Announcements

Notices prepared for posting on the UConn Physics Department web page under the announcements section.

2020-Newsletter Department Head Greeting

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It’s been crazy.

That holds for everybody over these past six months; UConn and the Physics Department as well. Events unfurled rapidly last March. Within a week the March Meeting of the APS was cancelled, our department had to postpone the 2020 Katzenstein Lecture with Donna Strickland, and then the University announced that students would not return to campus after spring break, with classes moving online and research labs shut down. The work of the department is now ramping back up, though many courses will remain online through spring semester 2021.

The Physics Department has seen turnover in personnel. Three long time faculty members have left the department this summer: Phil Gould has retired, Robin Cote has moved on to be the Dean of Science at UMass Boston, and Susanne Yelin has taken a position at Harvard. All three will maintain ties with us for the foreseeable future. We have some new faces as well. Professors Daniel Angles-Alcazar and Chiara Mingarelli were hired in fall 2019 on bridge positions with the Center for Computational Astrophysics of the Simons Foundation. They both spent 2019-20 at CCA, coming to Storrs full time this fall. We have hired Professor Chris Faesi to complete our initial construction of an Astrophysics group, though he will delay his start at Storrs until fall 2021. We also have hired Professor Erin Scanlon to a position at the Avery Point campus, though during 2020-21 she will spend some time at teaching at Storrs. Another addition to our department is University President Thomas Katsouleas. He is a plasma physicist with academic appointments in Electrical Engineering and Physics. Apparently, his other duties keep him busy, but he has managed to attend a few department events and a faculty meeting.

Despite the pandemic, the department has had notable events and successes. I highlight a few here. We moved into our newly renovated building in August 2019. While there have been a host of construction hiccups, the building is now mostly completed. Our new research labs are state of the art, we have new teaching spaces that allow for moving to a new method of teaching introductory physics, and bright airy spaces throughout. In November we hosted Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell for the 2019 Katzenstein Lecture. The event was a rousing success as we packed the student union theater and had record attendance at the banquet. We have had some great research success. The most prestigious awards given to new faculty members are the CAREER awards from federal agencies. We now have an unprecedented four active CAREER awardees: Professors Andrew Puckett, Daniel McCarron, Jonathan Trump, and most recently Luchang Jin. Congratulations to all four.

Looking forward, the immediate future remains daunting. We anticipate significant pandemic restrictions for another year and budgets for the university and research agencies are unsettled. Yet the department remain strong. We continue innovative work in education and research, we have an increasing number of excellent physics students, and dedicated faculty with a particularly strong young cohort. When the situation allows, please come visit us to see how we are evolving.

New result for part of muon anomaly

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Professors Tom Blum and Luchang Jin, along with colleagues at BNL and Columbia, Nagoya, and Regensburg universities have completed a first-ever calculation of the hadronic light-by-light scattering contribution to the muon’s anomalous magnetic moment with all errors controlled. The work is published in Physical Review Letters as an Editor’s Suggestion and also appeared in Physics Magazine. A recent press release from Argonne National Lab described the calculation, which was performed on Mira, Argonne’s peta-scale supercomputer.

The team found the contribution is not sufficient to explain the longstanding difference between the Standard Model value of the anomalous magnetic moment and the BNL experiment that measured it. The discrepancy, which could indicate new physics, should be resolved soon by a new experiment at Fermilab (E989) and improved theory calculations, including the one described here, both with significantly reduced errors. E989 is set to release their first results later this year.

Ron Mallett Featured on NBC Connecticut

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Could traveling into the past be part of our future? Quite possibly, says Ron Mallett, a UConn emeritus professor of physics who has studied the concept of time travel for decades. Earlier this month, he spoke with NBC Connecticut reporter Kevin Nathan about his life and work as a theoretical physicist, and discussed how time travel may be possible someday.

View the video on nbc.com

Goodwin School 3rd grade visits the Physics Learning Labs

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About one mile from the Gant plaza, Goodwin Elementary School teaches some really bright kids. On January 15, 2019, science teacher Nancy Titchen and Goodwin teachers brought the entire 3rd grade class on a field trip to the Physics Learning Labs mock-up studio for some science fun. Students enjoyed a liquid nitrogen show, witnessed quantum effects in superconducting magnetic levitation, experienced mechanics concepts such as angular momentum, and learned about vibrations and the phenomenon mechanical of resonance. The expert hands of a star team of PhD students (Erin Curry and Donal Sheets) and new laboratory technicians (James Jaconetta and Zac Transport) ensured students had a great time and learned some interesting science. Big thanks to the staff and the Goodwin School!

Workshop ‘Dynamic Quantum Matter’ organized by UConn faculty

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Dynamic Quantum Matter, Entangled orders and Quantum Criticality Workshop
Dates: June 18- June 19, 2018

Sponsors

UConn, NSF, Nordita, Villum Center for Dirac Materials, Institute for Materials Science – Los Alamos, Wiley Publishers
           

Scope

The conference will focus on entangled and non-equilibrium orders in quantum materials. The 21st century marked the revolution of probing matter at the nano- to mesoscale and these developments continue to be the focus of active research. We now witness equally powerful developments occurring in our understanding, ability to probe, and manipulate quantum matter, in entangled orders and novel states, in the time domain. Recent progress in experimental techniques including x-ray optics, optical pumping, time resolved spectroscopies (ARPES optics), and in cold-atom systems has led to a resurgence of interest in the non-equilibrium aspect of quantum dynamics. The novel entangled orders that have nonzero “overlap” with more than one order parameter also have emerged as an exciting new direction for research in quantum matter. Entangled orders go beyond the conventional orders such as density and spin, and significantly expand the possible condensates we can observe. It is only because of the lack of experimental control, resolution, theoretical framework, and computational power, that the realm of entangled and quantum non-equilibrium remained largely unexplored until now. The time has come for us to turn full attention to these phenomena. Specific topics include: superconductivity and dynamics near quantum criticality, composite orders in correlated materials, effects of strain on quantum critical points, and superconductivity in STO. This conference will have a format of topical lectures, while leaving ample time for discussions.

Venue

Gurney’s Resorts | Newport, RI