May 2013:  Prof. Eun-Ah Kim Receives Early Career Research Program Award

Professor of physics, Eun-Ah Kim was recently named one of sixty-one selectees for an Early Career Research Program Award from the US Department of Energy.  770 scientists submitted proposals for the award, now in its fourth year.  A press release from the DOE stated that the award “supports the development of individual research programs of outstanding scientists early in their careers and stimulates research careers in the disciplines supported by the DOE Office of Science.”

Prof. Kim was chosen by the Basic Energy Sciences office of the DOE for her proposal titled, ““Emergence of High Tc Superconductivity Out of Charge and Spin Ordered Phases.”

Kim joined Cornell’s faculty in 2008 and is also the recipient of an NSF Career Award.

To read the full list of awardees, click here.

April 2013:  Bethe Lecture on Cornell Cast

Gordon Baym (center) with Vijay Pandharipande and Hans Bethe at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1977.

What happens to matter when it is heated to more than 250,000 times the temperature in the center of the sun? When cooled to 1 billion times colder than interstellar space? Physicist Gordon Baym will discuss the terrestrial experiments that explore these extremes as Cornell’s 2013 Hans Bethe lecturer. His public lecture, “Quarks and Cold Atoms: From the Hottest to the Coldest Places in the Universe,” will be March 27 at 7:30 p.m. in Schwartz Auditorium, Rockefeller Hall.  The full schedule of talks and abstracts can be found here.

Baym, professor of physics and the George and Anne Fisher Professor of Engineering Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has been focusing his recent work on theoretical studies of the quark-gluon plasma, which existed in the first few microseconds after the big bang. These plasmas are created on Earth by colliding gold atoms at ultrarelativistic speeds. In parallel he has been studying Bose-Einstein condensates and related quantum states found in laser cooled atomic clouds. Baym has found unexpected connections between these extreme forms of matter.

In the 1970s and ’80s, Baym collaborated with Nobel laureate and Cornell physics professor Hans Bethe, solving important problems involving neutron stars and supernovae. In addition to his significant contributions to astrophysics and nuclear theory, Baym had an early and continuing influence on theoretical condensed matter physics. His book, “Lectures on Quantum Mechanics,” has been a basic text for teaching quantum mechanics to graduate students worldwide. He has also maintained a lifelong interest in, and has made major contributions to, the scholarly study of the history of physics.

Baym has received many awards; most recently he shared the 2011 Eugene Feenberg Memorial Medal for his contributions to many-body physics. He also received the 2002 Hans Bethe Prize from the American Physical Society for his “superb synthesis of fundamental concepts.”As part of the Hans Bethe Lecture series, Baym will also present the physics colloquium, “Two Slit Diffraction With Highly Charged Particles: Niels Bohr’s Consistency Argument that the Electromagnetic Field Must Be Quantized,” March 25 at 4 p.m. in Schwartz Auditorium; and a Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics seminar, “The Landau Criterion for Superfluidity Is Neither Necessary nor Sufficient,” March 26 at 2 p.m. in 700 Clark Hall.

The Hans Bethe Lectures, established by the Department of Physics and the College of Arts and Sciences, honor Bethe, who was Cornell professor of physics from 1936 until his death in 2005. Bethe won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1967 for his description of the nuclear processes that power the sun.

Linda B. Glaser is staff writer for the College of Arts and Sciences.

March 2013:  Prof. Paul McEuen Joins Scientists Supporting Brain Activity Map

The Human Genome Project was a mythic undertaking.  The $3.8B project unlocked the secrets of human DNA, while also contributing to the economy.  A decade later and scientists have taken on a new multi-disciplinary mission:  mapping the human brain.

Prof. of Physics Paul McEuen is one of many scientists who have voiced support for the Brain Activity Map (BAM) project in Science Magazine.  Joined by scholars such as Prof. Paul Alivisatos, Cornell’s Bethe Lecturer for Fall 2011, their written perspective “is meant to stimulate discussion and debate among scientists and administrators.”

The BAM project made headlines when Pres. Obama mentioned it during his State of the Union address.  “Today, our scientists are mapping the human brain to unlock the answers to Alzheimer’s,” he stated highlighting that the clinical success and positive economic impact made by the Human Genome Project could be seen through mapping the brain.

According to McEuen, et. al, “We believe that when devoted and passionate groups of people join together to achieve these extraordinary goals, they will have transformational benefits for humanity.”

To read the piece in Science, click here.

February 2013:  Cornell’s Society of Physics Students wins Outstanding Chapter Award

Cornell’s undergraduate student organization the Society of Physics Students was selected to receive a national Outstanding Chapter Award.  The Society of Physics Students (SPS) is a national organization under the American Institute of Physics for undergraduate students who are studying or interested in physics.  Each year chapters from the eighteen SPS regions are selected for Outstanding Chapter Awards based on a chapter’s involvement in local, zone or national SPS meetings, participation in SPS programs, outreach to grades K-12 and general public and other criteria.  Information is gathered when each chapter submits its annual report.

For the 2011-2012 academic year Cornell’s SPS held eight science talks, attended a Zone 2 conference at Adelphi University, held a tutoring session in Latex software, engaged in educational outreach with the Cornell Laboratory for Accelerator-based Sciences and Education (CLASSE) and the Cornell Center for Materials Research (CCMR), and Expanding Your Horizons.  The group is also active with their graduate student counterpart, the Physics Graduate Society (PGS) and had activities with Ithaca College, which was also selected for an Outstanding Chapter Award.

“Your chapter is remarkably active, especially in creating a supporting and encouraging community for physics majors and those interested in physics,” states one member of the award selection committee.

To read more about Cornell’s Society of Physics Students and join their listserv, click here.

February 2013:  Prof. Kyle Shen Studies Electronic Structure of Ferromagnetic Strontium Ruthenates

Unsymmetrized FS map for SrRuO3 at T ¼ 20 K integrated within EF  5 meV,
along with E vs kx, ky spectra illustrating the underlying band structure.

Professor of physics Kyle Shen, working with other researchers has performed the first first high-resolution Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) measurements of strontium ruthenate.  ARPES is a direct experimental technique to observe the distribution of the electrons in the reciprocal space of solids.  Shen et. al. studied SrRuO3 which is currently utilized as a conductive electrode for ferroelectrics, Schottky diodes, magnetocalorics, and magnetoelectrics.  The paper was published in Physical Review Letters on February 22.

Their work showed that strong electron-boson interactions have an important role in the large mass renormalization in SrRuO3. Local magnetic moments in this ruthenate also play an important role in its properties.  Contributing to the results were physics PhD candidate Daniel Shai, John Harter, Eric Monkman and Bulat Burganov.

To read the full article in Physical Review Letters, click here.

February 2013:  Cornell Remembers Robert Richardson

Professor of physics Robert Richardson passed away in Ithaca on February 19.  The University’s first Vice Provost for Research, Richardson was exceptionally distinguished serving as director of the Laboratory for Atomic and Solid State Physics, the Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science and most notably as the recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physics with Prof. David Lee and Prof. Douglas Osheroff (Ph.D. ’73 now a Stanford emeritus).

To read Richardson’s Obituary in Nature, click here.

Richardson’s obituary in the Cornell Chronicle can be found here.

To read about Prof. Richardson’s life in the New York Times, click here.

To read the write-up in the Washington Post, click here.

March 2013:  Prof. Jane Wang in “Falling Paper” at Schwartz Center

Professor of Physics Jane Wang will perform in a “A 15-minute collaborative improvisational event for passersby” at the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts on Wednesday, March 13.  The presentation will take place in the Schwartz Center lobby at 2:40, 4:15 and 4:35pm.

Joining Prof. Wang, whose contribution is called “Falling Paper,” is Annie Lewandowski from the Department of Music with “Prepared Piano” and Joyce Morgenroth from the Department of Performing & Media Arts with “Dance.”

February 2013:  Graduate Students Going Beyond the Standard Model

by Mario Martone, PhD candidate in Physics

One task, possibly the most exciting one, faced by high energy physicists is to unveil and understand the physics beyond the Standard Model of Particle Physics. As strange as it might sound, one of the most constraining measurements supporting the Standard Model as the best theory for the physics of fundamental particles, is the fact that three very special angles add up to 180º and are at the three vertices of a yet very special triangle called unitarity triangle.

The measurement and understanding of these three angles, named with a great dose of creativity alpha, beta and gamma, is therefore of crucial importance. Recently the LHCb, one of the four experiments operating at the LHC, has discovered a new phenomenon in the physics of the charm quark, CP violation in D mesons decay. It was a result unexpected by most and whose impact on particle physics has not yet been fully appreciated.

Joining other efforts in trying to understand the significance of the newly discovered phenomenon, Jure Zupan [Department of Physics, University of Cincinnati] and I suggested that direct CP violation in charm could affect the measurement of the angle gamma. We found not only that direct CP violation does indeed impact the way in which the angle gamma should be extracted, but also that such an effect might be measurable in the near future. In particular, the effect is much more prominent if the angle gamma is extracted from decays of a B meson into a D and a Pi meson.

To read the full publication in Physical Review D, click here.