Past Events

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…

Mar

26

Seminar

Physics Colloquium: “Geometric Simplicity in Quantum Field Theory and Gravity” Presented by Dr. Thomas Grimm

Location:

LL 316

March 26, 2026, 4:25 - 5:25pm

Physics often reveals surprising simplicity hidden inside complicated systems. Familiar examples include the structure of Feynman amplitudes and cosmological correlators, the simplifications appearing in large-N and duality limits, and the organizing power of symmetries. In this…

Mar

5

Seminar

Physics Colloquium: "On balanced growth and precision control" Presented by Dr. Suckjoon Jun - UC San Diego

Location:

LL 316

March 5, 2026, 4:25 - 5:25pm

Two core principles underlie bacterial physiology. The first, articulated in the 1950s, is balanced growth — the idea that all cellular components increase at the same rate. The second is precision control — the cell’s ability to coordinate spatial and temporal events, such as DNA…

Feb

26

Seminar

Physics Colloquium: "Data-Driven Discovery and Design of Materials’ Surfaces and Interfaces" Presented by Dr. Arunima Singh - Arizona State

Location:

LL 316

February 26, 2026, 4:25 - 5:25pm

Materials, their surfaces, and interfaces are at the heart of modern technology, playing a central role in various fields such as biosensing, energy conversion, quantum computing, and nanoelectronics. Recent advancements in ab initio methods, data science, and artificial intelligence…

Feb

19

Seminar

Physics Colloquium: "Exploring Synthetic Quantum Matter with Superconducting Circuits" Presented by Dr. Alex Ma - Purdue

Location:

LL 316

February 19, 2026, 4:25 - 5:25pm

One of the central challenges in modern physics is to understand how quantum entanglement shapes the behavior of many interacting particles, especially in systems that are open to their surroundings or driven far from equilibrium. We approach this challenge using quantum simulators…

Feb

12

Seminar

Physics Colloquium: "Listening to the Heartbeat of a Weyl Semimetal: Berry Curvature and Anomalous Hall effect in MnBi2Te4" Presented by Dr. Jiun-Haw Chu - Washington University

Location:

LL 316

February 12, 2026, 4:25 - 5:25pm

The concept of Berry curvature - a geometric property of quantum wavefunctions - has revolutionized our understanding of condensed matter physics. In Weyl semimetals, points of singular Berry curvature (Weyl nodes) act as magnetic monopoles in momentum space, leading to exotic…