Edward Pollack Distinguished Lecture

Attosecond Pulses Generated in Gases and Solids

P.B. Corkum
Joint Attosecond Science Lab
University of Ottawa and National Research Council of Canada

Abstract: Attosecond pulses are generated by electron wave packets that are extracted from a quantum system by an intense light pulse and travel through the continuum under the influence of the electric field of the light. Portions of each electron wave packet are forced to re-collide with its parent ion after the field reverses direction. Upon re-collision, the electron and ion can recombine, emitting soft X-ray radiation that can be in the form of attosecond pulses. This highly nonlinear process occurs in atoms, molecules and solids and offers unique measurement opportunities -- for measuring the attosecond pulse itself; the orbital(s) from which it emerged; and the band structure of material in which the wave packets moved.

Bio: Dr. Corkum is a fellow of the Royal Societies of Canada and London; a foreign member of the US, the Austrian and the Russian Academy of Science. In 2013, he was awarded Saudi Arabia's King Faisal Prize for science and Israel's Harvey Prize for physics. In 2014 he was named "Thompson Reuters Citation Laureate for work that is of Nobel class and likely to earn the Nobel someday". In 2018 he received the SPIE Gold medal and the IOP's Newton Medal, both societies' highest awards.

Friday, April 12, 2019
3:30 p.m.
Gant Science Complex
Physics, Room GW-38


Refreshments will be served prior to the talk at 2:30 outside of the lecture hall

Dr. Andrew Millis, Center for Computational Quantum Physics, The Flatiron Institute and Department of Physics, Columbia University

Meeting Dirac's Challenge:
From Quantum Entanglement to Materials Theory


About 90 years ago, P. A. M. Dirac established the foundations of many-body quantum mechanics. Summarizing, he wrote ``The underlying physical laws necessary for the mathematical theory of a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known, and the difficulty is only that the exact application of these laws leads to equations much too complicated to be soluble. It therefore becomes desirable that approximate practical methods of applying quantum mechanics should be developed, which can lead to an explanation of the main features of complex atomic systems without too much computation.'' Meeting Dirac's challenge, in other words developing approximate practical methods of determining the properties of interacting many-electron systems, so as to predict e.g. which materials will be novel magnets or high transition temperature superconductors, is one of the grand challenges of modern science. Recent progress has been enabled by remarkable developments in ideas, algorithms and computational power. The interplay between theoretical materials science and research into the fundamental phenomenon of quantum mechanical entanglement, has been crucial to progress in both fields. In this talk I will give an overview of modern quantum many-body theory, outlining the difficulties, describing some recent successes, and presenting a vision for the future.


Friday, March 15, 2019
3:30 p.m.
Gant Science Complex
Physics, Room GW-38

Refreshments will be served prior to the talk at 2:30 in room GW-103

Professor Rainer Weiss, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2017 Nobel Prize Winner,
Member of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) Scientific Collaboration

Exploration of the Universe with Gravitational Waves

The observations of gravitational waves from the merger of binary black holes and from a binary neutron star coalescence followed by a set of astronomical measurements is an example of investigating the universe by "multi-messenger" astronomy. Gravitational waves will allow us to observe phenomena we already know in new ways as well as to test General Relativity in the limit of strong gravitational interactions -- the dynamics of massive bodies traveling at relativistic speeds in a highly curved space-time. Since the gravitational waves are due to accelerating masses while electromagnetic waves are caused by accelerating charges, it is reasonable to expect new classes of sources to be detected by gravitational waves as well. The lecture will start with some basic concepts of gravitational waves. Briefly describe the instruments and the methods for data analysis that enable the measurement of gravitational wave strains of 10-21 and then present the results of recent runs. The lecture will end with a vision for the future of gravitational wave astrophysics and astronomy.

22nd Annual Katzenstein Distinguished Lecture

Refreshments will be served at 3:00 p.m. outside of GW-38