| Physics at the University of Virginia | ||||||
| Academics | People | Research | Announcements | Facilities | Administration | Classes |
| Friday, August 28, 2009 | Available | |
| 4:00 PM, Room 204 | ||
| Physics Building |
| Friday, September 4, 2009 | Young-kee Kim [Host: Seunghun Lee] | |
| 4:00 PM, Room 204 | Deputy Director, Fermilab/University of Chicago | |
| Physics Building | “ E = mc^2, High energy and intensity opens windows on the world” |
| The profound discovery of Einstein a century ago, that particles can both be made from energy and disappear back into energy, inspires the experiments that provide our knowledge of the smallest building blocks of matter. The experiments, done at enormous energy and intensity frontier accelerators, have led to a consistent theory of the origins of our world up to a certain point. However, at an energy scale not far above what we can attain at existing accelerators, this picture is predicted to break down. Moreover, the theory of the very small is intimately connected to cosmology -- the ultimate cause and structure of our universe. Cosmological observations again point to the need for a new theory in this energy range. In this colloquium, I will trace out the path from where we are and what we need to do to take the next step towards understanding the nature of space and time. The discovery of new particles or new laws at energy and intensity frontier accelerators will open up windows on this world. |
| Friday, September 11, 2009 | Available | |
| 4:00 PM, Room 204 | ||
| Physics Building |
| Friday, September 18, 2009 | Hugh Montgomery [Host: Gordon Cates] | |
| 4:00 PM, Room 204 | Director of JLab | |
| Physics Building | “Exploring the Nature of Matter: Jefferson Lab and its plans” |
| Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab) is one of the premier facilities for nuclear and hadronic physics in the world. With high luminosity and high polarization continuous wave electron beams, the 6 GeV physics program has produced exciting results during the past decade. Currently the laboratory is executing an upgrade of the accelerator from 6 GeV to 12 GeV: this project was recommended as the top priority in the most recent US nuclear physics long-range plan. The upgrade, which also includes changes to the experimental facilities, will open new avenues of investigation. Beyond this upgrade Jefferson Lab is preparing the case for a future Electron Ion Collider. |
| Friday, September 25, 2009 | Jim Condon [Host: PQ Hung] | |
| 4:00 PM, Room 204 | NRAO | |
| Physics Building | “Dark Energy and the Hubble Constant” |
| Dark energy dominates the expansion of the universe and will determine its ultimate fate. The best complement to cosmic microwave background data for constraining the nature of dark energy is an accurate measurement of the current expansion rate (Hubble constant). The goal of the Megamaser Cosmology Project is to measure the Hubble constant by using the Green Bank Telescope and the Very Long Baseline Array to discover and image 22 GHz water masers orbiting the nuclei of Seyfert galaxies. We can show that these compact nuclei contain supermassive black holes, not just dense clusters of stars, and determine their masses. In the past year we improved our measurement of the angular-size distance to the galaxy UGC 3789, imaged four more masing galaxies, and derived a preliminary estimate for the Hubble constant. |
| Friday, October 2, 2009 | Available | |
| 4:00 PM, Room 204 | ||
| Physics Building |
| Friday, October 9, 2009 | Eric Prebys [Host: Craig Dukes] | |
| 4:00 PM, Room 204 | Fermilab | |
| Physics Building | “Energy: No Such Thing as a Free Lunch” |
| Mankind has had a long obsession with the quest for limitless or virtually limitless sources of energy. This quest did not stop with the advent of modern physics, but much of it moved out of the realm of science and into the realm of pseudo-science. Today, "free energy" is a thriving, multi-million dollar business. It involves a colorful cast of characters that range from the sincerely self-deluded to outright charlatans. The fact their claims are given greeted with such credulity by both the public and the news media has profound implications about the general state of scientific understanding in our society. |
| Friday, October 16, 2009 | Matthew Hastings [Host: Israel Klich] | |
| 4:00 PM, Room 204 | Station Q, UCSB | |
| Physics Building | “Entropy in Quantum Information Theory and Condensed Matter Physics” |
| While entropy was introduced in thermodynamics to describe heat engines, its applications have spread to widely different areas. I will talk about recent research on two such problems. The first is a problem in information theory: how much information can we send over a noisy communication channel, given that the world is described by quantum mechanics? I will explain the so-called "additivity conjecture", which was a proposed way to calculate the communication capacity of such a channel, and I will explain my recent result disproving this conjecture, showing that we can use entanglement to boost communication capacity. The second problem is in quantum systems far from equilbrium. Here I will describe how entropy can arise from quantum entanglement, and I will discuss novel simulation algorithms and future experiments probing the relaxation back to local thermal equilibrium. |
| Friday, October 23, 2009 | Keith Williams [Host: Dinko Pocanic] | |
| 4:00 PM, Room 204 | University of Virginia | |
| Physics Building | “Nanotube & Graphite based electronics” |
| Friday, October 30, 2009 | Christopher Jarzynski [Host: Austen Lamacraft] | |
| 4:00 PM, Room 204 | Univ. of Maryland | |
| Physics Building | “Nonequilibrium thermodynamics at the microscale” |
| Friday, November 6, 2009 | Scott Ransom [Host: PQ Hung] | |
| 4:00 PM, Room 204 | NRAO | |
| Physics Building | “Detecting Gravitational Waves (and doing other cool physics) with Millisecond Pulsars” |
| The first millisecond pulsar was discovered in 1982. Since that time their use as highly-accurate celestial clocks has improved continually, so that they are now regularly used to measure a variety of general relativistic effects and probe a variety of topics in basic physics, such as the equation of state of matter at supra-nuclear densities. One of their most exciting uses though, is the current North American (NANOGrav) and international (the International Pulsar Timing Array) efforts to directly detect nanohertz frequency gravitational waves, most likely originating from the ensemble of supermassive black hole binaries scattered throughout the universe. In this talk I'll describe how we are using an ensemble of pulsars to try to make such a measurement, how we could make a detection within the next 5-10 years, and how we get a wide variety of very interesting secondary science from the pulsars in the meantime. |
| Friday, November 13, 2009 | Tom Gallagher [Host: Seunghun Lee] | |
| 4:00 PM, Room 204 | University of Virginia | |
| Physics Building | “Nondispersing Rydberg Wavepackets” |
| As first pointed out by Schrodinger, it is possible to make a "classical" atom, one in which the electron moves in an orbit around the nucleus, by creating superpositions of stationary quantum eigenstates. In quantum terms the probability has a moving spatial maximum. The idea lay dormant until the mode locked laser allowed the creation of atomic (and molecular) wavepackets. Such wavepackets usually disperse, that is, they lose their spatial localization after a few orbits. Dispersion can be prevented by applying an weak microwave field at the orbital frequency. The microwave field phase locks the electron's orbital motion, and by altering the microwave field it is possible to alter the electron's orbit. For example, increasing or decreasing the microwave frequency increases the orbital frequency, and changing the microwave polarization from linear to circular produces a circular orbit. |
| Friday, November 20, 2009 | RESERVED | |
| 4:00 PM, Room 204 | ||
| Physics Building |
| Friday, December 4, 2009 | Kambiz Safinya [Host: Tom Gallagher] | |
| 4:00 PM, Room 204 | Schlumberger Research | |
| Physics Building | “Meeting Future Energy Demand Through Unconventional Technology ” |
| Crude oil production forecasts point to a drop of 40 M b/d of conventional oil by 2030. Although the financial and economic crisis has driven global energy lower in 2009 for the first time since 1981 on any significant scale, demand will resume its long-term upward trend once the economic recovery gathers pace. By 2030, world primary energy demand is forecast to be around 45% higher than today – this is like adding two more United States to world consumption. There is therefore a drive to develop alternative energy sources as well as unconventional hydrocarbon reserves to replace the lost production from conventional reservoirs. Given that conservative estimates of Heavy Oil reserves approach 6 trillion barrels, and that heavy oil production today is approaching 10% of world production, it is reasonable to suppose that a significant percentage of the production shortfall would be filled through the production of heavy oil. These facts and the significant increase in average crude oil price since the turn of the century have led to an increased level of interest in these types of reservoirs. It is also true that due to the nature of heavy oil, while the reserves are significant, the recoverable reserves are around 5%-7%. The challenge is therefore to develop technologies that can significantly increase the recovery factors of heavy oil reservoirs in an environmentally acceptable manner. This talk will focus on the current approach adopted by industry and the technologies which will be required to address the challenges stated here. |
To add a speaker, send an email to jy2b@Virginia.EDU. Include the seminar type (e.g. Colloquia), date, name of the speaker, title of talk, and an abstract (if available). [Please send a copy of the email to phys-seminars@Virginia.EDU.]
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