paul J. McGinn, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, and Masaru K. Kuno, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry are working on two other projects.
Since it was established in 2005, the Notre Dame Energy Center has been working to develop new technologies to meet the global energy challenge. Housed in the College of Engineering, the center focuses on five areas of expertise: energy efficiency, safe nuclear waste storage, clean coal utilization, renewable resources and carbon dioxide separation and storage. The center is also committed to playing key roles in energy education and literacy, the development of energy policy and the exploration of the ethical implications associated with energy.
Post date: 8/7/08
High Enegy Physics Students Complete Summer Research ProjectsThe College of Science congratulates all students who completed research
projects this summer. Of note are five Notre Dame students who conducted high energy physics research under the direction of professors Michael Hildreth and Philippe Collon.
Thomas Rehagen worked with Prof. Hildreth on a team that included fellow undergraduates Matthew Lucia, A.J. McGauley, and Zachary Liptak. Pictured on the right and listed counter-clockwise, Matthew Lucia, A.J. McGauley, Prof. Mike Hildreth, Zachary Liptak, and Thomas Rehagen. The group is developing an optical instrument to detect motion of components in a linear accelerator, so the energy of the beam can be measured accurately. Rehagen said, "This program’s been a great introduction to physics research in general and high energy physics as well." He expects to do graduate work in high energy physics. Rehagen was a recipient of the College of Science Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) while McGauley received a stipend from the College of Science/College of Arts and Letters Honors Program. Funding for Lucia and Liptak comes from the Department of Energy and Hildreth’s Research Corporation Cottrell Scholar Award.
Kirk Post (pictured on the left) worked in the Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Group with Prof. Philippe Collon. He analyzed data from an experiment, attempting to separate the Argon 39 isotope from the background. The isotope is an important tracer for ocean water and has potential for a role in detecting dark matter. Post also received a SURF grant from the College of Science.
The researchers agree that their work gives them valuable experience in programming, machining, using electronics and conducting scientific analysis. Hildreth, who has worked with undergraduates in the summer for five years, says the COS-SURF program helped expand his team.
Post date: 8/6/08
Michael Wiescher Appointed to Board on Physics and AstronomyMichael Wiescher, the Freimann Professor of Physics, has been appointed to the
National Academies Board on Physics and Astronomy for a three year term beginning July 2008. The Board on Physics and Astronomy seeks to inform the government and the public regarding significant scientific opportunities and issues in physics and astronomy and build bridges between evolving sub-disciplines of physics and astronomy and other areas of science.
As a member of the board, Wiescher will collaborate with other leading researchers to identify trends in research and new developments at the scientific forefronts. He will strengthen connections to technology and foster interactions with other fields and academic disciplines.
Wiescher is a world-leading scientist in experimental nuclear astrophysics who has made numerous contributions to the determination of key nuclear reaction rates for the understanding of stellar evolution and the synthesis of the elements in the Universe. He is particularly well known for the use of novel techniques involving low energy ion beams in measuring nuclear reactions determining the lifetime and evolution of stars.
Wiescher is the director of the Nuclear Science Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame. He also serves as director of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics (JINA), an institute in collaboration with the University of Notre Dame, Michigan State University, and the University of Chicago which addresses a broad range of experimental, theoretical, and observational questions in nuclear astrophysics. JINA is funded by the National Science Foundation.
Additionally, Wiescher has been reappointed to the Advisory Board of the National Research Council of Canada for a three year term beginning in September 2008. The NRCC advances research and innovation through high-value information and publishing services in science, technology and medicine and provides Canada's research and innovation community with tools and services for accelerated discovery, innovation and commercialization.
Contact: Michael Wiescher, Freimann Professor of Nuclear Physics, 574-631-6788, mwiesche (at) nd (dot) edu
Post date: 7/25/08
Dr. Philip Sakimoto recipient of Second Annual Adler Mansfield PrizeDr. Philip Sakimoto, Professional Specialist in Physics, was awarded the Second
Annual Adler Mansfield Prize on July 2, 2008 at the International Planetarium Society’s biennial conference in Chicago. The Mansfield Prize promotes astronomical and historical research and recognizes innovative ways to increase the public’s awareness of the universe. The Prize, which is funded by an endowment from Ralph Mansfield and is administered by the Adler Planetarium, carries a monetary award of $1,000.
The award was given to Dr. Sakimoto "to recognize and to further encourage the ongoing recovery and distribution of the insights of cultures who have lived so intimately with, and in tune with, the sky as part of the natural world." It specifically recognized his significant contributions to supporting the quest of Indigenous people around the world to recover, preserve, and teach about their traditional understandings of the sky. He brought to the IPS conference a landmark panel of Indigenous Astronomers who spoke about the significance of the sky in each of their own lives and cultures. He also produced and led a session in the Adler’s Sky Theater in which a Navajo Sky and a Hawaiian Sky were presented.
This was the world debut of the Navajo Sky, which Dr. Sakimoto and collaborators from the Indigenous Education Institute are developing in Notre Dame's Digital Visualization Theater. The Hawaiian Sky was developed at the 'Imiloa Planetarium in Hilo, Hawaii.
In the award presentation, Dr. Sakimoto’s work was recognized as being "of great significance reflecting the human and international character of the planetarium field, one that enables us to tell more fully and more richly the human stories that reflect our intellectual, emotional, and spiritual participation in the universe."
Post date: 7/21/08
Professor Ruchti Associate Vice President in Office of
Vice President for Research
Professor Randy Ruchti joined the Office of the Vice President for Research as an
Associate Vice President on July 1 in a part time capacity. Prof. Ruchti will continue his teaching and research activities within the Department of Physics at a reduced level. He brings to the Office a long tenure of excellent scholarship and educational activity at Notre Dame. He recently returned from a three year assignment as a Program Director at NSF. Prof. Ruchti will help primarily with research development (helping faculty identify and secure research contracts and grants) and with the launch and management of centers and research cores, particularly new awards. He will also help with various projects that arise throughout the year. Prof. Ruchti’s addition will give the Office additional capacity to find opportunities for scholarship.Prof. Ruchti was the recipient of the Notre Dame Madden Teaching Award (1990) and the Notre Dame Presidential Award (2000). He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, Sigma Xi and the American Association of Physics Teachers. He was the founder of the Notre Dame QuarkNet Center and has been its Physics Director since 1999. Prof. Ruchti received his Ph.D. degree from Michigan State University in 1973. He has been a Professor of Physics at Notre Dame since 1977.
Post date: 7/21/08
New paper offers insights into "blinking" phenomenonA new paper by a team of researchers led by University of Notre Dame physicist Boldizsár Jankó provides an overview of
research into one of the few remaining unsolved problems of quantum mechanics.
More than a century ago, at the dawn of modern quantum mechanics, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Neils Bohr predicted so-called "quantum jumps." He predicted that these jumps would be due to electrons making transitions between discrete energy levels of individual atoms and molecules. Although controversial in Bohr’s time, such quantum jumps were experimentally observed, and his prediction verified, in the early 1980s. More recently, with the development of single molecule imaging techniques in the early 1990s, it has been possible to observe similar jumps in individual molecules.
Experimentally, these quantum jumps translate to discrete interruptions of the continuous emission from single molecules, revealing a phenomenon known as fluorescent intermittency or "blinking."
In a paper appearing in today’s edition of the journal Nature Physics, Jankó and his colleagues present a "progress report" on the research, including their own, that has been aimed at unlocking the mysteries of these fluorescent molecules or fluorophores. They hope the paper will help spark further experimental and theoretical activity to solve the mystery of fluorescence intermittency.
Post date: 7/1/08
Carol Tanner starts 3-year appointment as Secretary/Treasurer of DAMOP at APS
Carol Tanner is starting a three-year appointment as Secretary/Treasurer of the Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics of the American Physical Society. Professor Tanner received her Ph.D. in physics from the University of California-Berkeley. She has been at Notre Dame since 1990. She held the Clare Booth Luce Chaired Assistant Professorship from the Henry Luce Foundation from 1990-1995. In addition, Professor Tanner is the recipient of the University of Notre Dame Kaneb Teaching Award (2001). She has been a Fellow of the American Physical Society since 2002.
The Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics (DAMOP) was founded in 1943, and was the first division of the American Physical Society. Its central focus is fundamental research on atoms, simple molecules, electrons and light, and their interactions. It plays an enabling role underlying many areas of science through the development of methods for the control and manipulation of atoms, molecules, charged particles and light, through precision measurements and calculations of their properties, and through the invention of new ways to generate light with specific properties. Students who graduate with a background in AMO physics acquire a broad range of knowledge and skills that enable them to contribute to many areas of science and technology.
Post date: 6/10/08
Astronomers find tiny planet orbiting tiny star
An international team of astronomers led by David Bennett of the University of Notre Dame Department of Physics has discovered an extra-solar planet of about three Earth masses orbiting a star with a mass so low that its core may not be large enough to maintain nuclear reactions. The result was presented June 2 at the American Astronomical Society annual meeting in St. Louis.
The planet, referred to as MOA-2007-BLG-192Lb, establishes a record for the lowest mass planet to orbit a normal star. The star, MOA-2007-BLG-192L, is at a distance of 3,000 light years and the lowest mass host star to have a companion with a planetary mass ratio. The mass of the host is about 6 percent of the mass of the sun. Such a star is called a brown dwarf, because this is slightly below the mass needed to sustain nuclear reactions in the core. But the measurement uncertainty also permits a host mass slightly above 8 percent of a solar mass, which would make MOA-2007-BLG-192L a very low-mass hydrogen burning star.
"Our discovery indicates that even the lowest mass stars can host planets," Bennett said. "No planets have previously been found to orbit stars with masses less than about 20 percent of that of the sun, but this finding suggests that we should expect very low-mass stars near the sun to have planets with a mass similar to that of the Earth. This is of particular interest because it may be possible to use NASA’s planned James Webb Space Telescope to search for signs of life on Earth-mass planets orbiting low-mass stars in the vicinity of the sun."
Post date: 6/4/08
Symposium honors Walter Johnson after 50 yearsLeading physicists from around the world gathered at the University of Notre
Dame to honor a long-time member of the Notre Dame College of Science faculty at the "Symposium on Atomic Physics: A Tribute to Walter Johnson."
The Frank M. Freimann Professor of Physics, Johnson will be retiring from teaching this spring after 50 years at Notre Dame, where he has led the way in research involving physics, mathematics and computers.
Johnson, a theoretical physicist, investigates relativistic and correlation effects in heavy atoms using relativistic many-body methods derived from Quantum Electrodynamics. The symposium in Johnson's honor provided an occasion for more scholarship as well as reflection on his decades of contribution to the field.
"This is a great opportunity to bring together many of the leading people in atomic physics from around the world," said Gordon Drake, from the University of Windsor, Canada, at the symposium on April 4 and 5. "It is a great opportunity to exchange ideas and reminisce. It is both professional and to commemorate one of the best-known men in the field."
Johnson has advised 21 doctoral students, taught some 10,000 undergraduates, written a book on atomic structure theory, and authored or coauthored 250 published papers, including six already this year. His fifty years of teaching and research at the University of Notre Dame have left a legacy. Students, post docs and colleagues around the world will continue to appreciate his wisdom and guidance.
Post date: 4/24/08
Sophomore physics major selected for Department of Defense SMART ScholarshipKristina Sault, a sophomore Physics major, has been selected by the Department
of Defense for a SMART scholarship. This highly-competitive scholarship will pay her full tuition for the next two years, an annual “book allowance,” and a stipend.
The Science, Mathematics And Research for Transformation (SMART) Scholarship for Service Program has been established by the Department of Defense (DoD) to support undergraduate and graduate students pursuing degrees in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines. The program aims to increase the number of civilian scientists and engineers working at DoD laboratories. The DoD offers this scholarship for service to individuals who demonstrate outstanding ability and special aptitude for a career in scientific and engineering research and product development and express interest in career opportunities at DoD laboratories.
In addition to being an outstanding student, Kristina enjoys the outdoors. She surfs, sails and paddles outrigger canoes. Last fall she was a member of the Notre Dame Sailing Club. Music is another of Kristina's passions. She enjoys playing the piano and trying to play the guitar. She is also a member of the Notre Dame chorale.
Kristina is currently involved in research under the guidance of Prof. Umesh Garg. This summer Kristina will travel to Osaka, Japan to assist in running an experiment. She says, "Working in the physics department with the professors and the other majors has been incredible overall. Many professors are truly interested in what they teach and are successful in making us excited about it. The long hours of work are manageable because there are others to work with; these hours together have not only resulted [in] finished assignments, but also some of my most treasured friendships."
Post date: 4/18/08
Matthew Meixner to attend meeting of Nobel Laureates in LindauMatthew Meixner, a 2nd year graduate student in the Department of Physics
(Grant Mathews, advisor), has been invited to attend the 58th Meeting, June 29 – July 4, 2008, of Nobel Prize Winners in Physics in Lindau, Germany.
Each year, since 1951, 20 to 25 Nobel Prize Winners accept the invitation to a unique meeting on Lake Constance. Some 500 young students come from all over the world to listen to the Laureates' lectures and to engage in discussions with them. Intermediaries from universities and research institutions select participants based on strict criteria.
The Laureates give presentations on topics of their choice. Lively round table discussions in plenary sessions include the audience and are defined by interdisciplinary questions. Specially organized student discussions have students gathered around a designated Laureate per group for several hours in the afternoons. Social events bring the scientific newcomers into personal contact with the Nobel Prize Winners.
Post date: 4/17/08
Physics professors recipients of 2008 Joyce AwardProfessors Margaret Dobrowolska and Michael Hildreth are recipients of the Rev.
Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C. Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. Established in 2007, the Joyce Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, formerly known as the Kaneb Teaching Award, honors faculty members who have had a profound influence on undergraduate students through sustained exemplary teaching at Notre Dame. In particular, the award recognizes faculty who create environments that stimulate significant student learning, elevate students to a new level of intellectual engagement, and foster students' ability to express themselves effectively within the discipline.
This university award, inaugurated on the 70th anniversary of Fr. Joyce's graduation from Notre Dame, is funded through an endowment established by the Class of 1937. Fr. Joyce served as Notre Dame's executive vice president from 1952 to 1987. Fr. Joyce's passionate commitment to our Lady's University is reflected through faculty dedication to, and exemplary teaching of, Notre Dame's undergraduates.
Malgorzata (Margaret) Dobrowolska-Furdyna, Professor of Physics, was one of those chosen to receive the Joyce Award. Professor Dobrowolska is the recipient of the National Science Foundation Creativity Award (1995-1997), the Kaneb Teaching Award (2005), and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society. She also served as Associate Chair and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Physics (2002-2006). She has been at Notre Dame since 1987.
Michael Hildreth, Associate Professor of Physics, was also one of those chosen to receive the Joyce Award. Professor Hildreth was named Cottrell Scholar by the Research Corporation in 2003 and Outstanding Junior Investigator by the U.S. Department of Energy (2002). He was also a Kaneb Center Fellow for International Teaching Assistants (2002, 2003). Professor Hildreth is a member of the American Physical Society. He has been at Notre Dame since 2000.
Post date: 4/15/08
Walter Johnson – Outstanding in the Atomic FieldOn April 4 and 5, the Physics Department sponsored a "Symposium on Atomic
Physics: A Tribute to Walter Johnson" in honor of Johnson who will be retiring from teaching this year. Participants came from the Harvard Smithsonian Observatory, the University of New South Wales, the University of Reno, the University of Southern California, the University of Delaware and Colorado State University, among others.
Johnson, 79, has been a world leader in the use of computers to solve complex problems, bringing the technology together with mathematics and physics. Leading physicists from around the world gathered at Notre Dame to toast his half-century with a symposium on atomic physics.
Johnson, who attended the University of Michigan on the G.I. Bill after World War II, earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees there, where he was the last student of Otto Laporte, discoverer of the Laporte Rule.
He has advised 21 doctoral students, taught some 10,000 undergraduates, written a book on atomic structure theory, and authored or coauthored 250 published papers, including six already this year. Johnson’s fifty years of teaching and research at the University of Notre Dame have left a legacy. Students, post docs and colleagues around the world will continue to appreciate his wisdom and guidance.
Post date: 4/9/08
Arizona Telescope Sees Deep into the CosmosThe best pair of eyes on Earth are now wide open. The Large Binocular
Telescope sits in a 17-story building atop an Arizona mountain. LBT, as it is known for short, can probe deeper into the cosmos than any other instrument. The 580-ton telescope is twice as big as the next-largest telescope on Earth, and it has 10 times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope. The LBT cannot see farther than Hubble, but the images it sends back are much sharper and of a much wider field than the space telescope.
There is a universe to look at, but time is limited, so scientists submit proposals for observation. One of the first for tonight: the Kuiper Belt, which lies on the edge of the solar system, about 2.7 billion miles from earth.
Later that night, Notre Dame professor Peter Garnavich helps focus the LBT on another object, which is no small task given the instrument's complexity. Garnavich is interested in a supernova that exploded a few nights earlier.
"The star just happened to die and its jet was pointed at us and we can see it most of the way across the universe," says Garnavich. The screen shows a large mass with a plume coming from it. Garnavich wants to learn how energy from the dying star decays over time. By looking at objects like this – halfway across the universe and back in time – these astronomers hope the LBT will answer some fundamental questions.
Richard Pogge, professor of astronomy at Ohio State University, lists some of those questions: "Where do we come from, how did we get here, where are we going? Astronomy is one of the few ways we can answer that."
Post date: 3/18/08
3 from Physics in APS Outstanding Referees ProgramWe are honored to announce that three faculty members in the Department of
Physics have been selected by the American Physical Society as Outstanding Referees. They are Neal M. Cason, Jacek K. Furdyna, and Walter R. Johnson.
The Outstanding Referee program was instituted in 2008. The highly selective award program recognizes scientists who have been exceptionally helpful in assessing manuscripts for publication in the APS journals. The program will annually recognize approximately 130 of the 42,000 currently active referees, but in the inaugural year a larger group of 534 referees has been selected for the Outstanding Referee designation. Like Fellowship in the APS, this is a lifetime award. By initiating the program, APS expresses its appreciation to all referees, whose efforts in peer review not only keep the standards of the journals at a high level, but in many cases also help authors to improve the quality and readability of their articles—even those that are not published by APS.
The selection of Outstanding Referees was made based on two decades of database records on over 50,000 referees (some no longer in active service) who have been called upon to review manuscripts, of which 33,000 were submitted in 2007. Most of the referees chosen in this inaugural year have given dedicated service for many years. The basis for choosing the 534 honorees was the quality, number, and timeliness of their reports, without regard for membership in the APS, country of origin, or field of research. Individuals with current or very recent direct connections to the journals, such as editors and editorial board members, were excluded. The decision was difficult and there are many excellent referees who could not be recognized this year. In this first year of the program the lifetime of work contributed by a referee was emphasized. In future years, the focus will be on the more recent work of referees.
The Outstanding Referees are to be congratulated and thanked for their outstanding service to the physics community.
For the complete story and list.Post date: 3/14/08
Brown University researcher appointed College of Science deanGregory P. Crawford, currently dean of engineering and professor of physics
and engineering at Brown University, has been appointed dean of the College of Science at the University of Notre Dame by Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., the University’s president. Crawford, who also was appointed professor of physics, will assume the dean’s position July 1, 2008.
Crawford succeeds Joseph P. Marino, who had served as dean since 2002 and who remains professor of chemistry at Notre Dame.
"It is a great honor to be selected as the dean of the College of Science at the University of Notre Dame," Crawford said. "I am taking on this new position with great energy and enthusiasm. My enthusiasm is driven by the unique mission and character of Notre Dame, the overwhelming sense of unity of purpose and spirit of camaraderie on campus, the extraordinary caliber of the faculty in the College of Science and the University as a whole, and the ambitious plans of the University leadership. My family and I are looking forward to becoming part of the Notre Dame community."
Before joining the Brown faculty in 1996, Crawford was a member of the research staff at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and a postdoctoral research associate at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. He has served as dean of engineering at Brown since 2006.
Post date: 3/7/08
Physics Reunion 2008
Even though winter doesn’t want to release its hold on us, we are thinking ahead to spring and Notre Dame Reunion 2008. On line registration is now open for the following years: 1958, 1963, 1968, 1973, 1978, 1983, 1988, 1993, 1998, 2003 and the 50-year club.
On May 30, 2008, from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m., all Physics Alumni in the graduating classes listed above are invited to attend a reception during Alumni Reunion weekend in Nieuwland Science Hall. Our physics reunion grows and gets better every year. In a letter received after last year’s reunion, Steve Storch (Class of 67), thanked the department for the “splendid reception” and said he was “greatly impressed by the physics research that is now being done at ND especially in the areas of astrophysics and biophysics.” So, as you make plans to attend Notre Dame Reunion 2008, include a visit to the Department of Physics and see for yourself what you have been missing.
Keep watching the website for additional postings about Physics Reunion 2008.
Post date: 3/4/08
Astronomers discover Jupiter-Saturn-like planets in distant solar systemThe simultaneous discovery of two exoplanets slightly smaller than Jupiter and
Saturn by an international team of astronomers that includes David Bennett from the University of Notre Dame gives astrophysicists an important clue that solar systems like ours might be quite common.
The report, to be published in the February 15 issue of the journal Science, describes the series of observations that began March 28, 2006, when a collaboration known as Optical Gravitational Microlensing Equipment (OGLE) detected a signal, possibly due to a planet in microlensing event OGLE-2006-BLG-109, that the researchers had discovered and announce two days earlier.
Gravitational microlensing takes advantage of the fact that light is bent as the rays pass close to a massive object, like a star. The gravity from the mass of the intervening object, or lens star, warps surrounding space and acts like a giant magnifying glass. As predicted by Albert Einstein and later confirmed, this phenomena causes an apparent brightening of the light from the background 'source' star. The effect is seen only if the astronomer's telescope lies in almost perfect alignment with the source star and the lens star. Astronomers are then able to detect planets orbiting the lens if the light from the background star also is warped by the planets.
The discovery of the double planet system was a triumph for astronomers who use this method, which is of such high sensitivity that it can detect planets similar to those in our own solar system, with the exception of Mercury.
"These planets could not have been detected without any other technique," Bennett said. "The light curve of this event revealed an unprecedented amount of information about the planetary host star and the planets," he continued.
Post date: 2/18/08
Physics researcher reports novel interaction between superconductivity and magnetismAn international collaboration of researchers led by Morten Ring Eskildsen, assistant professor of physics at the University
of Notre Dame, has discovered an altogether new way in which superconducting electrons can interact with an applied magnetic field.
Superconductivity is a phenomenon which occurs in certain materials and which manifests itself by a complete loss of electrical resistance. An important area in the study of superconductors is how they respond to magnetic fields. Besides their obvious relevance to practical applications, such studies are an ideal way to obtain a deeper understanding of the fundamental aspects of superconductivity.
In experiments, Eskildsen’s team investigated the material CeCoIn5, which is a so-called heavy-fermion superconductor with a transition temperature of 2.3K (-456 degrees Fahrenheit). The results were obtained by neutron scattering experiments performed at the Swiss Spallation Neutron Source at the Paul Scheer Institute in Switzerland and were carried out in collaboration with researchers from the University of Montreal, ETH Zurich, the University of Birmingham, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Post date: 1/23/08
Searching for the Christmas StarProfessor Grant Mathews is a theoretical astrophysicist and cosmologist whose
research addresses such unknowns as the age of the galaxy or at what rate the universe is expanding. He is also intrigued by one of the enduring "seasonal" mysteries, namely, the nature of the Star of Bethlehem, said to have led the three magi to the birth place of Christ.
While neither Prof. Mathews nor anyone else has solved the puzzle, he has applied the tool of modern astrophysics to search for evidence that some astronomical event occurred during the time frame of Jesus’ birth. ‘An increasingly rich archive of information, stored in a variety of astronomical databases, has the potential to shed new light on this ancient puzzle,’ he says.
Professor Mathews plans to give four family-friendly public presentations of his research titled “What and When was the Christmas Star,” in the Digital Visualization Theatre located in the Jordan Hall of Science. The lectures will be at 7 p.m. Saturday, December 15; 3 p.m. Sunday, December 16; 7 p.m. Saturday, December 22 and 3 p.m. Sunday, December 23.
A recent article appeared on the site InsideBayArea.com
Post date: 12/6/07 (updated on 12/21/07)
Peter Garnavich elected Fellow of the APSUniversity of Notre Dame astrophysicist Peter Garnavich has been elected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society.
His citation reads: "For pioneering work on the discovery of dark energy and the cosmic equation of state, along with important observational discoveries regarding the nature of gamma ray bursts and the physics of supernova light curves."
For more information on the American Physical Society.Post date: 11/28/07
Nuclear astrophysics institute joins international allianceThe University of Notre Dame’s Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics (JINA)
is one of four international partners in a new research alliance titled ‘Extremes of Density and Temperature: Cosmic Matter in the Laboratory.’
Under the sponsorship of GSI, Darmstadt, one of the largest European nuclear physics laboratories, the alliance connects JINA, the University of Paris VI, the University of Tokyo and RIKEN, Japan, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The alliance also includes seven national German partners: TU Darmstadt, the University of Frankfurt, FIAS Frankfurt, the University of Heidelberg, Max Planck Institute, Forschungszentrum Juelich and the University of Muenster.
Leading international scientists, including two Nobel laureates, will serve as associate partners. Through the alliance, GSI and its partners intended to push forward the frontier of “extreme matter” research.
A central goal of the group is the creation of the “ExtreMe Matter Institute” (EMMI) on GSI grounds in Darmstadt. With EMMI, the alliance will generate a unique infrastructure for interdisciplinary investigations of matter under extreme conditions – from extremely hot matter of the Big Bang to ultra-cold quantum gases. The institute also will serve as a think tank for the new International FAIR facility for antiproton and ion research to be built at GSI, Darmstadt.
A Physics Frontier Center of the National Science Foundation, JINA is one of the world’s leading research institutions in experimental and theoretical nuclear astrophysics. It will contribute to the new alliance mainly through its expertise in the experimental and theoretical simulation of nuclear reactions at high density and temperature conditions typical for exploding white dwarf stars (novae and supernovae Ia) and nuclear processes taking place in the crust of neutron stars.
This article appeared as a News Release in Notre Dame News & Information on November 16, 2007.
Post date: 11/19/07
When stars collide: a new way to make a supernovaUniversity of Notre Dame astrophysicist Peter Garnavich and a team of
collaborators have identified a supernova caused by the collision of two stars. They made a detailed study of the 234th supernova discovered in 2005, called "2006gz," and found convincing evidence that the explosion resulted from the merging of two "white dwarfs." The thermonuclear destruction of a white dwarf is called a type Ia supernova and was crucial in the discovery of the accelerating universe and dark energy.
White dwarf stars are the remnant cores of stars like our Sun and contain mostly the elements carbon and oxygen. White dwarfs can explode if their mass is increased and reached a critical 1.4 times the mass of the Sun. It was believed that type Ia supernovae results from a white dwarf stealing mass from a Sun-like star to reach the unstable mass limit. But supernova 2006gz was different. Two white dwarf stars in orbit about each other spiraled together and combined to exceed the mass limit.
"We have used supernovae to discover dark energy, yet we do not know exactly how the explosions happen," Garnavich said. "It now looks like there are at least two ways of making a type Ia supernova."
The discovery appeared in the November 1 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Post date: 11/15/07
Merz named AAAS fellowJames L. Merz, Frank Freimann Professor of Electrical
Engineering, interim dean of the College of Engineering, former vice president for graduate studies and research at Notre Dame and concurrent Professor of Physics, has been named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in honor of his efforts to advance science or its applications.
AAAS, founded in 1848 as a nonprofit association, is the world’s largest scientific society and publisher of the prestigious journal Science.
Merz, who joined the Notre Dame faculty in 1994, was cited for “distinguished contributions to the field of photonic devices and particularly to optical spectroscopy of semiconductor nanostructures.”
Merz was graduated from Notre Dame with a bachelor’s degree in physics and attended the University of Göttingen in Germany as a Fulbright Fellow in 1959-60. He attended Harvard University as both a Woodrow Wilson and Danforth Fellow, earning his master’s degree in 1961 and his doctorate in 1967. He joined the technical staff of Bell Laboratories in 1966 and conducted investigations there into the optical properties of compound semiconductors. After a semester as Gordon McKay Visiting Lecturer on Applied Physics at Harvard in 1972, he returned to Bell Laboratories, where he work on optoelectronic devices and integrated optical circuits until joining the UC-Santa Barbara faculty in 1978.
Also named as an AAAS Fellow is Professor Shahriar Mobashery, Navari Family Professor of Life Sciences. Merz and Mobashery will be presented with an official certificate and a gold and blue (representing science and engineering, respectively) rosette pin on February 16, at the Fellows Forum during the 2008 AAAS annual meeting in Boston.
Post date: 11/2/07
Physicist Umesh Garg Accomplishes a Rare FeatIt is not often when a physicist has an important paper published in Physical
Review Letters, considered the most influential journal in physics. So, consider the feat achieved by Notre Dame nuclear physicist Umesh Garg who had not one, but two papers published back to back in PRL in October.
His first paper, published on October 15, measures nuclear incompressibility – an important component of the Equation of State (EOS) of nuclear matter that related to measurements of neutron stars, the most dense objects in the universe. His second paper, published October 23, affirmed a property of the nucleus of an atom, called chirality and put to rest recent conflicting data that had cast doubts on the nature of chirality in nuclei.
Post date: 10/23/07
Evening of Space Science/Astronomy at Jordan HallIn celebration of the October 15-17 visit of NASA’s mobile visualization unit
‘The Vision for Space Exploration Experience’ to the South Bend area, the Notre Dame extended Research Community and the Department of Physics will sponsor an event on the first floor of Jordan Hall of Science this Monday, October 15, 2007, from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m
Two talks will be presented in the first hour and will highlight research done by NASA and by astrophysicists at Notre Dame. An experience of space visualization and observation will take place in the Digital Visualization Theater and the Jordan Hall Observatory during the second hour.
The first of two lectures will be delivered by Mark Klem (ND ’82 BS Aerospace Engineering, ’82 BA Economics, ’84 MS Mechanical Engineering), who is Project Manager for the Propulsion and Cryogenics Advanced Development at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Ohio, working with the lunar lander and Orion crew vehicle development programs.
Notre Dame astrophysicist Peter Garnavich, will deliver the second lecture which will feature research done at the Large Binocular Telescope. The evening at Jordan Hall is free and open to the public.
If you haven’t already heard, NASA’s mobile visualization unit will be parked at Adams High School and will be open for free general public viewing between 5:00 and 8:00 p.m. on October 15-17.
Post date: 10/11/07
Profiling Physics (and Notre Dame’s) New FacultyArriving from points as far away asAustralia, England, Spain and China, 40 new members of Notre Dame’s teaching and research faculty have come to the University for their own, unique reasons. Two of these new faculty came to the Department of Physics.
Mark Caprio, Assistant Professor
(right). Area of research interest: Research focuses on the structure of the atomic nucleus and on phenomena which occur in quantum systems consisting of small numbers of particles. Teaching: Electricity and Magnetism. Most recent position: Postdoctoral associate, Yale University. Education: B.S., Oglethorpe University; M.S., Yale University; M.Phil., Yale University; Ph.D., Yale University.
“Notre Dame was especially appealing as a place to come to, since it has a vibrant physics research community, with a long history in nuclear physics, and yet it also places a strong emphasis on undergraduate teaching. It therefore combines some of the best aspects of the research and liberal arts worlds.”
Antonio Delgado, Assistant Professor (left). Area of research interest: Theoretical particle physics. Teaching: Quantum Field Theory, Spring 2008. Most recent position: Postdoctoral Fellow, CERN, Geneva, Switzerland. Education: B.Sc., Universidad Autónoma de Madrid; Ph.D., Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.
“I chose Notre Dame because of the good atmosphere I found when I visited, and also the quality of the High Energy group.”
Post date: 10/4/07
Physics department to host colloqiaIan Shipsey, a Purdue University physics professor who first heard the voice of his
11-year-old daughter in 2002 when he received a cochlear implant, will deliver the first lecture in the University of Notre Dame Department of Physics Fall 2007 Colloquium Series on Wednesday (Sept. 12) at 4 p.m. in room 118 of the Nieuwland Science Hall. His lecture, titled "Bringing Hearing to the Deaf. Hearing Implants: A Technical and Personal Account," is free and open to the public.
Shipsey, who was profoundly deaf from 1989 until he underwent cochlear implant surgery, will be discussing the physiology of natural hearing from the perspective of a particle physicist. He will describe the function of cochlear implants in the context of historical treatments, electrical engineering, psychophysics, clinical evaluation of efficacy and personal experience. The social implications of cochlear implantation and the future outlook for auditory prostheses also will be discussed.
The colloquium series also will include researchers from Argonne National Laboratory, University of Michigan, and international universities in Barcelona, Spain and Ottawa. All lectures will be held at 4 p.m. in room 118 of Nieuwland Hall. The lectures are geared toward science students and each lecture will be followed by a brief question-and-answer period.
For the complete story.Post date: 9/12/07
Department welcomes new graduate studentsOn Friday, August 24, 2007, 23 new graduate students were officially welcomed
to the department of physics with a reception in their honor. The new arrivals had a very busy week moving in, filling out reams of paperwork, and sitting through orientations where they learned “everything they would need to know for the next 7-8 years.”
Twelve of the incoming graduate students come to us from the U.S., 7 from P.R. China, 2 from India, and 1 each from Nigeria and Germany.
With a total of 92 graduate students, we are well on our way to our goal of 100.
Post date: 9/10/07
Symposium to focus on undergraduate research experiencesMore than 80 undergraduate students from the University of Notre Dame, the
University of Michigan and Hope College who have conducted science and engineering research presented the results of their research at the Tri-University Undergraduate Research Symposium on AugFoundation. All of the undergraduates spend 8 to 10 weeks during the summer conducting hands-on research under the supervision of Notre Dame faculty and alongside graduate students. They gain experience and explore a particular field in more depth than is possible during the regular academic year.
The Physics REU program at Notre Dame is one of the nation’s oldest, having begun in 1985, long before other universities developed similar programs.
The complete schedule including a short abstract on each student’s research is available at http://www.science.nd.edu/research/index.htm.
Post date: 8/6/07
Astrophysicist Garnavich to Share Gruber Prize in CosmologyPeter Garnavich, associate professor of physics at the University of Notre Dame,
The Gruber Prize in Cosmology has been given annually since 2000 by the Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation for "groundbreaking work that inspires and enables fundamental shifts in knowledge and culture." The 2007 prize is awarded to the High-Z Team (led by Brian Schmidt of the Australian National University) and the Supernova Cosmology Project (led by Saul Perlmutter of the Lawrence-Berkeley National Lab). The teams share a cash prize of $500,000.
In 1994, Garnavich helped establish the High-Z Supernova Research Team, an international collaboration of 20 astrophysicists, with the goal of tracing the expansion history of the universe using a type of bright, exploding star called a "type Ia" supernova.
Post date: 7/18/07
If the Earth is a peppercorn…
If the Earth is a peppercorn, what would Jupiter be? Stumped? Answer: a Brazil nut. And Saturn would be an almond.
These are not your usual analogies for our planets, but then again, the class that Notre Dame astrophysicist Phil Sakimoto teaches is not your usual summer school class. The 150 students whom he instructs are really at Notre Dame attending an annual camp, the National Youth Sports Program, originally started by the NCAA. Each year the youngsters, age 10-16, come to campus to take part in sports activities like softball, basketball, and volleyball with a little instructional component on the side: namely nutrition and drug and alcohol awareness.
But recently more than a few people at Notre Dame entertained some expansive ideas. Sakimoto, Notre Dame’s physics and astronomy outreach specialist, was one of them. "We decided there is one thing wrong here. If we bring the kids to campus every summer, shouldn’t we be doing something to give them a chance to actually be students at a place like this? " he explained. NASA and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific provided the materials for the classroom lessons, such as "Earth as a Peppercorn." These youngsters are now gaining insight about our solar system, space flight and the universe from a unique perspective.
Post date: 6/26/07
Alumni Reunion Weekend Reception
On Friday, June 1, 2007, Physics Alumni attended a reception during Alumni
Reunion Weekend.
This year Reunion Weekend invitees included the following classes: the 50 Year Club, Classes of 1957, 1962, 1967, 1972, 1977, 1982, 1987, 1992, 1997 and 2002. Other physics alumni who live or work near campus were also invited and several dropped by to visit. Our reunion continues to gain momentum and we were pleased to reacquaint ourselves with more than 15 alumni and spouses/guests. Details of the reception and pictures will appear in the next issue of Physics Tracks.
We’re looking forward to next year’s reunion and hope you are too.
Post date: 6/7/07
Chris Kolda recipient of 2007 Madden Award
At the President’s Dinner which took place on May 22, 2007, Chris Kolda received the 2007 Thomas P. Madden Award for outstanding teaching of first year students.
The citation read, “This outstanding teacher is also a well recognized researcher in the field of theoretical high energy physics. Equally at home teaching a graduate course on field theory or a basic course on introductory physics, he has spent the past several years explaining the wonders of modern physics to 1st year students in the Arts and Letters/Science Honors Program. Whether discussing the origins of the cosmos or the standard model of elementary particles, this dedicated instructor has a unique ability to present these topics in a clear and understandable manner. His extensive knowledge of the history of physics helps make the subject come alive for his students. He has also enlightened a different cohort of 1st year students as part of the team-taught course “The Genome, the Earth and the Cosmos”. Now serving as Director of Undergraduate Studies for the physics department, he has worked closely with 1st year advisors to identify and work with prospective majors. As an academic who not only loves to teach but also brings the excitement of his own research to the classroom, this professor is a great role model for young Notre Dame students.”In 1990 Randal C. Ruchti was the recipient of this prestigious award.
Post date: 5/23/07
Wiescher named Humboldt Fellow
Freimann Professor Michael Wiescher, has been named an Alexander von
Humboldt Fellow by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
The foundation was established by the Federal Republic of Germany to promote international cooperation in research. This prestigious fellowship will allow Wiescher to study the nuclear reactions leading to the formation of an isotope of iron, 60Fe, which has been found in sediments on the deep-ocean floor. This isotope is thought to be related to a supernova a few million years ago in our neighborhood of the Milky Way galaxy.
Wiescher is a world-leading scientist in experimental nuclear astrophysics who has made numerous contributions to the determination of key nuclear reaction rates for the understanding of stellar evolution and the synthesis of the elements in the universe. He is particularly well known for the use of novel techniques involving low energy ion beams in measuring nuclear reactions determining the lifetime and evolution of stars. He also pursued the use of radioactive ion beams in measuring important reactions relevant in explosive astrophysical environments. These techniques will be implemented at the future U.S. Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL) and the Future Radioactive Ion Beam (FRIB) facility. For his work Professor Wiescher received several awards, including the prestigious Hans Bethe Prize of the American Physics Society.
Wiescher is director of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics (JINA), a collaboration between the University of Notre Dame, Michigan State University, and the University of Chicago, to address a broad range of experimental, theoretical, and observational questions in nuclear astrophysics.
JINA serves as an intellectual center with the goal of enabling swift communication and stimulating collaborations across field boundaries. It also provides a focal point for the rapidly growing and diverse field of nuclear astrophysics.
The foundation is named after Baron Alexander von Humboldt, a Prussian naturalist and explorer. Baron von Huboldt explored much of Central and South American in the late 18th Century and early 19th Century.Post date:5/14/07
Jacek Furdyna to receive Purdue honorary degree
Jacek Furdyna, Aurora and Tom Marquez Professor of Physics at the University
of Notre Dame, received an honorary doctor of science degree May 12 during commencement ceremonies at Purdue University’s West Lafayette campus.
In its announcement of the honor, Purdue noted, “Throughout his career Dr. Furdyna projected the image of an extraordinarily creative scientist with a special talent for identifying fascinating new problems and new directions.”
Furdyna’s research interests involve the preparation of new semiconducting compounds and the investigation of their physical properties. Most recently, his research has focused on three semiconducting systems: quantum well structures for use in blue and blue-green light emitters, including semiconductor lasers; magnetic semiconductors (which combine “traditional” semiconductor phenomena with new magnetic properties, including ferromagnetism); and semiconductor nanostructures, such as self-assembled quantum dots, quantum wires, and their arrays. All these structures are fabricated at Notre Dame by molecular beam epitaxy.
Furdyna was born in Poland and was deported at age 6 to the Soviet Union with the outbreak of World War II. He spent much of his childhood in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and after his release from the USSR, in Iran, Iraq, Palestine, and in the United Kingdom, before immigrating to the United States.
Furdyna earned his bachelor’s degree at Loyola University in Chicago, and his doctorate at Northwestern University. From 1962 to 1966, he was on the research staff of the Francis Bitter National Magnet Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He went to Purdue in 1966 as an associate professor of physics and established a new program in magnetic semiconductors and gained an international reputation through imaginative research on various topics in this field.
Furdyna, who joined the Notre Dame faculty in 1986, is a fellow of both the American Physical Society and the Institute of Physics. For his scientific accomplishments, he was awarded a doctorate honoris causa by Warsaw University in 2002.
Post date: 5/9/07
College of Science hosts Undergraduate Research Meeting
On May 4, more than 40 undergraduate science and math students from the University of Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s College presented results fromtheir scientific research at the Jordan Hall of Science during the first annual College of Science Joint Annual Meeting.
The First Place Winner of Best Research Presentation in Physics was Thomas Schad (pictured above, right) for his talk “Coronal Seismology: The Search for Propagating Waves in Coronal Loops.” Tom did his work this past summer as an REU project at the National Solar Observatory in New Mexico, trying to understand the physics that underlies the sun’s corona. Tom is finishing his senior year as a Physics and Philosophy dual major. He will be attending the University of Arizona next year where he will continue his work at the National Solar Observatory on uncovering the secrets of the sun.
The Second Place Winner of Best Research Presentations in Physics was Steve Kurtz (pictured above, left) for his talk “An Undergraduate Perspective on Accelerator Mass Spectrometry at Notre Dame.” Steve gave a talk on his research done here at ND with Philippe Collon on the design and construction of our Accelerator Mass Spectrometer. He was involved in almost every phase of its development. Steve is finishing his senior year as a CSE and Physics major and will attend Notre Dame as a graduate student next year in engineering, studying quantum cellular automata.
Post date: 4/7/07
Wiescher recipient of first Joyce Award
Seventeen University of Notre Dame faculty members have been selected as recipients of the first Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C., Award for Excellence in
Undergraduate Teaching, and three faculty and staff members have been selected to receive the first Dockweiler Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising.
The Joyce Award, formerly known as the Kaneb Teaching Award, was established this year and is named for the late executive vice president of Notre Dame. It honors faculty members who have had a profound influence on undergraduate students through sustained exemplary teaching, and, in particular, recognizes professors who create environments that stimulate significant student learning, elevate students to a new level of intellectual engagement, and foster students’ ability to express themselves effectively within their disciplines. The award was funded through an endowment established by the Notre Dame class of 1937, of which Father Joyce was a member, on the 70th anniversary of his graduation.
Michael Wiescher, Freimann Professor of Physics, was one of those chosen to receive the Joyce Award. Professor Wiescher is the Director of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics (JINA) and is also Director of Notre Dame’s Nuclear Structure Laboratory. He was the recipient of the American Physical Society’s Hans Bethe Prize in 2003, Notre Dame’s Presidential Award in 2004, is a Fellow of the Center of Social Concerns, University of Notre Dame and is also a Fellow of the Reilly Center of Science, Technology, and Values at the University of Notre Dame. Professor Wiescher has been at the University of Notre Dame since 1986.
For the complete story.Post date:4/19/07
Matt Phipps, physics major, chosen as new leprechaun
Seven male students tried out for the leprechaun gig. A physics major and junior,
Matt Phipps, was selected as the Notre Dame leprechaun for the 2007-2008 school year. Matt has served on the varsity cheerleading squad for the past three years.
“I’ll definitely be flipping and doing acrobatics all over the field next year, and be a little bit more involved in the stunts that cheerleaders do. Even if I hadn’t made it, I loved the experience of trying out, and that one experience was nothing less than amazing,” Phipps said.
Professor Philippe Collon said, “It’s not every day one of my students gets elected top leprechaun and I wish him all the best.”
Post date: 4/17/07
Alumni Reunion Weekend Reception
This year, Reunion Weekend is open to the following classes: the 50 Year Club,Classes of 1957, 1962, 1967, 1972, 1977, 1982, 1987, 1992, 1997 and 2002. Even if this isn’t your reunion year but you live or work nearby, you may still want to drop by to visit with your colleagues. In a few weeks Professor Mitchell Wayne, Chair of the Department of Physics, will be sending out invitations to Reunion Weekend.
Please RSVP to physics@nd.edu or phone 574-631-6386. We look forward to seeing you there.
Post date: 4/16/07
Benjamin Fehrman 2007 Goldwater Scholar
The Board of Trustees of the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation has announced the names of the 2007 Goldwater Scholars. This year Notre Dame is represented by Benjamin Fehrman, a College of Science double major in Physics and Mathematics. The scholarships are given annually to about 300 undergraduate sophomores and juniors from around the United States.
The Scholarship Program, honoring Senator Barry M. Goldwater, was designed to foster and encourage outstanding students to pursue careers in the fields of mathematics, the natural sciences, and engineering. The Goldwater Scholarship is the premier undergraduate award of its type in these fields.
Notre Dame physics majors have been recipients of the Goldwater Scholarship a number of times in the recent past, including Patricia Engel in 2005, Jeffrey Drocco in 2003, and Matthew Wysocki in 2002. Congratulations to Ben for joining an illustrious group of honorees!
Post date: 4/13/07
PIXE-PAN 2007
PIXE-PAN 2007 is a relatively new program at Notre Dame replicating the very successful Physics of the Atomic Nuclei (PAN) program from Michigan State
The program introduces teachers and students to the fundamentals of the extremely small domain of atomic nuclei and its connection to the extremely large domain of astrophysics and cosmology. Lectures and hands-on experiments are led by senior faculty and staff of the Institute for Structure and Nuclear Astrophysics (ISNAP).
PIXE-PAN will be held summer 2007 from June 18 to 29 (for teachers) and from June 25-29 (for students) at the Institute for Structure and Nuclear Astrophysics (ISNAP) on the campus of the University of Notre Dame. Teachers spend two weeks working in the Nuclear Structure Laboratory and students join them for the second week.
Flyer for Summer 2007 and PIXE-PAN 2006 Website
Post date: 4/4/07
Notre Dame extended Research Community
The University of Notre Dame has been awarded a $2.71 million grant from the
National Science Foundation for its new GK-12 program, The Notre Dame extended Research Community (NDeRC). To quote the NSF: "This program provides funding to graduate students in NSF- supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines to acquire additional skills that will broadly prepare them for professional and scientific careers in the 21st century. Through interactions with teachers in K-12 schools, graduate students can improve communication and teaching skills while enriching STEM instruction in K-12 schools." NDeRC will provide full 1-year support for 37 graduate fellows over the five year duration of the award.
The program cuts across disciplines and will support graduate students in both the Colleges of Science and Engineering. The co-principal investigators include Anna Goussiou, Dan Karmgard, Tom Loughran and Mitchell Wayne (PI) from physics, along with Douglas Thain from computer science and engineering. Much of the impetus for the proposal has come from a group of fifteen local high school science teachers at the Notre Dame QuarkNet Center (NDQC). A high energy physics research laboratory with a focus on educational outreach, the NDQC was founded by ND physicist Randy Ruchti and is directed by Beth Marchant, a QuarkNet national staff teacher. Another NDQC teacher, Thomas Loughran, spearheaded the NDeRC collaboration and will serve as managing co-principal investigator. He has an undergraduate degree in chemistry and a Ph.D. in philosophy, both from Notre Dame, and currently is I2U2 Education Program Leader as a professional specialist in the Department of Physics, while co-leading the science research course at Saint Joseph’s High School in South Bend.
Pictured is the Summer 2006 Cohort of the Notre Dame QuarkNet Center
Post date: 3/30/07
First science from the LBT: ND astrophysicist reports gamma ray finding
An international team headed by University of Notre Dame astrophysicist Peter M. Garnavich has reported the first scientific result from the Large Binocular
Telescope (LBT). The team imaged a distant “afterglow” of gamma ray burst “070125.”
The $120 million LBT is located atop Mount Graham, a 10,700-foot mountain in southeastern Arizona. The team of observers used the LBT’s “left-side” primary mirror and its “blue” camera to capture a detailed image of the afterglow of the gamma ray burst
Gamma ray bursts are huge blasts of gamma rays that last for seconds or minutes. The blasts drive shocks into the surrounding gas that generate light from X-rays to radio waves and these “afterglows” are visible for just a few hours to a few days. The explosions are distant, often more than halfway back to the Big Bang. GRB 070125 was more than 7 billion light years away.
Garnavich’s team observed the gamma ray burst February 21, almost a month after it exploded. The detection caught the burst at 26th magnitude. The magnitude scale is used by astronomers to measure the brightness of objects in space. The human eye can detect stars as faint as the 6th magnitude on a clear, dark night. The LBT was able to see a source that was 100 million times fainter than the limit of human vision.
Post date: 3/16/07
70 years of Nuclear Physics at ND
Nuclear Physics was born at the University of Notre Dame in 1937 with the first
For the complete story.successful experiments accelerating particles. These experiments began an active scientific program and laid the foundation for one of the first nuclear laboratories in the United States of America. During its 70 years of history, the Nuclear Laboratory has contributed significantly to all aspects of Nuclear Physics, to our understanding of the nucleus as a unique few body quantum system, to our interpretation of nuclear reactions and reaction mechanisms as signatures of the four fundamental forces governing the Cosmos, and finally to the critical role these reactions provide for the synthesis of the chemical elements formed in generations of stars since the beginning of our Universe.
Post date: 2/9/07
New finding helps further understanding of X-ray bursts
X-ray bursts are among the most fascinating of astrophysical phenomena.
Now, a new finding by a team led by University of Notre Dame astrophysicist Michael Wiescher will enable researchers to derive many more qualitative predictions about X-ray burst behavior and characteristics.
X-ray bursts are thermonuclear explosions in the outer atmosphere of accreting neutron stars. The accreted hydrogen and helium-rich material burns through steady fusion processes, heating the neutron star atmosphere toward the ignition point.
Wiescher and his team have performed the first successful measurement of the alpha-decay branch of the resonance level using the Notre Dame TwinSol system in the University’s Nuclear Structure Laboratory. Based on this result, and coupled with the first successful lifetime measurement of the resonance level at Notre Dame, the reaction rate of the thermonuclear explosion of X-ray bursts has been determined with much improved accuracy.
For the complete story.Post date: 2/9/07
Hands-on exhibition part of NSF FY 2008 budget proposal presentation
A special open house accompanied the National Science Foundation Fiscal Year 2008 budget proposal presentation on February 5, 2007. The news media were invited to attend the event that included hands-on exhibitions from NSF research areas.
Fifteen NSF principal investigators from across the country showcased research sponsored by NSF directorates and programs. You could see robots used in disaster areas, learn about earthquake ground-motion sensors, witness superconductivity and magnetic levitation, see technological advances in particle detection in applications for homeland security, or don 3-D glasses and see high-definition stereo visualizations and much more. Among the exhibits, University of Notre Dame Prof. Randy Ruchti had a cosmic ray detector display that he and Jeff Marchant (QuarkNet) presented.
For more information on the exhibits, see http://www.nsf.gov/news/newsmedia/budget_exhibits/index.jsp
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering, with an annual budget of $5.58 billion. NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 1,700 universities and institutions. Each year, NSF receives about 40,000 competitive requests for funding, and makes nearly 10,000 new funding awards. The NSF also awards over $400 million in professional and service contracts yearly.
Post date: 2/8/07
Institute for Theoretical Sciences Workshop
Professor Boldizsar Janko is one of the organizers
of the Institute for Theoretical Sciences Workshop on Fluorescence Intermittency in molecules, quantum dots and quantum wires. Other members of the organizing committee are Pavel Frantsusov and Masaru Kuno. The workshop will take place in McKenna Hall at the University of Notre Dame on April 2 and 3, 2007. Workshop topics include intermittency via single molecule spectroscopy, electron transfer theories, and statistics.
For further information contact: Mimi Mostofi, Administrator, The Institute for Theoretical Sciences, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556 mmostofi@nd.edu, Phone: (574) 631-2668 www.theoryinstitute.org/blink.
Post date: 1/26/07
DZero finds evidence of rare single top quark; Observation marks
a step closer to finding Higgs bosonNotre Dame's High Energy Physics group is an important member of the DZero
experiment with five faculty, a research professor, three postdocs and eight graduate students.
The result is the first experimental evidence of the "single top" events. The top quark was discovered in 1995 by D0 and the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF). However, top quarks are usually produced in pairs. Theoretically it is also possible to produce events with a single top quark at the Fermilab Tevatron, but the probability of such events is small and it is experimentally difficult to separate the signal events from very large backgrounds. D0 has now accomplished this feat and reported on the result last week.
These two 'Feynman diagrams' represent the processes that lead to the production of single quark events of the kind seen by DZero.
For the complete story.Post date: 12/19/06
DZero finds evidence of rare single top quark; Observation marks
a step closer to finding Higgs bosonNotre Dame's High Energy Physics group is an important member of the DZero
experiment with five faculty, a research professor, three postdocs and eight graduate students.
The result is the first experimental evidence of the "single top" events. The top quark was discovered in 1995 by D0 and the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF). However, top quarks are usually produced in pairs. Theoretically it is also possible to produce events with a single top quark at the Fermilab Tevatron, but the probability of such events is small and it is experimentally difficult to separate the signal events from very large backgrounds. D0 has now accomplished this feat and reported on the result last week.
These two 'Feynman diagrams' represent the processes that lead to the production of single quark events of the kind seen by DZero.
For the complete story.Post date: 12/19/06
Wiescher serves on National Academies Assessment Committee
on the Scientific Opportunities with a Rare-Isotope Facility
in the United StatesDr. Michael Wiescher, Freimann Professor of Physics, was appointed by the National Research Council of the National Academies to serve on an assessment
The 18 members of the committee represent nationally recognized leaders of nuclear science in the United States, Europe, and Japan. The committee began their study process on December 2005 and has submitted the report to the National Academies. The report summarizes the goals for nuclear physics with radioactive beams and discusses the increasing demand for radioactive beam facilities worldwide. It underlines the need for a worldwide competitive US radioactive beam facility. The report was approved for public release on December 8, 2006. The final report appears on The National Academies homepage (upper left) as well as on the RISAC homepage
The Nuclear Physics faculty at Notre Dame has played a pioneering role in the development of radioactive beams for the last decade. Jim Kolata has developed the TwinSol facility, one of the first successfully operating radioactive beam facilities in the nation, to study nuclear reaction processes far from stability. Ani Aprahamian utilized this technique to develop one of the first Nuclear Structure programs with radioactive beams. Michael Wiescher played a pioneering role in demonstrating the role and impact of radioactive beams for Nuclear Astrophysics measurement. Wiescher has served for many years on the FRIB (RIA) steering committee for a US radioactive beam facility. He was recently elected by the community to serve a second term on the RIA user committee.
Michael Wiescher is the Director of the Nuclear Structure Laboratory at Notre Dame. Wiescher serves also as Director of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics (JINA) of the University of Notre Dame, Michigan State University, and the University of Chicago. JINA is funded as one of the ten Physics Frontier Centers of the National Science Foundation.
Post date: 12/12/06
Ani Aprahamian recipient of fifth annual Arts and Letters Award of Appreciation
The following is an excerpt of a letter received from Mark W. Roche, I.A. O’Shaughnessy Dean, announcing the recipient of the fifth annual Arts and Letters Award of Appreciation.
“Many of you will recall that the College Council established an award of appreciation in 2001, to be given annually to a faculty member or staff person outside the College of Arts and Letters who has contributed significantly to the mission of the College. Its purpose is to recognize and encourage work that contributes to the College but is undertaken by persons whose primary responsibilities lie outside of the College...”
“I am pleased to announce that the recipient of the fifth annual Arts and Letters Award of Appreciation is Ani Aprahamian, Professor and former Chairperson of Physics. The 2006 Arts and Letters Award of Appreciation Committee — Karen L. Buranskas (Music), Ian Kuijt (Anthropology), and Robert P. Schmuhl (American Studies) — selected Ani from an impressive array of highly qualified nominees.”
“The multiple nominations that outlined Ani’s work on behalf of the University of Notre Dame, and in particular on behalf of the members of the College of Arts and Letters, were impressive. Ani is especially appreciated for three reasons. First, Ani, a distinguished scholar-teacher in experimental nuclear physics, embodies the link between teaching, research, and service in an exemplary manner and in such a way as to extend beyond Science and into Arts and Letters…Second, Ani actively seeks out, creates, and promotes opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration and integrative thinking, for herself and for others. Ani has developed collaborative relationships with academics in, for example, the departments of Classics, History, and Philosophy and in the Graduate Program in the History and Philosophy of Science. She has also organized, for example, two recent and very popular lecture series on the Notre Dame campus: “World Year of Physics 2005: Einstein in the 21st Century” and “Thoughts of the Unthinkable: Perspectives on Nuclear Weapons and Warfare.”…Finally, Ani enjoys introducing members of the Notre Dame community to each other and to distinguished visitors. She helps make the University more welcoming to new faculty members and guests and frequently hosts social events that spark interesting cross-disciplinary conversations. Such initiative and generosity are remarkable.”
Post date: 12/5/06
Adjunct professor in physics awarded Hans Bethe prizeDr. James R. Wilson has been awarded the prestigious Hans A. Bethe Prize. He is a staff scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and an Adjunct Professor of Physics at the University of Notre Dame.
The prize is awarded annually to recognize outstanding work in theory, experiment or observation in the areas of astrophysics, nuclear physics, nuclear astrophysics, or closely related fields. The prize consists of $7,500 and a certificate citing the contributions made by the recipient.
The citation reads “for his work in nuclear astrophysics and numerical work on supernovae core collapse, neutrino transport, and shock propagation. His codes reenergized supernovae shocks, launched numerical relativity and magnetically driven jets.”
Dr. Wilson has been an adjunct professor in the Physics Department of the University of Notre Dame since 1995. He travels frequently to the University to foster collaborations with University of Notre Dame astrophysicist Grant Mathews.
Among the projects which he has worked on in his collaboration with the University of Notre Dame are: The modeling of supernova explosions and the associated nucleosynthesis of heavy elements in the material ejected from the explosion; effects from Einstein’s theory of relativity on neutron stars and white dwarfs in binary systems or passing near to a black hole; and models for the generations of cosmological acceleration (dark energy) based upon decaying heavy neutrinos; the formation of jets in cosmological gamma-ray bursts.
Post date: 11/30/06
Sakimoto appointed to National Academies Study CommitteeDr. Philip Sakimoto, Professional Specialist in Physics, has been appointed by the National Research Council of the National Academies to
serve on a study committee charged by Congress with evaluating the NASA pre-college science, mathematics, and technology education program. The committee will address questions posed in the NASA Authorization Act of 2005 regarding the effectiveness, funding priorities, and assessment procedures of NASA’s program. They will also examine the alignment of NASA’s goals with the learning goals of teachers and students. The twelve members of the committee are all nationally recognized leaders of science education reform efforts in the United States. Their study will commence on November 15 at a three-day meeting in Washington, DC, and will take approximately 20 months to complete.
Post date: 11/9/06
Notre Dame Student Awarded APS Scholarship
Richard Molina Jr., a University of Notre Dame first-year student and physics major intent, has been awarded the 2006-2007 American Physical Society Scholarship for Minority Undergraduate Physics Majors. The
scholarship includes a monetary award of $2000 ($1000 per semester) for the first year, and renewing scholars receive an additional $3000 per academic year. A member of the APS Committee on Minorities has been assigned as a mentor for Richard. Also, the scholarship provides support to the physics department to provide local mentoring. Two University of Notre Dame physics faculty will serve as co-mentors for Richard to help guide him towards his interest in astrophysics. They are Chris Howk, an assistant professor and researcher in astrophysics, and Phil Sakimoto, a professional specialist and astronomer with a background in minority outreach. We are pleased to have such a special student in the Department of Physics.
Post date: 9/29/06
New science building open for tours on football Saturdays
The University of Notre Dame will open the new Jordan Hall of Science to the
public for guided tours between 9:00 and 11:30 a.m. on the Saturdays of home football games.
Scheduled for dedication September 14, the Jordan Hall of Science is a $70 million, 201,782-square foot structure north of the Joyce Center. The building’s majestic Great Hall features 12 glass-enclosed display cases that house presentations on a wide variety of scientific topics. The building includes 40 undergraduate teaching laboratories and two identical 250-seat lecture halls. An octagonal-shaped, 150-seat multi-media visualization room enables students and the general public to experience images projected on the room’s domed ceiling. The facility also features an observatory, greenhouse and herbarium.
The Marie P. DeBartolo Center for the Performing Arts will also be open for guided tours between 9 and 11:30 a.m. on the Saturdays of home football games.
Post date: 9/8/06
Barabási co-edits new book and is awarded computing medal
Albert-Lászlo Barabási Hofman Professor of Physics at the University of Notre
Dame, has been named the recipient of a major computing award from a leading Hungarian information technology society and is the co-editor of a new book on networks.
Barabási is a pioneer in the field of networking as a unified scientific theory and the author of “Linked: The New Science of Networks.” His early research led to significant findings on how networks are structured and how they operate. Of late, he has begun examining how people behave in networks.
Barabási is the 2006 recipient of the John von Neumann Medal, which is presented by the Hungarian-based John von Neumann Computer Society for outstanding achievements in computer-related science and technology. The award has been presented since 1976 to a maximum of three individuals who have gained distinction in the dissemination of computer culture. Previous recipients of the award include Microsoft founder Bill Gates, former IBM chairman Louis Gerstner and Intel Corporation board chair Andrew Grove.
Barabási has also edited a new book titled “The Structure and Dynamics of Networks.” The book brings together a series of articles from the fields of mathematics, physics, computer science, sociology and biology that examine the new science of networks.
For the complete story.Post date: 9/5/06
Bennett leads Hubble team in star discovery
A NASA Hubble Space Telescope team headed by University of Notre Dame astrophysicist David Benett has, for the first time, identified the pare
nt star of a distant planet that was discovered through gravitational microlensing.
In the gravitational microlensing technique, a foreground star-planetsystem slightly amplifies the light of a background star that momentarily aligns with it. Knowledge of exactly which types of host stars around which remote planets revolve is fundamental to constraining theories of planet formation. The Hubble Space Telescope, with its image sharpness and stability, is ideally suited to identify the host stars for gravitationally-lensed planets found in our Milky Way Galaxy.
“The identification of the host star is critical for a complete understanding of the planets discovered by microlensing,” Bennett said.
For the complete story.Post date: 8/10/06
New NSF grant to fund research on blinking molecules
A team of researchers led by University of Notre Dame physicist Boldizsár Jankó and backed by a new $1.2 million National Science Found
ation Nanoscale Interdisciplinary Research Team (NIRT) grant is seeking to solve an enduring mystery in chemical physics.
More than a century ago, at the dawn of modern quantummechanics, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Niels Bohr predicted so-called 'quantum jumps.' He predicted that these jumps would be due to electrons making transitions between discrete energy levels of individual atoms and molecules. Although controversial in Bohr's time, such quantum jumps were experimentally observed, and his prediction verified, in the 1980s. More recently, with the development of single molecule imaging techniques in the early 1990s, it has been possible to observe similar jumps in individual molecules. Experimentally, these quantum jumps translate to discrete interruptions of the continuous emission from single molecules, revealing a phenomenon known as florescent intermittency or 'blinking.'
Post date: 8/8/06
New study offers insights into planetary formation
Surprisingly, given the vast amount of information astrophysicists have uncovered
about planets, the exact process by which they form remains a mystery. A new study by a team of researchers led by University of Notre Dame astrophysicists Terrence Rettig and Dinshaw Balsara may help solve that mystery.
"Obviously, we know this process happens, but no one can fully explain the details of the process of planet building," Rettig said. "From our own solar system and the observations of the variety of other planets around more distant stars, we have indirect clues as to how the gas and dust that remains in a fully extended disk surrounding young stars might coagulate into larger and larger bodies to form a planet and, eventually perhaps, life."
The study appears in the July 20 edition of Astrophysical Journal. The papers coauthors are David Tilley of Notre Dame; Sean Brittain, Clemson University; Erika Gibb, University of Missouri-St. Louis; and Ted Simon and Craig Kulesa from observatories in, respectively, Hawaii and Arizona.
Post date: 7/21/06
$10 million gift from John and Barbara Glynn to enhance
Arts and Letters and Science Honors Program
Alumnus John W. Glynn and his wife, Barbara, have made a $10 million gift to theUniversity of Notre Dame to expand and fortify the joint honors program in the College of Arts and Letters and the College of Science. Beginning with the fall 2007 semester, the Glynn gift will enable the program to admit 100 students per year – 400 overall. The benefaction will allow every student in the program to become eligible for summer research fellowships to pursue original research projects at Notre Dame or other universities around the world. Students accepted into the honors program will be known as Glynn Scholars.
A 1962 graduate of Notre Dame, John Glynn is founder and president of Glynn Capital Management in Menlo Park, California. He earned his bachelor’s degree in history from Notre Dame, a law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law, and an MBA from Stanford University. Glynn has served on Notre Dame’s College of Arts and Letters Advisory Council since 1998 and on the advisory board of the Gigot Center for Entrepreneurial Studies since 2000 and currently serves on the advisory board of the Judge Business School of Cambridge University. He is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of Virginia School of Law.
Barbara Glynn earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history from Trinity College in Washington and the University of Virginia, respectively. She is a co-founder of the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, California, one of the major technology museums in the world. She also serves on the boards of several schools and community agencies, including the Family Service Organization.
Post date: 7/20/06
Physics study examines moviegoers’ behavior
With the summer blockbuster movie season in full swing, studios are spending milli
ons of marketing dollars to convince us that their offerings are “must-see” movies. And legions of critics are telling us which films are “hits” and which are “misses.”
However, a new study by a Notre Dame physics doctoral student claims that we, the paying public, are the best arbiters of what are quality films. Cesar Hidalgo and colleagues attempted to gauge how good the “word of mouth” was around a film based on the behavior of moviegoers. They developed a mathematical equation that approximates box-office numbers in the weeks after release.
Post date: 6/26/06
Merz to serve as interim dean of College of Engineering
James L. Merz, Frank M. Freimann Professor of Electrical
Engineering and former vice president for graduate studies and research at the University of Notre Dame, has been appointed the University’s interim dean of the College of Engineering, effective August 1. Professor Merz is a Concurrent Professor of Physics and a Fellow of the American Physical Society.
Post date: 6/22/06
Professor Mitchell Wayne appointed Chair of Department of Physics
Professor Mitchell R. Wayne has accepted the appointment of Chair of the Department of Physics beginning July 1, 2006 for an initial term of three years. For the last four years he has served as Associate Dean in the College of Science in addition to his continuing research with the D0 experiment at the Fermilab Tevatron and staying active within the Department of Physics. He was the recipient of the Shilts-Leonard Teaching Award in 2003 and the inaugural Kaneb Teaching Award in 1999.
Professor Wayne received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Los Angeles. He has been at the University of Notre Dame since 1991.
Post date: 5/22/06
Wiescher and Aprahamian invited to become Reilly Fellows
Professor Michael Wiescher, Freimann Professor of Physics, and Professor Ani Aprahamian have been invited to become fellows of the John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values at the University of Notre Dame. The University’s John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology and Values is committed to promoting research in science and technology as ways in which these institutions affect society, and this from a variety of perspectives, including those of the historian, the philosopher, and the social and natural scientist.
Post date: 5/16/06
Cason and Garg to Receive Kaneb Award at 161st Commencement
The University of Notre Dame has selected 47
outstanding faculty members as recipients of the seventh annual Kaneb Teaching Awards. Professors Neal Cason and Umesh Garg of the Department of Physics will be recognized May 21 during the University's 161st Commencement exercises. Professor Cason and Professor Garg are among eight additional Kaneb recipients in the College of Science in the Departments of Biological Sciences, Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Mathematics.
Because their intent is to recognize teaching excellence that is demonstrated over time, the awards are given to faculty who have been active full time in undergraduate teaching for at least five years. Professor Cason came to Notre Dame in 1965. He served as Chairman of the Department of Physics from 1983-1988 and again in 2005-2006. In addition, he is a Phi Beta Kappa, a member of the American Physical Society and is a Visiting Scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Professor Garg came to Notre Dame in 1982. He is also a guest scientist at the Argonne National Laboratory and has been a visiting professor at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, and a visiting scientist at Bhabha Atomic Research Center, Bombay, India, and at the Cyclotron Institute, Texas A&M University. He is also a Fellow of the American Physical Society.
Post date: 5/12/06
NASA names Notre Dame official site of Hubble photo unveiling
NASA has designated the University of Notre Dame as one of 50 official national sites to receive and display a photo print of the starburst galaxy Messier 82 (M82), taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and made in celebration of the 16th anniversary of its launch.
A public unveiling of the print was held May 4 at Notre Dame's Office of Community Relations in downtown South Bend. The event, which was open to the public, included a brief presentation by Notre Dame astronomers Peter Garnavich, Christopher Howk and Philip Sakimoto, who discussed the legacy of the Hubble Space Telescope and the significance of the image.
Post date: 5/5/06
Alumni Reunion Weekend Reception
On Friday, June 2, 2006, all Physics Alumni are
invited to attend a reception during Alumni Reunion Weekend from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. in room 284 Nieuwland Science Hall.
Please R.S.V.P. to physics@nd.edu or phone 574-631-6386. We look forward to seeing you there.
Our graphic titled 'Color Charge' was created by student Paul Rumbach, a senior at St. Joseph's High School in South Bend, Indiana. It was used for the cover of the Fall 2005 issue of Interactions.
Post date: 5/4/06
Physics goes to the movies
The popularity of a particular film largely depends on word-of-mouth recommendations according to a new study by statistical physicists in the U.S. and Chile. Cesar Hidalgo of the University of Notre Dame and colleagues have also developed a quantitative indicator of a film's quality, which they say could be used by film producers and studios to estimate the commercial value of a movie (New Journal of Physics 8(2006)52).
Hidalgo and co-workers have developed a model that can explain the different types of behaviour observed in filmgoers. The model takes into account how many people go to the opening of a movie and whether they go to see a film alone or in a group. It also describes the rate at which individuals lose interest in a film once it has opened, which means the probability of them going to see it decreases.
Post date: 4/19/06
Journey into the Heart of Matter
Professor Ani Aprahamian was highlighted in anew publication entitled 'Journey into the Heart of Matter' produced by the Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Science. The publication gives an introduction to Nuclear Physics and highlights some of the many job opportunities that are available for people who study Nuclear Physics. Prof. Aprahamian's career in education is shown as one of four profiles in this brochure. The profiles demonstrate the breadth and diversity of fields in which nuclear physicists are presently engaged in from finance to medical physics.
Post date: 4/12/06
New planet found: Icy "Super-Earth" dominates distant solar system
An international collaboration of astronomers that includes David Bennett, an associate professor of physics at the University of Notre Dame, has discovered a "super-Earth" orbiting in the cold outer regions of a distant solar system roughly 9,000 light-years away from our planet.
Post date: 3/17/06
Aprahamian appointed to UR National Laser User's Facility
Steering Committee
Professor Ani Aprahamian was appointed to theUniversity of Rochester National Laser Users' Facility Steering Committee. The National Laser Users' facility is located at the University of Rochester Laboratory for Laser Energetics. Professor Aprahamian was previously on the steering committee of this laboratory in 2004 and part of a group of five who established the research program for the OMEGA laser shot allocations in FY-05-06. The research at the OMEGA laser facility is of relevance to the National Nuclear Security Agency and the Stockpile Stewardship program of the USA.
Post date: 2/24/06
Microlensing technique reveals small, rocky extrasolar planet
David Bennett, a University of Notre Dame astrophysicist, is a member of an international team of astronomers that has discovered a potentially rocky, icy body that may be the smallest and coolest extrasolar planet yet found. The discovery was made using a technique called "gravitational microlensing," which may be an exceptional technology for finding distant planets with traits that could support life.
"The new discovery provides a strong hint that low-mass planets may be much more common than Jupiters," said co-author and PLANET researcher David Bennett of the University of Notre Dame. Most extrasolar planets found so far have been Jupiter-sized. "Microlensing should have discovered dozens of Jupiters by now if they were as common as these five-Earth-mass planets. This illustrates the primary strength of the gravitational microlensing method: its ability to find planets of low-mass," Bennett said.
For the National Science Foundation story.
The article appears in the January 26 edition of Nature.
Post date: 1/30/06
Aprahamian, Barabasi and Sun in November Issue of Nature Physics
Excited quantum states in nature are normally extremely
short-lived, and this certainly applies to most nuclei. But what makes the metastable nuclear states different? And how can we exploit them for useful applications? Read the entire article written by Ani Aprahamian and Yang Sun in the November issue of Nature Physics.
Also in the November issue, the science of networks is experiencing a boom. But despite the necessary multidisciplinary approach to tackle the theory of complexity, scientists remain largely compartmentalized in their separate disciplines. Can they find a common voice? You can read this article titled "Taming Complexity" by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi.
Post date: 12/21/05
Ani Aprahamian Appointed to DOE/NSF Nuclear Science Advisory Committee
Ani Aprahamian, was just appointed to be a member ofthe DOE/NSF Nuclear Science Advisory Committee for a term of two years through 2007. The committee provides advice and recommendations on scientific, technical, and programmatic issues relating to the nuclear physics program of the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation. Professor Aprahamian is asked to provide her expertise in the field of nuclear science.
Post date: 12/16/05
Air Force Institute of Technology honors Anthony Hyder
Anthony K. Hyder, associate vice president for graduate studies and research and professor of physics has received the Air Force Institute of Technology(AFIT) Distinguished Alumnus title. A 1962 graduate of Notre Dame, Prof. Hyder earned his master's and doctoral degrees in physics from AFIT in 1964 and 1971, respectively. He taught at Auburn University and served as its associate vice president for research before joining the Notre Dame faculty in 1991 and assuming his current position in 1993. Prof. Hyder's research largely concerns the interaction of spacecraft with the space environment and his recent work has focused on the design of spacecraft systems.
The title is the highest honor the AFIT awards to its alumni, only 23 of whom have received it since it was first conferred in 1979. Previous recipients include Col. Frank Borman, the astronaut, and Gen. Jimmy Doolittle, the aviation pioneer and World War II hero
Post date: 12/12/05
New Technology in the Classroom
During the Spring Semester of 2005 Professors Neal Cason and Margaret Dobrowolska began using the "classroom performance system" (CPS) for their Introductory Physics lecture (PHYS 30220). The enrollment of this class was about 150 students per section with two sections offered in that semester. Given the size of these classes, it is quite challenging to engage all students in the lecture. The CPS approach provides every student with a "clicker," a wireless response device that allows him/her to participate actively in the learning process.
The system works like this: students answer questions by pressing one of the buttons on the clicker and through radio signal their answer is sent to a receiver plugged into a computer. A summary of the responses are instantly displayed as a graphic. Profs. Cason and Dobrowolska used it to test students preparation for the class in "reading quizzes" activities at the beginning of each lecture and several times throughout the lecture to test students understanding of the concepts being covered. This helped them to learn immediately if students - even those sitting in the back of the lecture hall - really grasped the concept so they could decide if they needed to spend more time on it or move forward. The students liked the anonymity of their response and it also helped them to see how they were doing in relation to everyone in the class. This approach made the students aware of their difficulties early on. Students were receptive to the idea and responded with very positive comments. This new response system is sure to catch on and will find a home in more classrooms in the near future.
Post date: 12/8/05
Jordan Hall to Profit from Fiesta Bowl
The University of Notre Dame will receiveapproximately $14.5 million as its share of Fiesta Bowl revenues. According to Notre Dame President, Rev. John Jenkins, net proceeds will go toward academic priorities. One of these priorities, the new Jordan Hall of Science (JHS), will receive a substantial share of these funds. The JHS is a 201,782 square foot building currently under construction on the east side of Juniper Road. It will house undergraduate science laboratory space, an observatory, herbarium, greenhouse and other facilities. Father Jenkins said the university wants to provide the best equipment available when the hall opens in the summer of 2006.
Post date: 12/7/05
What and When was the Christmas Star?
At this time in the Christian year, we are often reminded that the Gospel of Matthew records a peculiar astronomical event that occurred at the birth of Christ. Astronomers and theologians have pondered for many years what this "Christmas Star" could be and many possibilities have been suggested. Was it a comet? Was it a nova, a supernova, or some other transient stellar burst? And who were the "wise men from the East" who could somehow see significance in this peculiar event that was apparently missed in Jerusalem. This public lecture will review the many astronomical postulates for the Christmas star.
Professor Grant J. Mathews, Director of the Center for Astrophysics, Department of Physics, University of Notre Dame, will discuss recent evidence that points toward likely answers to the nature and time of appearance of this special event in the sky and that also may shed new light on the Christmas story.
This World Year of Physics Public Outreach Lecture will take place on Friday, December 9, 2005 at 7:00 p.m. in the DeBartolo Classroom Building.
Post date: 11/21/05
Wiescher Appointed to Rare Isotope Science Assessment Committee
Michael Wiescher, Freimann Professor of Physics andPost date: 11/11/05
Prof. Anna Goussiou receives prestigious 2005 NSF CAREER Award in Physics
The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers the National Science Foundation's most prestigious awards in support of the early career-development activities of those teacher-scholars who most effectively integrate research and education within the context of the mission of their organization.
Professor Goussiou received the award for a research program aimed at discovering the mechanism responsible for electroweak symmetry breaking and the origin of mass. This constitutes one of the most important open questions, and therefore highest priorities, in Particle Physics today. Professor Goussiou is currently pursuing her research at the Tevatron proton-antiproton collider at Fermilab, and will continue at the proton-proton Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. The CAREER award provides research support for five years.
Post date: 11/9/05
Beyond Einstein World Wide Webcast
On December
1, 2005, join the webcast! 12 hours of live show from around the world. Find out how a young man 100 years ago had a bright idea that completely changed the world in which you live.
THE LATE SHOW WITH LEON LEDERMAN!!!
Leon Lederman is a Nobel Laureate in physics and was Director of Fermilab from 1979 to 1989. Leon's guests include our very own Notre Dame physicist Anna Goussiou as well as physicists Jason Nielsen and Peter Skands with a cameo appearance by A. Einstein. Science commercials courtesy of Lee Marek (who has appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman 36 times in the past 13 years). Music by the world-famous CDF band, Drug Sniffing Dogs.
Be a part of the webcast on Thursday, December 1, 2005 from 1:30 - 3:30 p.m. CST (2:30 - 4:30 EST) at Fermilab's Wilson Hall 1 West. Register via e-mail at latenight@fnal.gov. The actual webcast from Fermilab will take place from 2:00 - 3:30 p.m. CST (3:00 - 4:30 EST).
Post date: 11/7/05
World's Most Powerful Telescope Captures First Images of Night Sky
The Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) partnership, which includes University of Notre Dame astrophysicists, announced on October 27 that it achieved 'first light,' or the telescope's first science-quality images of the night sky, on October 12.
The images mark the dawn of a new era in observing the Universe as the LBT will peer deeper into space than ever before with 10 times the clarity of the Hubble Space Telescope. The telescope's unparalleled observational capability will enable astronomers to view planets in distant solar systems and detect and measure objects dating back to the beginning of time (14 billion years ago).
The $120 million LBT, built by a consortium that includes Notre Dame, the Universities of Minnesota and Virginia, and Ohio State University, all in association with the Research Corp., and researchers from Germany and Italy, is located atop Mount Graham, a 10,700-foot mountain in southeastern Arizona. The LBT is unlike any other telescope because it uses twin 8.4-meter (27.6-foot) 'honeycomb' mirrors that sit on a single mount, allowing it to simulate a 23-meter telescope. The exceptional first light images were obtained with one of the telescope's two primary mirrors in place. The second primary mirror recently was transported from the University of Arizona and installed on Mount Graham. The LBT will be fully operational next year with both of its enormous eyes wide open.
Post date: 10/28/05
Paper Examines the Correspondence of Darwin and Einstein
A new paper in today's edition of the scientific journal
'Nature' by University of Notre Dame physicist Albert-László Barabási offers a fascinating glimpse into the communication patterns of scientific giants Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin.
Barabási is a pioneer in networking as a unified scientific theory and the author of "Linked: The New Science of Networks." His earlier research led to significant findings on how networks are structured and how they operate. Of late, he has begun examining how people behave in networks.
"When we looked at the communication patterns of scientists whose correspondence has been carefully catalogued, Darwin and Einstein stand out, given that the record of their correspondence is fairly complete," Barabási said. "It consists of over 14,000 letters sent or received by Darwin, and over 30,000 by Einstein. These are incredible numbers: Einstein appears to have sent one letter per day on average and, on a few occasions, received as many as 120 letters on the same day. Most important, both made a point of answering most of the letters they received, even if they came from school-children."
Post date: 10/28/05
Wiescher Appointed to TRIUMF Advisory Committee
Michael Wiescher, Freimann Professor of Physics and Director of the Joint Institute of Nuclear Astrophysics has been appointed by the National Research Council of Canada to serve on the Advisory Committee on TRIUMF (ACOT).
TRIUMF is Canada's National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics located in Vancouver, British Columbia. ACOT does advise the National Research Council on specific matters relating to TRIUMF's program, and does provide scientific program to TIUMF's Director.
Post date: 10/28/05
Guided Tours of Physics Labs
On November 5, in celebration of the World Year ofPhysics 2005, join guidedtours of the Physics Labs. Witness with your own eyes
the essence of light, relativity and quantum mechanics in Nieuwland 288 and 292. The Nieuwland Observatory will be open for visitors to safely view the sun (weather permitting). Visit our Molecular Beam Lab, view real-time cosmic rays raining down from space at the High Energy Particle Detector Development Lab, observe the nuclear accelerators that allow us to probe the life of stars and see the historic Napoleon Telescope (pictured). The telescope lens was donated by Napoleon III in the 1890s and the telescope was refurbished in the 1950s. Discover cutting edge research done in the Notre Dame Physics labs.
9:00 - 10:00 a.m. Welcome, Guided Lab Tours - Nieuwland Science Hall.
10:00 - 11:00 a.m. Nieuwland 118. Lecture by Professor Chris Kolda entitled 'God's dice: Einstein and the Journey from the Wedgewood Kilns to the Uncertainty Principle.'
11:00 a.m. - Noon. Guided Lab Tours - Nieuwland Science Hall.
Post date: 10/19/05
Wiescher New Faculty Fellow at CSC
Post date: 10/18/05
Ikaros Bigi appointed to endowed chair
Ikaros Bigi, Grace-Rupley II Professor of Physics. A member of the Notre Dame
faculty since 1988, Professor Bigi focuses hisresearch primarily on the development of theoretical ideas that lead to novel experimental searches for new forces beyond the standard model of high energy physics. He was the co-recipient of the American Physical Society's 2004 J.J. Sakurai Prize, which is awarded annually to recognize and encourage outstanding achievement in particle theory. He was cited for pioneering theoretical insights that pointed the way to the very fruitful experimental study of CP violation in B decays, and for continuing contributions to the field of CP and heavy flavor physics. Professor Bigi earned his master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Munich while doing his research at the Max-Planck Institute for Physics and his habilitation (a qualification at a higher level than a doctorate within the German university system) from the RWTH Aachen.
The Grape-Rupley II Chair in Physics honors Joseph Grace and Allen Rupley, both former chairmen of the board of W.R. Grace & Co., a diversified company.
For the complete story on five faculty members appointed to endowed chairs.
Post date: 10/7/05
5 Supernovae Discovered
The extension of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey(SDSS-II) announced in an International Astronomical Union Circular the discovery of five supernovae on September 19. This is the start of a multi-year program that will discover several hundred supernovae and use them to estimate properties of dark matter and dark energy. The Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics (JINA) based at the University of Notre Dame is partner in the SDSS-II effort.
The SDSS telescope in New Mexico with a mirror diameter of 2.5 meters is used for the supernova search. It scans the same strip of sky every other night and the scans are compared with images taken in 2004. After image processing the difference between the recent scans and old scans reveals any variable or moving sources. Many of these are asteroids and active galactic nuclei, but a handful are exploding stars in distant galaxies. After software filters out most of the false supernova candidates, the SDSS astronomers eye-ball the remaining images to pick out the good events. Spectra of many of the candidates are taken to determine the type of supernova and how much the light has been redshifted by the expanding universe.
Post date: 9/21/05
Physics intents welcomed at Picnic on the Roof
The Physics Club organized a pizza party on the roof of Nieuwland Science Hall on
Friday, September 9. Thirty-three physics intents in the freshman year were invited to enjoy a social evening with members of the Physics Club and faculty members from the physics department.
The picnic on the roof was instituted in 2004. It was a great success and has become an annual event for the start of each new school year.
For more information on the Physics Club.
Post date: 9/16/05
The rating game
If this is late summer, then it must be time for national
magazines to publish their annual rankings of the nation's finest colleges and universities.
Two of the most prominent magazine surveys - U.S. News & World Report's 'America's Best Colleges' and the 'Newsweek-Kaplan College Guide' - have Notre Dame rated among the nation's elite institutions of higher learning. For the second consecutive year, U.S. News ranked Notre Dame 18th in its analysis of the 248 national universities. It is the 12th straight year that U.S. News has rated the University among the top 25 of the schools that offer a wide range of undergraduate majors as well as master's and doctoral degree programs.
"All 25 colleges on the Newsweek-Kaplan Hot List have one attribute in common: They are creating buzz among student, school officials and longtime observers of the admissions process," reporter Jay Mathews wrote.
For the complete story.
Post date: 9/9/05
Lecture series to examine nuclear weapons and warfare
David Kay, leader of the U.S. effort to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,
will be among the featured speakers in afall semester lecture series at theUniversity of Notre Dame titled 'Thoughts on the Unthinkable: Perspectives on Nuclear Weapons and Warfare.'
The series, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Department of Physics, Center for Social Concerns, College of Science, and Reilly Center for Science, Technology and Values. The lectures, all at 7:30 p.m., take place in the McKenna Hall auditorium.
Post date: 8/30/05
Ani Aprahamian Announces Nuclear Theory Initiative
The Physics Division at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory and the Physics Department at the University of Notre Dame on August 24, 2005 began a collaborative research initiative: 'Advancing Nuclear Theory for a Rare Isotope Accelerator: Nuclear Structure and Reactionsfor Astrophysics.'
This new initiative will explore and explain the physics of rare nuclear isotopes and their role, e.g., in astrophysical phenomena, including: the reliability of type-I supernovae as 'standard candles' to measure the scale of the universe; the sites of r-process element production, both type-II supernovae and colliding neutron stars; and nuclear processes, such as breakout from the CNO cycle in solar burning. Many of the nuclei that participated in the evolution of our galaxy have never been made on earth and theories to describe them are not yet quantitatively reliable. Experimental and theoretical efforts in this direction represent great challenges and opportunities for nuclear science in coming years.
Post date: 8/29/05
D'Andrea and Poirier highlighted in GRL
A paper entitled Ground Level Muons Coincident with the 20
January 2005 SolarFlare written by Chris D'Andrea and John Poirier has been selected by the editors of Geophysical Research Letters as a Journal Highlight. The following summary of the paper will be published in the print version ofGRL and distributed to interested news media.
Muons surge at Earth's surface during a solar flare.
Satellite- and spacecraft-mounted sensors observed a sudden surge in cosmic radiation near Earth on 20 January 2005 caused by a solar flare. At the same time, D'Andrea and Poirier detected a sudden ground-level increase in muons, elementary charged particles similar to electrons but heavier and not found in normal atoms. They observed the muons using Project GRAND, an array of 64 stations of proportional wire detectors distributed over a 100 x 100 square meter field at Notre Dame, Indiana. These muons were detected as they passed near the wires and were distinguished from other particles by passing undeflected through a steel plate. The surge of muons peaked between 6:51 and 6:57 Universal Time and coincided with a rise in neutrons reaching detection facilities in New Jersey and Finland. The authors hope to combine their data with that from other muon and neutron detectors around the world to learn more about the particles emitted by the Sun during solar flares.
The entire article can be found at Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 32, L14102 (2005).
Post date: 8/26/05
Barabási Awarded European Biochemical Prize
Albert-László Barabási, Emil T. Hofman Professor ofPhysics, has been awarded
the 2005 FEBS Anniversary Prize for Systems Biology by the Gesellschaft fuer Biochemie und Molekularbiologie. FEBS is the Federation of European Biochemical Societies.
The anniversary prize is awarded to scientists under the age of 40 for their outstanding achievement in biochemistry and molecular biology. Barabási was honored for his important contributions to understanding cellular networks, such as the scale-free nature of the metabolic and the protein interaction networks.
Barabási received the anniversary prize during the FEBS 30th Annual Congress, held July 2-7 in Budapest.
Post date: 7/22/05
Feeling the heat from a gamma-ray burst
Heat generated from a gamma-ray burst has been detected for the first time by a team of astronomers led by University of Notre Dame physicist Peter Garnavich.
Using the Spitzer Space Telescope in rapid response mode, the team spotted the expanding energetic explosion produced by a burst of gamma-rays in a unique wavelength band. The light from gamma-ray burst afterglows fades quickly, so Spitzer had to move fast to catch the burst before it disappeared from view. 'The controllers of the Spitzer telescope really jumped on this burst as soon as we let them know this was a good one,' Garnavich said. 'They did a great job in getting observations just 48 hours after discovery.'Post date: 6/10/05
Research team achieves 'spintronics' breakthrough
An important breakthrough in the emerging scientific fieldof 'spintronics' was reported recently by University of Notre Dame physicist
Boldizsár Jankó and his research team from the Joint Institute for Theoretical Sciences of Notre Dame and Argonne National Laboratories.
Spintronics is developing as a result of the growing recognition that a replacement will have to be found for silicon, traditionally the key material in computer chips, if processing power is to continue to grow at rapid rates. The continuing growth in the processing power of silicon chips has brought about smaller, faster and cheaper devices ranging from cell phones and personal music devices to laptop computers.
However, at some point, estimated by some experts to be as early as 2010, the fundamental physical laws that govern the behavior of transistors will preclude them from being shrunk any further and packed in greater numbers on computer chips. The continued shrinking of transistors will lead to various problems with electrical leakage, power consumption and heat.
Many experts feel that spintronics, combined with nanotechnology, offers the best possible solution to this problem. Nanoscience and nanoengineering involve the study of small devices and device-related phenomena on a spatial scale of less than one-tenth of a micron, that is one-thousandth the diameter of a human hair or roughly the diameter of a DNA molecule. For the past two year, Jankó and a team of researchers have been using a NSF Nanoscale Interdisciplinary Research grant to develop and create manmade materials aimed at performing extremely fast functions in computers of future generation.
Post date: 6/2/05
New study examines timing of human actions
A new study by Albert-László Barabási, Emil T. Hofman
Titled 'The Origin of Bursts and Heavy Tails in Human Dynamics,' the study appears in the Thursday (May 12) edition of the scientific journal Nature.
'Many social scientists have examined the why of human activity, but few have addressed the when of human activities,' Barabási said.
Barabási is a pioneer in networking as a unified scientific theory and the author of the book 'Linked: The New Science of Networks.' His earlier research led to significant findings on how networks are structured and how they operate. The current Nature piece begins an examination of how people behave in networks.
Post date: 5/24/05
Faculty and Students Inducted into Physics Honor Society
On April 26, 2005, Notre Dame Physics Department faculty and students were inducted into the National Physics Honor Society Sigma Pi Sigma. Faculty
members inducted were Mitchell Wayne (a member since his undergraduate days atUCLA), Michael Hildreth, Peter Garnavich, Philippe Collon, Kathie Newman, Laszlo Barabasi and Eivind Almaas. Student inductees were Pat Engel, Becky Marks, Catherine Kennedy, Angelo Signoracci, Eric Chitambar, Laurel Mianecki, Tony Strathman, and Ken Henisey.
Sigma Pi Sigma is the national physics honor society, with chapters in about 500 of the 700 SPS campuses. Members, usually upper level undergraduates but sometimes graduate students, alumni, and faculty, are elected into Sigma Pi Sigma based on academic record. About 37,000 members of SPS receive 'Radiations', the society's official publication, about twice a year. The society hosts a Congress every four years. The most recent Sigma Pi Sigma Congress was held in Albuquerque, New Mexico in October 2004 and served as a kick-off event for the 2005 World Year of Physics celebration.
Notre Dame SPS inductees pictured above from left to right are Prof. Mitchell Wayne, Prof. Michael Hildreth, Pat Engel, Prof. Peter Garnavich, Becky Marks, Prof. Philippe Collon, Catherine Kennedy, Angelo Signoracci, Dr. Eivind Almaas, Eric Chitambar, and Laurel Mianecki. (Not in the picture: Prof. Kathie Newman, Prof. Laszlo Barabasi, Tony Strathman and Ken Henisey.)
For the more information on the society, check out their website at http://www.sigmapisigma.org.
Post date: 4/28/05
Physics major recipient of Goldwater Scholarship
Patricia Engel, a Notre Dame physics major in her junior year and president of the Society of Physics Students, is a recipient of the
2005 Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship.
The Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program was designed to foster and encourage outstanding students to pursue careers in the fields of mathematics, the natural sciences, and engineering. The Goldwater Scholarship is the premier undergraduate award of its type in these fields.
Patricia first became interested in physics while a high-school senior at Punahou School in Hawaii. Her enthusiasm for knowledge comes, in part, from her admiration of her parents (one a university professor and the other a physical therapist). Early on, she became heavily involved in our departmental life and clearly feels very much a part of the Physics Department. A well-rounded individual, Patricia does not limit her activities to the Physics Department. She is deeply involved in volunteerism as evidenced by her membership in numerous groups and clubs. Patricia plans to continue her studies in physics and eventually obtain her Ph.D. We wish her much success in all her endeavors.
Post date: 4/5/05
Ruchti Recipient of 2005 Shilts/Leonard Teaching Award
Professor Randal C. Ruchti, of the Department of Physics, is the recipient of the prestigious 2005 Rev. James L. Shilts, C.S.C./Doris and Gene Leonard Teaching Award in the College of Science.
This award is named in honor of Father James Shilts, whotaught in the Department of Physics from 1961 until his death in 1982, and is presented annually for excellence in teaching at the undergraduate and/or graduate level. All faculty in the College of Science are eligible for the award, which was inaugurated in 1983. This award, which recognizes only one College of Science faculty member each year, was endowed in 1984 by Doris and Eugene (Gene) Leonard. Gene Leonard was a member of the Science Advisory Council from 1976 until 1991.
Professor Ruchti received his Ph.D. from Michigan State University. He joined the University of Notre Dame in 1977. In addition to the Shilts/Leonard Award, he received a Madden Teaching Award in 1990, the Presidential Award in 2000, was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2001, and was a Faculty Fellow in the John A. Kaneb Center for Teaching and Learning in 2003-2004. One of Ruchti's favorite projects is the QuarkNet program which he helped establish in 1999. QuarkNet engages teachers, and subsequently their students, with scientific investigations, engages particle physicists with current issues in science education and provides science experiences to those in the local community. The Notre Dame QuarkNet program continues to grow, bringing physics challenges to teachers and high school students in and around the Notre Dame area. 53 centers have been established nationwide with Notre Dame's center being the most active.
Post date: 3/17/05
Eskildsen named Sloan research fellow
Awarded for two-year terms, Sloan Research Fellowships recognize young scientists who show outstanding promise of making fundamental contributions to new knowledge in the fields of chemistry, physics, mathematics, computer science, economics and neuroscience. The foundation reviewed some 400 nominations before selecting 116 fellows. Thirty-two former Sloan fellows have received Nobel Prizes and hundreds have received other prestigious awards and honors.
Eskildsen is interested in studies of superconductivity, especially in vortices induced in type-II superconductors by an applied magnetic field. Such vortices consist of a core region in which superconductivity is suppressed. Outside the core, the superconducting state recovers over a characteristic lengthscale - the coherence length. Furthermore, supercurrents circulating around the vortex screen the magnetic field and confine it to the vicinity of the vortex. This screening, which is usually referred to as the penetration depth, is the second characteristic lengthscale of a superconductor.
Eskildsen joined the Notre Dame faculty in 2003.
Post date: 3/14/05
Ani Aprahamian to Serve on Executive Committee of DNP of American Physical Society
Incidentally, another of our colleagues, Michael Wiescher, served on the DNP executive committee during 1999-2001.
Post date: 3/14/05
In Einstein's Footsteps, Women Follow
When Albert Einstein published the three papers that established his career and revolutionized science, he was a mere patent clerk. So it may stand to reason that, 100 years later, clichés about who can succeed in science do not thrive.
'We are the only physics department in the country with an all-female administration,' says department chair Ani Aprahamian, professor of physics, in a tone that conveys pride.
Aprahamian's administration is supported by Margaret Dobrowolska-Furdyna, associate chair and director of undergraduate studies, and by Kathie Newman, director of graduate studies. Both are full professors.
Thirteen percent of the department's tenure-track and research faculty are women, compared to a 6 percent average for doctoral-granting institutions, according to the American Physical Society's Committee for the Status of Women in Physics. The 1998 study showed Notre Dame among only 17 universities with four or more female faculty members.
Post date: 2/28/05
A Pearl Among Stars
In 2001, astronomers trained one of the world's largest telescopes on HD 209458, a main sequence star located in the constellation Pegasus, 900 trillion miles - or 150 light years - away. To their surprise, they found a planet amazingly different from the planets in our solar system. The planet - HD 209458b - orbits its star every 3.5 days and is nearly the mass of Jupiter.
In June and July 2004, Notre Dame scientists, Sean Brittain and Reese Haywood, traveled with their academic adviser, Terrence Rettig, and visiting professor Erika Gibb, to the 14,000-foot summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii. There they would train the Keck II on HD 209458 and its planet in hopes of collecting the data that just might help answer some of the newest and most controversial astrophysical questions.
The Notre Dame astronomers returned to the Keck II in November - their fifth visit in 2004. Those observations concentrated on the group's primary objective: understanding how disks around young stars form and eventually produce planets.
The Keck telescopes are used primarily by astronomers at Caltech, the University of Hawaii, and the University of California. Only 32 nights a year are available for other astronomers in the U.S. The Notre Dame program has progressed over the last few years such that they have received three nights this year for themselves and an additional five to six nights a year with other collaborators. These opportunities put ND astronomers in a strong position to make important contributions to cutting-edge research and points to a strong future for Notre Dame astronomy.
Post date: 2/21/05
Fixing Hubble a no brainer
Peter Garnavich, Associate Professor of Physics, commented on the White House plan to scrap Hubble. 'Hubble is the most productive scientific mission NASA ha
s ever launched,' Garnavich said. 'Several national science organizations haverecommended that every effort be made to keep Hubble working. Just this month the American Astronomical Society joined this list.'
Media reports have suggested that rising costs, associated in part with returning the space shuttles to flight, may forceNASA to focus on a robotic mission to safely de-orbit Hubble by sending it splashing into an ocean. President Bush is thought to favor investment in manned space missions instead of repairing the Hubble.
Post date: 1/31/05
Surprise finding reveals short-lived neutrons
SEVENTY-TWO years after the neutron was discovered, physicists believe theyhave made the most precise measurement ever of the particle's lifetime - and the new figure is ruffling feathers. It differs enough from the accepted lifetime to have an impact on our understandingof the composition of the universe.
If the new measurement is correct, it could help explain why astronomers have found less helium in the universe than expected. Grant Mathews, a cosmologist in our physics department, has found that the new neutron lifetime cuts the predicted abundance of helium by about 0.15 per cent to 24.61 percent [Physical Review D71, 021302R, 2005]. Although it's a small shift, the new prediction is closer to the estimate of abundance that astronomers have come up with from observations of young galaxies.
Post date: 1/27/05
Faculty Honored
APS and IOP Fellows
In 2004, the American Physical Society and the Institute of Physics recognized three faculty members in the Physics Department for their contributions. Professor Ikaros Bigi and Professor Malgorzata Dobrowolska wereelected APS Fellows.
Professor Bigi was cited for correctly predicting large CP violation in B meson decays. Professor Dobrowolska was cited for her seminal contributions to the understanding of the role of electron spin in optical transitions in semiconductor compounds. Professors Bigi and Dobrowolska join the fifteen existing APS Fellows in the department: Ani Aprahamian, Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, Gordon Berry, Stefan Frauendorf, Jacek Furdyna, Umesh Garg, Walter Johnson, James Kolata, Gene Livingston, Grant Mathews, James Merz, Randy Ruchti, Jonathan Sapirstein, Carol Tanner and Michael Wiescher.
Professor Jacek Furdyna was elected a Fellow of the prestigious Institute of Physics (IOP), United Kingdom, in recognition of his status in the physics community.
Post date: 1/27/05
Student Interest Revives Nuclear Warfare Course
A foreign affairs environment that includes weapons of mass destruction has rekindled interest in a long-time Notre Dame physics course: 'Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Warfare.'
The class is comprised of a cross section of physics, engineering and business students who learn about the physics and technological aspects of nuclear weapons and warfare as well as the ethical, legal and social aspects. The course also includes a community research component.
Post date: 12/6/04
Large Binocular Telescope Dedication
The LBT is the most powerful single mount telescope in the world when it comes to light collection ability. It will also have the possibility of combining the light from the two mirrors in what is called 'interferometric mode'. This will allow the LBT to achieve images with a resolution about 10 times better than the Hubble Space Telescope while still maintaining a field size of the order one arcminute on the side
in the near-infrared wavelength region. This combination of large field-size (when compared to other interferometric telescopes which are currently being contemplated) and high angular resolution makes the LBT a unique facility for exploring the universe further back to the beginning than it has ever been possible to do. The potential for exploration of the cosmos has never been greater.
The entire LBT undertaking is a $120 million project. The countries of Italy and Germany each own 25% of the telescope as does the University of Arizona. The remaining 25% is shared between Ohio State University and Research Corporation, of which the University of Notre Dame is a partner.
The dedication ceremony, which took place in a weekend long celebration October 14-17, 2004 in Tucson, Arizona was attended by the Italian minister of research and education with representatives from 17 industries that had participated in the various aspects of the LBT construction/development. The German representation included the heads of the Max Planck Society, the Leibniz Society, and their supporting scientific personnel. Ohio State University president, Karen Holbrook, came along with members of her board of trustees, graduate students and faculty to show their strong support for science in general and astronomy in particular. The University of Arizona came with the present university president and former ones to show their continued support over the years. The University of Notre Dame was represented by Professor Ani Aprahamian, Chair of the Department of Physics, Professor Mitchell Wayne (Associate Dean in the College of Science), and Professor Terry Rettig.
The dedication event was covered nationally by CNN and by special media groups from Italy and Germany that had flown in to cover the event from Mount Graham in Arizona.
Post date: 10/29/04
Inaugural Cushing Memorial Prize Awarded
The John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values, along with the Graduate Program in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Notre Dame and the Cushing Memorial Prize Advisory Committee are pleased to announce the award of the first Cushing Memorial Prize in the History and Philosophy of Physics to Professor Hans Halvorson of the
Department of Philosophy, Princeton University, for his paper:
'Reeh-Schlieder Defeats Newton-Wigner: On Alternative Localization Schemes in Relativistic Quantum Field Theory.' Philosophy of Science 68 (2001), 111-133.
The $1,000 prize was awarded on Friday, September 3, 2004 in conjunction with Professor Halvorson's delivering at Notre Dame an invited lecture under the title, 'No Eliminative Materialism, No Quantum Measurement Problem.'
The Cushing Memorial Prize is awarded annually for the best work by a younger scholar on the history and philosophy of physics. The prize honors the memory of the late James T. Cushing (1937-2002), long-time professor of physics, philosophy, and the history and philosophy of science at the University of Notre Dame. The prize is administered by Notre Dame's Graduate Program in the History and Philosophy of Science with the assistance of a distinguished international advisory committee composed of Professor Cushing's students, friends, and professional colleagues.
Post date: 9/28/04
Collon comments on recruitment of physics scholars
Assistant Professor Philippe Collon told Rev. Edward Malloy, ND president, that
recruitment of physics scholars from Asia was down 70 percent. "Some of them, faced with problems at the consular level, simply decide not to come," Collon said.
The remarks came during a recent meeting of the faculty senate in which Fr. Malloy commented at length on the revocation of a work visa for Tariq Ramadan. Ramadan, a Swiss Muslim scholar, had been scheduled to join the faculty in August as a tenured professor of religion, conflict and peace-building at Notre Dame's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. The revocation was recommended by the Department of Homeland Security, apparently under terms of the Patriot Act.
Read the entire article from the South Bend Tribune
Post date: 9/10/04
Forecast: Sparkling Shower
Peter Garnavich, Associate Professor of Physics, was quoted in an August 8 South Bend Tribune article on the Perseid meteor shower. Professor Garnavich explained that the showers occur when the Earth passes through a trail of dust left behind by a comet as it nears the sun and becomes warm.
'Not only can you see meteor showers, you can 'hear' them on your car radio as well.' Professor Garnavich says meteors change the surrounding atmosphere, ionizing it as they speed through it. Radio waves bounce off the temporary ceiling of ionized air, diverting radio transmissions to places they wouldn't normally go. 'You may be listening to static, and then you'll hear a station come in and disappear,' Garnavich says.
Post date: 9/9/04
World Year of Physics 2005
The World Year of Physics (WYP 2005) is a worldwide celebration of physics and its importance in our everyday lives. Physics not only plays an important role in the development of science and technology but also has a tremendous impact on our society. The Physics Department at ND aims to raise the awareness of physics within the Notre Dame community.
The year 2005 marks the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein's 'miraculous year' in which he published three fundamental papers, all in a few months. The first paper claimed that light must sometimes behave like a stream of particles with discrete energies, 'quanta.' The second paper offered an experimental test for the theory of heat. The third paper addressed a central puzzle for physicists of the day - the connection between electromagnetic theory and ordinary motion - and solved it using the 'principle of relativity.'
At Notre Dame, the Physics Department is celebrating WYP 2005 with a whole series of programs that will open doors to the Physics Laboratories for the community of students/faculty/alumni as well as the Michiana public. There will be a series of distinguished lecturers, a movie series at Cinema@ND, collaborative projects with the Department of Music, the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, and the new Performing Arts Center.
Post date: 9/8/04
The Institute for Theoretical Sciences
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Notre Dame have entered into an agreement to create a new joint Institute for Theoretical Sciences.
The purpose of the Institute for Theoretical Sciences (ITS) is to promote theoretical research at ANL and ND by attracting scientists, junior researchers, as well as graduate students in selected areas of basic and applied theoretical
sciences. To achieve its aims, the institute cooperates with all Departments at ND and Divisions at ANL which pursue research in theoretical sciences. Furthermore, the institute coordinates its activities with other domestic and international academic institutions. The institute will promote and encourage the participation of underrepresented groups, such as women and underrepresented minorities at the highest levels of academia and research.
“The institute will provide visiting scientists with the opportunity to pursue research in the intellectually stimulating environments of Notre Dame and the Argonne National Laboratory,” said Boldizsár Jankó, executive director of the new institute and associate professor of physics at Notre Dame.
Post date: 5/25/04
Distant planet found by "gravitational microlensing"
David Bennett, a University of Notre Dame astrophysicist, is a member of an international team of astronomers that has discovered the most distant giant planet to orbit an ordinary star in the Milky Way.
This is the first unequivocal planet discovery to be made by a technique known as gravitational microlensing.
Post date: 4/20/04
Physicist Jankķ nominated for Wired Rave Award
Boldizsár Jankķ, an assistant professor of physics at the University of Notre Dame, has been nominated for a 2004 Wired magazine Rave Award.
Created in 1999, the Rave Awards celebrate innovation and the individuals transforming commerce and culture and are presented in 14 categories that represent the most dynamic areas in art, entertainment, design science, sports, business and politics.
Albert-Lászlo Barabási, Emil Hofman Professor of Physics at Notre Dame, was a 2003 Rave Award nominee in the author category for his book Linked: The New Science of Networks.
Post date: 3/9/04
Sean Brittain Winner of 2004 Michelson Postdoctoral Fellowship
Sean Brittain has won the prestigious 2004 Michelson Postdoctoral Fellowship. The
JPL/NASA Michelson Fellowship Award covers up to three years of stipend and a research budget. Sean will continue his research regarding the chemical and physical evolution of preplanetary disks around young stars that will help to constrain planet formation scenarios as well as developing a unique spectroscopic technique to characterize extrasolar planets. He will be associated with either the University of Hawaii or the University of Arizona. Sean is pictured here with his advisor, Prof. Terry Rettig.
Post date: 2/6/04
Women in Physics
The average number of Ph.D. degrees granted per year over the last 10 years in physics is
1400. The percentage of this total number of students that are female is 13% over the same 10 year period. The percentage of women Ph.D. students has increased from 9% of the total during the 1980s. The percentage of female faculty in Ph.D.-granting physics departments has increased from 3% in the 1980s and 1990s to 5% in 2003. So, what are the issues? Why aren't women getting much farther ahead? What can we do as a community of physicists?
Post date: 11/19/03
JINA Center receives $10 million from NSF
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded $10 million to the University of Notre Dame to establish a Physics Frontier Center (PFC) for Nuclear Astrophysics. The center
Professor Michael Wiescher, a Notre Dame nuclear astrophysicist, will serve as its first director
The five-year NSF grant is intended to foster an interdisciplinary approach to nuclear astrophysics that seeks to coordinate efforts between the astrophysics and nuclear physics communities, as well as those between experimenters, theorists, and observers.
Post date: 11/13/03
New science building back on track
The Board of Trustees of the University of Notre Dame approved at its fall meeting last week construction of two new buildings and resumption of construction of a third.
The Jordan Hall of Science will be underwritten with a leadership gift from John W. Jordan II,
a 1969 Notre Dame graduate and a member of the University's Board of Trustees since 1993. He previously funded construction of the Jordan Auditorium in Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business and currently chairs the Board of Trustees' investment committee.
The science hall will be a 201,783-square-foot building that will cost $70 million. It will include laboratories, lecture halls, classrooms, faculty offices and an observatory. The science hall is to be built on Juniper Road in front of the Rolfs Sports Recreation Center and will be completed in the summer of 2006.
Post date: 10/22/03
Ikaros Bigi Recipient of 2004 Sakurai Prize
Professor Ikaros Bigi is the recipient of the 2004 J.J. Sakurai Prize in Theoretical Particle Physics along with Professor Anthony Ichiro Sanda of Nagoya University (Japan). This is an annually awarded American Physical Society prize to recognize and encourage outstanding achievement in particle theory.
The Citation Read: For pioneering theoretical insights that pointed the way to the very fruitful experimental study of CP violation in B decays, and for continuing contributions to CP and heavy flavor physics.
Post date: 10/9/03
New York Times: We're All on the Grid Together
By ALBERT-LÁSZLÓ BARABASI
Once power is fully restored, it will take little time to find the culprit: most likely, it will be a malfunctioning switch or fuse, a snapped power line or some other local failure. Somebody will be fired, promotions and raises denied, and lawmakers will draw up legislation guaranteeing that this problem will not occur again.
Something will be inevitably missed, however, during all this finger-pointing: this week's blackout has little to do with faulty equipment, negligence or bad design. President Bush's call to upgrade the power grid will do little to eliminate power failures. The magnitude of the blackout is rooted in an often ignored aspect of our globalized world: vulnerability due to interconnectivity.
In the early days of electricity, all power was produced locally. First each neighborhood, later each city, had its own power plant. Local generators had to satisfy the peak demands of hot summer nights, when everything from air-conditioners to televisions run full power. That means that the generators were idle most of the time outside of peak hours.
Post date: 09/02/03
Notre Dame Graduate student presents talk
at the Gordon Conference on Nuclear ChemistryShaofei Zhu, graduate student working with Prof. Umesh Garg, presented an invited talk at
the recent Gordon Conference on Nuclear Chemistry, held at Colby College, New Hampshire. This is a unique honor for a graduate student. His talk was titled: "Chiral Rotation in the odd-A Nucleus 135Nd".
This work, to appear in the journal Physical Review Letters, establishes that chirality, or "handedness" is a general property of triaxial nuclei, confirming the predictions made by Prof. Stefan Frauendorf and Prof. V. Dimitrov of the Notre Dame Physics Department.
Post date: 08/15/03
Finding by Notre Dame Astrophysicist helps understanding of planetary formation
A Notre Dame astrophysicist is part of a team of researchers who have studied a "winking star" that may offer important clues to how planets are formed.
Peter Garnavich, assistant professor of physics, and colleagues from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics studied the star, discovered last year by astronomers at Wesleyan University and known as KH 15D. The star undergoes a regular, long-lasting (20 day) eclipse, or dimming, every 48 days, in effect "winking."
The Wesleyan researchers and Garnavich and his colleagues theorized that the star may be surrounded by a disk of dust and gas left over from its birth. That disk, known as a protoplanetary disk, is a possible source of the eclipse. A nearly three-week eclipse is difficult to explain by the usual intervention of a planet or companion star; the star’s face is totally hidden from view half of the time. The most plausible cause is a wide swath of disk material - a planet in formation - sliding in front of the star, thereby blocking most of the star's light.
Post date: 08/11/03
Researcher make breakthrough in spintronics theory
A team of University of Notre Dame researchers led by physicist Steven T. Ruggiero has made a breakthrough that may speed progress toward the development of "spintronic" devices.
Spintronics is the emerging field of technology in which not just the charge, but the spin, of electrons is exploited. It is expected to lead to dramatic improvements in electronic systems and devices, such as memory elements, logic elements, spin transistors and spin valves. These improvements would include faster processing speeds with less power consumption, non-volatility, where turning off the power doesn't turn off the information, and possibly the development of quantum computers.
In addition to Ruggiero, the Notre Dame researchers include Carol Tanner, associate professor physics, and Tony Williams, a physics graduate student.Post date: 06/26/03
Hildreth named the 2003 Cottrell Scholar
Prof. Michael Hildreth was recently named the 2003 Cottrell
Scholar. The Cottrell Scholar Awards are named in honor of Frederick Gardner Cottrell, scientist, inventor, and philanthropist who founded Research Corporation in 1912 to provide means for scientific research andexperimentation at scholarly institutions.Prof. Hildreth received his Ph.D. from Stanford University and joined Notre Dame in 2000.The Cottrell award comes with an unrestricted 75K grant.
Full Story
More information on the Cottrell Scholar AwardsPost date: 06/11/03
Ani Aprahamian is a 2003 Presidential Award recipient
Each year the University of Notre Dame confers several Presidential Awards upon faculty and administrators for exemplary service. Physics Professor Ani Aprahamian was presented with the 2003 Presidential Award at the faculty dinner held on May 20, 2003.
Ani has been a highly visible and successful Notre Dame faculty member for nearly 15 years, and has developed an internationally recognized research program in nuclear structure physics. She is a member of the research advisory committees for most of the U.S. national laboratories, and is widely recognized for her combined social and intellectual engagement with scientific leadership.
In addition to her research, Ani is a spokeperson for women in physics and the role of women in science. She has served on numerous university committees and is a mentor and supporter for minority and women students on campus as well as in the wider physics community. Her leadership will continue in a new capacity, as the incoming chair for the Physics Department.Post date: 06/10/03
Astrophysicist Garnavich helps link gamma-ray burst and
supernova
A University of Notre Dame astrophysicist is part of a team of scientists that closely monitored the nearest and brightest gamma-ray burst on record and detected the supernova that appears to have caused the burst of gamma-rays.
Peter Garnavich,assistant professor of physics, and colleagues from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), today announced the first direct evidence linking these two types of explosions, both of which now appear to be triggered by the death of a massive star.
Gamma-ray bursts are incredibly bright flashes of high-energy radiation whose origin has been a mystery since their discovery nearly 40 years ago. They release ten times as much energy in a few seconds as our Sun will emit in its entire 10-billion-year lifetime. Bursts occur at random locations scattered across the sky, and few last more than a minute, making them a challenge to study.
Post date: 04/17/03
Notre Dame Physicist receives The Woman of The Year in
Education from the St. Joseph County YWCAMargaret Dobrowolska-Furdyna receives 2003 Woman of The Year in
Education from the St. Joseph County YWCA. The YWCA recognizes women in our community who have served as outstanding role models and mentors in the workplace, in academia, and in the community. They are women who support innovation, public-spirited problem solving, and nurturing other women in positions of leadership. They truly exemplify the mission of the YWCA.Margaret, a professor of physics at the University of Notre Dame, has worked with students and researchers world-wide, setting an outstanding example of female capability and helping undergraduate and graduate students, both American and Internationals, to achieve success in
physics. As a graduate student in Poland, she demonstrated against unfair government
practices and participated in the workers' Solidarity movement until the collapse of communism in that nation.Post date: 04/08/03
"Nuclear Physics News International"The Nuclear Structure Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame is
featured in the recent publication of Nuclear Physics News International, Vol.2 No. 4.
"Nuclear Physics News" is published on behalf of the Nuclear Physics European Collaboration Committee (NuPECC), an expert Committee of the European Science Foundation, with colleagues from Europe, America, and Asia. If you would like more information on the Nuclear Physics News please e-mail: nupecc@ph.tum.de.
Click here for a pdf of the Nuclear Structure Laboratory article
Post date: 02/13/03
Sloan Research FellowProf. Boldizsár Jankó has been named an Alfred P. Sloan Research
Fellow by the Sloan Foundation. The Sloan Research Fellowship, an extremely competitive award, is given to top scientists at research universities early in their careers, in the fields of physics, chemistry, economics, mathematics, and neuroscience. The Foundation usually reviews some 400 nominations per year before selecting 104 Fellows.The Sloan Research Fellowship carries a grant of $40,000 to be used in a flexible and largely unrestricted manner so as to provide the most constructive possible support of the Fellow's research.
Prof. Jankó's research focuses on a wide variety of phenomena associated with
highly-correlated electron systems. Problems include high-Tc superconductivity, mesoscopic and nanoscopic physics, magnetic systems, vortex motion in superconductors, and electronic properties of carbon nanotubes.Prof. Jankó completed his Ph.D. at Cornell University, 1996. He joined the Physics Department at Notre Dame in 2000.
Post date: 02/13/03
Click here form more information on the Sloan Research Fellowships.
Albert-László Barabási , a pioneer in networking as a unified scientific theory
and Emil Hofman Professor of Physics at the University of Notre Dame, has
been nominated for a 2002 Wired Magazine Rave Award.
Created in 1999, the Rave Awards celebrate innovation and the individuals transforming commerce and culture and are presented in 13 categories that represent the most dynamic areas in art, entertainment, design, science, sports, business and politics.
Barabási was nominated in the author category for his book 'Linked: The Science of Networks.' Written for a general audience, the book describes how knowledge of common patterns of networks can illuminate many of life's most basic mysteries. Barabási and his research team have examined network patterns in all aspects of life, from the worldwide spread of AIDS, to social relationships among Hollywood film luminaries, to the al Queda terrorist organization. Among the other four nominees in the category is Stephen Wolfram, author of best seller 'A New Kind of Science.'
Post date: 1/17/03
Now available from the Johns Hopkins University Press is the textbook "Introduction toRelativity," by William D. McGlinn, emeritus professor of physics at the University of Notre Dame.
In his textbook physics teacher and researcher Bill McGlinn explains the fundamental concepts of Einstein's special and general theories of relativity. He describes the basic consequences of special relativity--length contraction and time dilation--and the enigma of the twin paradox, as well as the Doppler shift of light.
For more information.Post date: 1/6/03
To teams of University of Notre Dame researchers have been awarded Nanoscale Interdisciplinary Research Team (NIRT) grants totaling almost $3 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Boldizsar Janko, assistant professor of physics, and his team received $1.8 million to support research on the development and creation of man-made materials aimed at performing extremely fast functions in computers of future generations. His group includes Malgorzata Dobrowolska-Furdyna, professor of physics, and Jacek Furdyna, the Aurora and Thomas Marquez Professor of Information Theory and Computer Technology.Post date: 10/02/02
Jacek K. Furdyna, Marquez Professor of Physics at the University of Notre Dame received an honorary degree from Warsaw University on October 14, 2002 during a special ceremony in his honor.Warsaw University awards 3 honorary degrees a year. Since 1921, there have been eleven physicist to receive the degree including L. De Brogile, Fryderyk Joliot-Curie, Neils Bohr, Leon von Hove, and Nikolaj Bogolubow.
Congratulations from your colleagues and staff at Notre Dame!
Post date: 10/02/02
Hans Bethe Prize
Michael Wiescher will be the 2003 recipient of the American Physical Society Hans BethePrize. The prize recognizes outstanding work in theory, experiment or observation in the areas of astrophysics, nuclear physics, nuclear astrophysics, or closely related fields.
Previous winners of the prize are: Gordon Baym-2002, Gerald E. Brown-2001, Igal Talmi-2000, Edwin E. Salpeter-1999, John Bahcall-1998.
Post date: 10/09/02
Released: July 3, 2002
Terrence W. Rettig, professor of physics, and graduate student Sean D. Brittain report their findings in the Thursday (July 4) edition of the prestigious scientific journal "Nature."
Even though an Earth-like planet never has been detected outside the solar system, the formation process for these similiar planets is fairly well understood. Observations of infrared and radio emission from dust in space have revealed the presence of protoplanetary disks where dust grains likely accumulate to form rocky planets like Earth.
Released: June 24, 2002
"Linked: The New Science of Networks," the recently published book by University of Notre Dame physicist Albert-László Barabási, currently stands as the No. 1-ranked science book on the Amazon.com retail web site. It also ranks 13th overall Amazon's top 100 best sellers.
Written for a general audience and released last month, "'Linked" describes how knowledge of the common patterns of networks can illuminate many of life's most basic mysteries. It also was the subject of a feature article in the Money and Business section of the June 23 edition of the New York Times.Barabási and his research team have examined network patterns in all aspects of life, from the worldwide spread of AIDS to the social relationships among Hollywood film luminaries. Their findings frequently are featured in "Nature," the premier journal of scientific research.
Physicist's team solves mystery of gamma ray bursts
Released: June 13, 2002
An international team of astronomers led by physicist Peter Garnavich from the University of Notre Dame has solved the mystery behind gamma ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the universe. The team found that the blasts occur when massive stars explode and their cores collapse to form black holes.Gamma ray bursts are huge blasts of gamma rays, often accompanied by an afterglow of light, X-rays and radio waves which last for just a few hours to a few days. The spasms of light burnwith the brilliance of 10 billion suns.
Hildreth named the Outstanding Junior Investigator by
the DOEMichael D. Hildreth, assistant professor of physics at the University of Notre Dame, has been named an Outstanding Junior Investigator by the U.S. Department of Energy.
A Notre Dame faculty member since 2000, Hildreth studies the mechanisms responsible for Electroweak Symmetry Breaking, which would explain why mass exists. He participates in the D0 (Dzero) Experiment at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, which is a worldwide collaboration of scientists conducting research on the fundamental nature of matter. The research is focused on the interaction of protons and antiprotons at the highest possible energies to reveal the character of mass.
More on the DOE Program.
Date: June 27, 2002
Professor of Physics at Notre DameReleased: May 15, 2002
Albert-László Barabási, a pioneer in networking as a unified scientific theory and Emil Hofman Professor of Physics at the University of Notre Dame, takes his research to a new level in his forthcoming book "Linked: The New Science of Networks."
Writing for a general audience, Barabási describes how knowledge of the common patterns of networks can illuminate many of life's most basic mysteries. Understanding networks, he says, "is the crucial prerequisite to comprehending nature's complexity."
Barabási and his research team have examined network patterns in all aspects of life, from the worldwide spread of AIDS to the social relationships among Hollywood film luminaries. Their findings frequently are featured in "Nature," the premier journal of scientific research.
His research has identified the influences of "hubs" or "connectors" as reoccurring elements that influence interactions, be they in social settings, among the molecules of a cell, or on the World Wide Web. The influence of the hubs contradicts previous understanding that networks behave randomly. The high degree of "robustness" offered by these hubs protects against random failures, but they also are vulnerable to attack.
Released: May 1, 2002
The quirks of quarkND prof's idea could rewrite view of matter
By WAYNE FALDA
Tribune Staff WriterSOUTH BEND -- Our wildly bizarre universe may be stranger than we ever thought.
The cosmos that we know already is a mind-bending swirl of galaxies, titanic eruptions of high-energy gamma rays deep in space, and tiny particles popping in and out of existence with every teeny energy fluctuation in the cosmic void.
Now things have gotten really odd, with strong hints that there are heavenly bodies way, way out there made up of strange quarks.
Fridolin Weber was among the few astrophysicists who dared to go out on a limb in the late 1980s by hypothesizing that a peculiar form of matter -- called the strange quark -- may whiz around in a baglikestate inside neutron stars.
A visiting professor at the University of Notre Dame, Weber has lately become something of a media star himself for being one of the first to have postulated a very strange idea that would, in essence, reveal a new form of matter.
Full story
in the Milky WayReleased: December 21, 2001
From: William Gilroy
David Bennett, an astronomer from the University of Notre Dame, is a member of an international team of researchers that has directly observed an object of "dark matter" — part of the hidden material that makes up most of the total mass of the universe— for the first time.
The finding means that precision brightness measurements and extensive follow-up will allow astronomers to characterize a significant fraction of the Milky Way's dark matter.The team's research was featured in a recent issue of the prestigious journal Nature.
Dark matter is called dark because it doesn't shine like stars. Up until now, scientists have seen it indirectly by measuring its "microlensing" effect, in which it bends the light from stars shining behind it.
Released: January 7, 2002
From: William Gilroy
A University of Notre Dame astronomer is part of a team of scientists that is presenting preliminary results today (Jan. 7) that show the association of unique gas flows to rapidly rotating black holes.
Grant J. Mathews, director of the Center for Astrophysics at Notre Dame, and P. Chris Fragile and James R. Wilson of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in Livermore, Calif., are presenting their work at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington, D.C.The research is of special interest because it may help explain unusual periodic timing properties seen in the X-rays being emitted near many suspected black holes. The team's work has centered around a computer simulation of the way the gas flows act in the vicinity of black holes.
Released: August 30, 2001
From: William Gilroy
Uncovering a new Internet vulnerability, University of Notre Dame researchers have tricked Web servers around the world into solving math problems without permission in a practice known as "parasitic computing."Unlike hackers who exploit flaws to gain direct access to machines, the Notre Dame scientists created a virtual computer
by relying on the protocols used in everyday Internet communications. The research was reported in today's (Aug. 30) issure of the prestigious journal Nature.
The Notre Dame team included Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, Hofman Professor of Physics; Jay Brockman, associate professor of computer science and engineering; Vincent Freeh, assistant professor of computer science and engineering; and Hawoong Jeong, research assistant professor of physics.
Released: August 27, 2001
From: William Gilroy
Two University of Notre Dame physicists are involved in the discovery of a new fundamental difference between matter and its mirror image, antimatter a finding that helps explain why the universe is not a giant void.John LoSecco, a professor of physics, was active on the experimental side of the discovery and Ikaros Bigi, also a
professor of physics, played a key role on the theoretical side.
James Cronin and Val Fitch of the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York first detected the difference, referred to as CP violation, in 1964 as a tiny defect in the decays of particles known as "K mesons." Cronin and Fitch shared a Nobel Prize for their work.
In 1966, Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov, another Nobel laureate, pointed out that CP violation might explain the observed excess of protons and neutrons over their antiparticles in the universe.
In 1973, physicists Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa showed how CP violation could be incorporated into the so-called Standard Model of the fundamental forces of nature.
In a paper published in1981, Bigi, Anthony Ichiro Sanda and Ashton Carter pointed out that certain decay modes for so-called B mesons, which are 10 times heavier than K mesons, would have to show large CP asymmetries, if the Standard Model was correct.
Released: Sept. 6, 2001
Two members of the Notre Dame Physics Department, Professor Randy Ruchti and Research Engineer BarryBaumbaugh are traveling to Washington DC for a reception and formal opening of a new permanent Exhibit Hall at the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, in Washington DC on Monday, September 10, 2001.
The Exhibition entitled "Explore the Universe" contains many instruments invented by astronomers and scientists over the centuries to study and explore the heavens. Examples include a model of Herschelšs observatory and telescope that was used to discover the planet Uranus, astrolabs and navigational instruments, the huge "back-up" mirror for the Hubble Space Telescope, and a compact and operating Cosmic Ray Particle Detector invented and built by Ruchti, Baumbaugh and students from Notre Dame. The instrument consists of 1 million scintillating fiber-optic elements that are sensitive to ionizing radiation. The weak optical scintillation signals produced by particles passing through the fibers are amplified by image intensifiers to a level where the particle tracks are easy to see with the naked eye. With this device, cosmic rays (typically muons and electrons) are visible in real time to visitors to the museum gallery one can watch them. The cosmic ray detector is a variant of specialized devices that were pioneered by the Notre Dame group and used in the USA and Europe by physicists to study particles containing charm and beauty quarks. More recent variants are large devices, several meters long and over a meter diameter, such as the Central Fiber Tracker for the Dzero Experiment at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Such instruments are used in the USA and Europe to study particles called Vector Bosons, top quarks, and to search for new phenomena such as hypothesized Higgšs Bosons and Supersymmetric Particles.Through such studies, particle physicists hope to gain insight into the origin of "mass" and the how the fundamental forces of nature (nuclear interactions, electricity and magnetism, radioactivity, and gravity) behave or "unify" at the high energies of the early universe, shortly after the Big Bang.
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Released: July 27, 2001
From: William Gilroy
Two faculty members from the College of Science at the University of Notre Dame have been awarded endowed professorships, according to Nathan O. Hatch, the University's provost. Albert-László Barabási has been appointed Emil T. Hofman Professor of Physics. Barabasi's research focuses on the organizational structure of complex networks and his work has been published regularly in the highly prestigious research journals Nature and Science. He has discovered that the network that undergirds the development and function of cells may be largely identical for all living organisms, a finding that will significantly enhance the understanding of cellular systems and, ultimately, how they malfunction in the form of cancers and other diseases. Barabasi has also had papers published in Nature on the structural strengths and weaknesses of the Internet and the World Wide Web, and the diameter of the Web, which found that any two randomly selected pages are on average just 19 clicks apart.Alejandro Garcia has been appointed Grace-Rupley Professor of Physics. His research involves the search for physics beyond the Standard Model using the nucleus as a probe. He suspects that there is a theory, more fundamental than the Standard Model, that could describe the behavior of nature in a much simpler way. His work has been featured in numerous refereed journals and conference .
The University of Notre Dame has honored 45 outstanding undergraduate teachers with the third annual Kaneb Teaching Awards. The award recipients will be recognized May 20 (Sunday) during the University's 156th Commencement exercises.
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Professor Alejandro Garcia and Carol Tanner from the Physics Department are among the recipients.
On the first and fourth weekends in March the physics department welcomed a total of 18 prospective graduate students.
The first weekend eleven prospective graduate students visited our department. The students arrived Thursday evening and stayed at the Marriot Hotel in downtown South Bend, about 10 minutes from campus. On Friday, they were welcomed at a breakfast/reception by Professor Bruce Bunker, Department Chair, and Professor Ani Aprahamian. The Nuclear, Condensed Matter, and High Energy groups gave presentations on their research throughout the day. The students ended their day in the physics department by attending a Colloquium, followed by a social hour and dinner with the faculty.
On Saturday, the Biophysics, Astrophysics, and Atomic Groups presented their research. The visiting students had an opportunity to see the campus, graduate student housing, and the Notre Dame bookstore. That evening they went to dinner with a group of physics graduate students.
The second weekend seven students arrived at the Inn at Saint Mary's located just across the road from the Notre Dame Campus. The agenda was virtually identical to the first weekend, with the exception of a colloquium.
Thanks to all who participated in making both recruiting weekends a success! And thanks to all of the visiting students for taking time out of busy schedules to visit with us!
Many molecular structures have two forms that are mirror images of one another, often called left- and right-handed forms. Now a collaboration reports that potato-shaped atomic nuclei can also have a "handedness" when they spin about an asymmetric axis. Since symmetries are fundamentally related to basic interactions, experts are excited about evidence that nuclei are less symmetric than previously thought and expect it to lead to a deeper understanding of nuclear structure.
Theoretical work by Stefan Frauendorf of the Physics Department of the University of Notre Dame and collaborators at Rossendorf Research Center in Dresden, Germany showed that triaxial nuclei with odd numbers of both protons and neutrons ("odd-odd" triaxial nuclei) could have handedness. According to their results, observing the so-called chirality would provide solid evidence for stable triaxial shapes, while also establishing handedness as a new property of nuclei.
Related Links:
- Full text of the Physical Review Focus article.
The first systematic comparative mathematical analysis
of metabolic networks
A team of scientists led jointly by University of Notre Dame physicist Albert-Lászlo Barabasi and Northwestern University pathologist Zoltán N. Oltvai, has discovered that the network that undergirds the development and function of cells may be largely identical for all living organisms, a finding that will significantly enhance the understanding of cellular systems.
Published in the Oct. 5 issue of the prestigious research journal Nature, the study is titled The Large-Scale Organization of Metabolic Networks and was coau
