Past Events

Sep

24

Seminar

Physics Colloquium: “Atoms on the Move: Coherent Transport, Interferometry, and Computation with Optical Tweezers” Presented by Dr. Yoav Sagi - Technion, Israel Institute of Technology

Location:

Lewis Lab 316

September 24, 2026, 4:25 - 5:25pm

The ability to control individual quantum particles has expanded the role of neutral atoms, from platforms for studying collective quantum matter to building blocks for quantum sensors, simulators, and computers. Tightly focused beams of light, known as optical tweezers, allow us to…

Sep

17

Seminar

Physics Colloquium: "A universal theory of incoherent metals" Presented By Dr. Rufus Boyack - Dartmouth College

Location:

Lewis Lab 316

September 17, 2026, 4:25 - 5:25pm

Numerous unconventional superconductors such as cuprates, heavy-fermions, and twisted-bilayer graphene exhibit incoherent metallic transport (where the particles are short lived) above the superconducting critical temperature. One of the most striking results of these quantum…

Sep

10

Seminar

Physics Colloquium: "Measuring Gravity by Dropping Atoms" Presented By Dr. Xuejian Wu - Rutgers University

Location:

Lewis Lab 316

September 10, 2026, 4:25 - 5:25pm

Exploiting the nature of quantum phenomena, quantum technologies are developing rapidly towards computing, communicating, and sensing. Quantum inertial sensors based on light- pulse atom interferometry are powerful tools for precision measurements, navigation, geoscience, and civil…

Sep

3

Seminar

Physics Colloquium: "What String Theory Can Tell Us About Quantum Field Theory" Presented By Dr. Jacques Distler - UT Austin

Location:

Lewis Lab 316

September 3, 2026, 4:25 - 5:25pm

String Theory has proven to be an enormously powerful tool in tackling difficult questions in quantum field theory. I will attempt to explain why, and explain some of the things that it can tell us. Jacques Distler received his PhD from Harvard in 1987. He went on to a postdoc at…

Aug

27

Seminar

Physics Colloquium: “Quantum-Like States and foundations of quantum mechanics” Presented by Dr. Gregory Scholes - Princeton

Location:

Lewis Lab 316

August 27, 2026, 4:25 - 5:25pm

In this talk I will ask: Can a classical system mimic a quantum system? Or, in terms of a specific example, can we design a classical circuit that emulates a quantum computer? The advance of this work is to demonstrate a way to construct complex classical networks that mimic the…

Apr

30

Event

Physics Graduate Student Association: Movie Night "Tenet"

Location:

Lewis Lab 316

April 30, 2026, 5:30 - 6:30pm

The Physics Graduate Student Association (PGSA) is hosting a physics movie night featuring the film "Tenet." Join us!

Apr

30

Seminar

Physics Colloquium: "Quasicrystals of Ultracold Quantum Matter" Presented by Dr. Charles Brown - Yale

Location:

LL 316

April 30, 2026, 4:25 - 5:25pm

Quasicrystals are not spatially periodic, yet they exhibit long-range order. These aperiodic crystals feature rotational symmetries that are mathematically forbidden in periodic crystals. In 1984, Shechtman performed X-ray diffraction measurements on a metallic alloy, revealing 10…

Apr

23

Seminar

Physics Colloquium: "Exploring the quantum world with dilute-gas Bose-Einstein condensates" Presented by Dr. Peter Engles - Washington State University

Location:

LL 316

April 23, 2026, 4:25 - 5:25pm

Ultracold quantum gases play a central role in modern quantum science. These systems consist of clouds of atoms cooled to temperatures near absolute zero using laser cooling and related techniques, making them among the coldest objects in the universe. Although quantum mechanics is…

Apr

16

Seminar

Physics Colloquium: "Exploration of Light Ion Collisions at the Large Hadron Collider" Presented by Dr. Austin Baty - University Of Illinois, Chicago

Location:

LL 316

April 16, 2026, 4:25 - 5:25pm

Collisions of relativistic heavy ions, such as gold and lead, have been used for decades to explore a hot, deconfined medium of quarks and gluons known as the quark-gluon plasma (QGP).  In the last few years, there has also been great interest in searching for similar effects in…

Apr

9

Seminar

Physics Colloquium: "Multiscale Mechanics of Cytoskeletal Networks" Presented by Dr. Bekele Gurmessa - Bucknell University

Location:

LL 316

April 9, 2026, 4:25 - 5:25pm

Biological cells regulate their mechanical behavior through the cytoskeleton, a composite network of interacting protein filaments whose properties emerge from structure and dynamics across multiple scales. In this talk, I will describe optical tweezers microrheology and imaging…

Apr

2

Seminar

Physics Colloquium: “Unified theory of interacting Dirac fermions in two dimensions and the dark side of the Gross-Neveu model” Presented by Dr. Igor Herbut

Location:

LL 316

April 2, 2026, 4:25 - 5:25pm

Gapless (or "massless") Dirac fermions appear as low-energy excitations in many condensed matter systems of recent interest.  They are often weakly interacting, as famously in graphene, but at stronger interactions they can also acquire a gap ("mass") and exhibit many ordered…

Mar

30

Event

Physics Seminar: “Trees: topology, multifractality, and superconductivity” Presented by Dr. Askar Iliasov, University of Zurich

Location:

Lewis Lab 316

March 30, 2026, 3 - 4:30pm

Tree graphs provide an appealing example of a geometry that allows for explicit solutions and lies at the intersection of several areas of physics and mathematics. In this talk, I will discuss three physical phenomena on tree graphs: topological states, multifractality of wave…