# Research News Archive

## Prof. Kyungseon Joo named Chair of CLAS Collaboration at Jefferson Lab

Kyungseon Joo, a professor of physics, has been named Chair of the CLAS Collaboration, one of the largest international collaborations in nuclear physics.  CLAS involves 50 institutions from 9 countries and has about 250 collaborators.  The collaboration recently completed the upgrade of the CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer (CLAS12) for operation at 11 GeV beam energy […]

## Ron Mallett Featured on NBC Connecticut

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 […]

## Professor Jocelyn Bell Burnell – 2019 Katzenstein Lecturer

The UConn Physics Department is delighted to announce that our 2019 Distinguished Katzenstein Lecturer will be Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell. Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell is world-famous for her discovery of pulsars in 1967. Pulsars are a special type of neutron star, the rotating dense remnant of a massive star. Pulsars have highly magnetic surfaces, and emit a beam of electromagnetic radiation […]

## Research Spotlight: Exploring the nature of the universe with Dr. Thomas Blum

The Daily Campus published an article highlighting the research of Prof. Thomas Blum about Quantum Chromodynamics, a theory which describes the interactions between elementary particles. The development of this theory could help further understanding of the Standard Model of particle physics. The Standard Model is what physicists use to describe the fundamental building blocks of […]

## Astronomer Jonathan Trump interviewed on UConn 360

UConn Astrophysicist and observational astronomer Jonathan Trump was a recent guest on UConn 360, a podcast from the Storrs campus of the University of Connecticut. In this conversation, Jonathan tells about how attending a lecture as an undergraduate at Penn State captured his interest and changed the course of his professional career. Now Jonathan offers […]

## Breaking Up is Hard To Do (for Electrons in High Temperature Superconductors)

Physicists used to think that superconductivity – electricity flowing without resistance or loss – was an all or nothing phenomenon. But new evidence suggests that it’s not so clear cut, at least in copper oxide superconductors. “If we understood why copper oxide is a superconductor at such high temperatures, we might be able to synthesize a better one”, says UConn physicist Ilya Sochnikov. Sochnikov and his colleagues at Rice University, Brookhaven National Lab and Yale recently figured out part of that puzzle, and they report their results in the latest issue of Nature.

## One Giant Leap in Mapping the Universe

An artist’s rendering of hot material falling into a supermassive black hole, creating what is called the accretion disk, shown in orange. Reverberation mapping measures the time it takes light to travel between two areas of the accretion disk. The ‘light echo’ enables direct measurement of the mass of the black hole. This reverberation mapping […]

## LQCD workshop to take place in Storrs

Muon g-2 Theory Initiative Hadronic Light-by-Light working group workshop

Workshop participants will discuss recent progress and plans to determine the hadronic light-by-light scattering contribution to the muon anomalous magnetic moment, which is expected to contribute the largest uncertainty in the Standard Model prediction. The goal of the workshop is to estimate current and expected systematic errors from lattice QCD, dispersive methods, and models  and create a plan to address them in time for new experiments at Fermilab and J-PARC.

## Ultracold group achieves new milestone in quantum control

December 19, 2017 – Colin Poitras – UConn Communications Scientists from three major research universities successfully manipulated the outcome of a chemical reaction and, in doing so, created a rare molecular ion. Through a process known as “controlling chemistry,” the researchers bonded an oxygen atom to two different metal atoms, creating the barium-oxygen-calcium molecular ion or BaOCa+  The same […]

## Astronomers granted early science time on James Webb space telescope

Two UConn physics professors will be among the world’s first scientists to explore the universe using the new James Webb Space Telescope. The highly competitive, peer-reviewed James Webb Space Telescope Early Release Science program was created to test the capabilities of the new observatory and to showcase the tools the telescope is equipped with. Of more than 100 proposals submitted, only 13 were chosen to participate in the early release phase, including two separate proposals involving UConn researchers Kate Whitaker and Jonathan Trump, both assistant professors of physics.

## Special Lecture on Diversity and Inclusion

Solving the complex problems that we face in our world today requires a more talented workforce than we have ever needed before. Such a workforce must be comprised of a wide range of diverse talents and creative insights. No segment of the population can be ignored or overlooked in this talent search. This presentation will describe the most recent research that demonstrates the positive impact that social and informational diversity has on science and innovation, the reasons for this impact and the importance of committed leadership in achieving a strong and inclusive workplace where creativity and productivity is maximized.

## Two UConn professors recognized as Fellows of the American Physical Society

The American Physical Society (APS) has named two UConn Physics faculty as APS Fellows. APS Fellowship is a distinct honor signifying recognition by one’s professional peers and is an honor bestowed by election. The criterion for election is exceptional contributions to the physics enterprise; e.g., outstanding physics research, important applications of physics, leadership in or service to physics, […]

## Alex Barnes, PhD April 2017, begins post-doctoral fellowship in Nuclear Physics at CMU

In May, 2017 UConn alumnus Alex Barnes was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship in Nuclear Physics at Carnegie Mellon University, working in the group of Prof. Curtis Meyer. Alex begins this appointment immediately after completing his PhD at the University of Connecticut in April 2017, under the guidance of Prof. Richard Jones. In his new position, […]

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control lists radon as a primary cause of lung cancer, second only to smoking. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 20,000 deaths each year from lung cancer in the U.S. are the result of exposure to radon in the living environment. It is believed that as many as 1 in […]

## Undergraduate Sam Entner traps cold atoms in Physics lab for summer research project

As a research assistant in the physics department at UCONN, I assisted in the alignment, maintenance, and principles of operation of the various apparatuses and measurement techniques used within cold atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) experimental physics research. This included optical components, laser alignment, laser locking, saturation absorption spectroscopy, and electrodynamic ion trapping. Some specific […]

## Detection of recent seismic events in Storrs

Attached is our record for the Mw 6.9 earthquake associated with eruptions of the Kilauea volcano  on the big island of Hawaii.  The large waves arriving after 2300 GMT are surface waves (elastic energy that exponentially decays with depth away from the surface) traveling from the earthquake to us.  The beating pattern is characteristic of […]

## The newly upgraded CEBAF Accelerator opens door to strong force studies

Scientists have been rigorously commissioning the experimental equipment to prepare for a new era of nuclear physics experiments. This equipment is at the newly upgraded Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF) at Jefferson Lab in Newport News, Virginia. These activities have already led to the first scientific result. This research demonstrates the feasibility of detecting a potential new kind of particles known collectively as exotic hadrons. The existence and spectrum of these new particles hold important clues to unlocking the mystery of “quark confinement” — why no quark has ever been found alone.

## UConn PhD student Daniel Horning receives Dept. of Energy fellowship

As a theoretical physicist studying the fundamental elements of matter, UConn graduate student Daniel Hoying creates calculations so large and complex they require supercomputers to perform them. So Hoying is obviously excited that he will soon have regular access to one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National […]

## New gravity wave detection signals collision of two dead stars

For the first time, scientists have directly detected gravitational waves — ripples in space-time — in addition to light from the spectacular collision of two neutron stars. This marks the first time that a cosmic event has been viewed in both gravitational waves and light. The discovery was made using the U.S.-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave […]

## Landmark g-2 experiment begins second phase in long career of testing the Standard Model

Instead of directly searching for new particles as the LHC experiments are doing in Geneva, the muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab measures a well-known physical property of the muon to ever greater precision, looking for deviations from the value it should have based on the Standard Model of particle physics, assuming that no new forces […]

## Katzenstein lecture brings Nobel Laureat, UConn alumni to Storrs

The Katzenstein Distinguished Lectures series continued in Fall 2016 for its 19th year, with an October 28, 2016 lecture by Professor Leon N. Cooper of Brown University, entitled “On the Interpretation of the Quantum Theory: Can Free Will And Locality Exist Together In The Quantum Theory?” Professor Cooper shared the 1972 Nobel Prize in Physics […]

Whoever said rules were made to be broken wasn’t a physicist. When something doesn’t act the way you think it should, either the rules are wrong, or there’s new physics to be discovered. Which is exactly what UConn’s Connor Occhialini ’18 (CLAS), an honors student majoring in physics and math, found when he began researching scandium fluoride. Most materials swell as they heat up. Scandium fluoride must be doing something else, reasoned Occhialini. […]

## Physics student John Mangeri wins prestigious fellowship

John Mangeri’s Award Lands Him in Argonne National Laboratory John Mangeri (left) with his SCGSR-award host Dr. Olle Heinonen (right) in front of the Chemistry building (bldg. 200) at Argonne National Laboratory. (Photo credit to Dr. Andrea Jokisaari) By Katherine Eastman John Mangeri, a Ph.D. candidate in Dr. Serge Nakhmanson’s “Complex Materials by Computational Design” […]

## GlueX experiment publishes first scientific results following accelerator upgrade

Researchers working with the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF) at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (J-Lab) have published their first scientific results since the accelerator energy was increased from six billion electron volts (GeV) to 12 GeV. The upgrade was commissioned to enable the next generation of physics experiments that will allow scientists to see smaller bits of matter than have ever been seen before. The first publication from the upgraded CEBAF was published by the GlueX collaboration in the April issue of Physical Review C.

## Physics society names three APS Fellows

The American Physical Society (APS) has named three UConn Physics faculty as APS Fellows. APS Fellowship is a distinct honor signifying recognition by one’s professional peers and is an honor bestowed by election. The criterion for election is exceptional contributions to the physics enterprise; e.g., outstanding physics research, important applications of physics, leadership in or […]

## Prof. Sochnikov is a recipient of Montana Instruments Cold Science Exploration Awards

Dr. Sochnikov is a recipient of Montana Instruments Cold Science Exploration Awards Lab Startup Grant. Dr. Ilya Sochnikov has just started new scanning SQUID microscopy lab at the University of Connecticut. Ilya Sochnikov’s research focuses on nanoscale quantum phenomena in new materials. An emergence of a new phenomenon or a phase transition occurs when interactions […]

## “Caution: Shrinks When Warm”

October 6, 2015 – Kim Krieger – UConn Communications Jason Hancock, Assistant Professor in Physics, with graduate students, Erin Curry and Sahan Handunkanda, have been investigating a substance that shrinks when it warms. Most materials swell when they warm, and shrink when they cool. But UConn physicist Jason Hancock has been investigating a substance that responds in reverse: […]

## Physicists Solve Low-Temperature Magnetic Mystery

March 26, 2015 – Tim Miller Researchers have made an experimental breakthrough in explaining a rare property of an exotic magnetic material, potentially opening a path to a host of new technologies. From information storage to magnetic refrigeration, many of tomorrow’s most promising innovations rely on sophisticated magnetic materials, and this discovery opens the door to harnessing […]

1. Dr. Viktor Mokeev, Jefferson National Laboratory, "Advances in the Exploration of the Nucleon Resonance Spectrum and Structure in Experimentswith CLAS and CLAS12", Particle, Astrophysics, And Nuclear Physics Seminar2:00pm 10/12
2. Dr. Semeon Valgushev, Brookhaven National Lab, "Phase diagram of QCD and Lifshitz regime: how transverse thermal fluctuations might turn nuclear matter into quantum-spin liquid", Particle, Astrophysics, And Nuclear Physics Seminar2:00pm 10/5
3. Dr. D. Farfurnik, University of Maryland, "Enhancing the coherence properties of quantum dots toward quantum photonic applications", Condensed Matter Physics Seminar10:00am 7/14
4. Prof. L. Levitov, Department of Physics, MIT, "Long-Lived Excitations, Directional Memory and Hydrodynamic Transport in Two-Dimensional Electron Fluids", Condensed Matter Physics Seminar9:00am 4/10
5. Dr. Raffaella DeVita, INFN Genoa and Jefferson Lab, "Hadron spectroscopy in the light quark sector", Particle, Astrophysics, and Nuclear Physics Seminar2:00pm 3/30
6. Prof. Masafumi Fukuma, Kyoto University , "Title/abstract TBA", Particle, Astrophysics, and Nuclear Physics Seminar2:00pm 3/23
7. CANCELLED:, Dr. J. Nathan Hohman, Institute of Materials Science and the Department of Chemistry, University of Connecticut, CANCELLED: Condensed Matter Physics Seminar2:00pm 3/17
8. Dr. Sumanta Bandyopadhyay, Nordita, "Superconductivity in a nonhermitian system and Berezinksii classification ", Condensed Matter Physics Seminar2:00pm 3/11
9. CANCELLED:, Dr. A. B. Belonoshko, Department of Physics, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, CANCELLED: Condensed Matter Physics Seminar2:00pm 3/10
10. Dr. Evan Philip, Department of Physics & Astronomy, Stony Brook University, "Chiral Photocurrents and Terahertz Emission in Dirac/Weyl Semimetals", Condensed Matter Physics Seminar2:00pm 2/19
11. Dr. I. Zaliznyak, Brookhaven National Laboratory, "Entropic elasticity and negative thermal expansion in crystalline solids", Condensed Matter Physics Seminar2:00pm 2/18
12. Dr. Andrey Sadofyev, Los Alamos National Laboratory, "Spin polarization of gauge bosons in rotating plasma", Particle, Astrophysics, and Nuclear Physics Seminar2:00pm 2/17
13. Prof. Lorenzo Sorbo, Department of Physics, University of Massachusetts Amherst, "Particle production during inflation: a case study", Particle, Astrophysics, and Nuclear Physics Seminar2:00pm 2/10
14. Dr. Matt Orr, California Institute of Technology, "Spatially Resolved Star Formation in Cosmological Zoom-in Simulations: Understanding the Role of Feedback in Scaling Relations", Astronomy Seminar2:00pm 1/22
15. Dr. Kiryl Pakrouski, Department of Physics, Princeton University, "Automatic design of Hamiltonians", Condensed Matter Physics Seminar2:00pm 1/10
16. Dr. GiBaik Sim, Department of Physics, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, "Interacting spin-3/2 and spin-1 Fermions : Topological superconductivity", Condensed Matter Physics Seminar2:00pm 1/7
17. Dr. Julia Wildeboer, Max Planck Institute for the Physics of complex systems, "Tales from the Quantum Spin Liquid Crypt", Condensed Matter Physics Seminar4:00pm 12/12
18. Prof. A. Polkovnikov, Department of Physics, Boston University, "Periodically driven quantum systems", Condensed Matter Physics Seminar2:00pm 12/12
19. Dr. Adrian Gozar, Applied Physics Department, Yale University , "Optical nano-imaging of novel quantum materials and hetero-structures.", Condensed Matter Physics Seminar2:00pm 12/10
20. Dr. Fatma Aslam, University of Connecticut &amp; Jefferson Lab, "Singularities in twist-3 distributions and QCD vacuum", Particle, Astrophysics, and Nuclear Physics Seminar3:00pm 12/4
21. Dr. Brian Svoboda,National Radio Astronomy Observatory, "The earliest phases of high-mass star formation in the Milky Way", Astronomy Seminar2:00pm 12/4
22. Dr. Fazel Tafti, Boston College, "Design Principles for the Kitaev Magnets with Emergent Majorana Fermions ", Condensed Matter Physics Seminar2:00pm 12/4
23. Prof. Jie Wu, Westlake University, China, "Electronic nematicity in unconventional superconductors", Condensed Matter Physics Seminar2:00pm 11/26
24. Dr. N. Wink, University of Heidelberg, "The gluon spectral function and its applications", Particle, Astrophysics, and Nuclear Physics Seminar2:00pm 11/25
25. Prof. Jie Wu, Westlake University, China, "Electronic nematicity in unconventional superconductors", Cancelled: Special Condensed Matter Physics Seminar2:00pm 11/21
26. Dr. Christopher Faesi, University of Massachusetts Amherst, "The Forest AND the Trees: Bridging the multi-scale physics of star formation", Astronomy Seminar2:00pm 11/20
27. Dr. Cyril P. Opeil, Physics Department, Boston College , "Condensed Matter from Space: Thermal Properties of CM2 Meteorites", Condensed Matter Physics Seminar2:00pm 11/19
28. Dr. William I. Jay, Theoretical Physics Department, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory , "Composite BSM physics on the lattice", Particle, Astrophysics, and Nuclear Physics Seminar2:00pm 11/18
29. H. Perry Hatchfield, Department of Physics, University of Connecticut, "Understanding Enigmatic Star Formation Activity in the Milky Way's Galactic Center", Astronomy Seminar2:30pm 10/30
30. Gloria Fonseca Alvarez, Department of Physics, University of Connecticut, "The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project Radius Luminosity Relation", Astronomy Seminar2:00pm 10/30
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