Over the past two years, scientists in the Dark Energy Survey (DES) have been following up realtime neutrino alerts from IceCube with deep optical telescope imaging in search of supernovae that might be the origin of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos.

Full story and submitted paper

Professor Francis Halzen, PI of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, was awarded the 2019 Kanwal & Gaurang Yodh Prize at the 2019 International Cosmic Ray Conference. He was honored for “his leadership and landmark contributions that cleared the path for the emergence of neutrino astronomy.”

Keep up with ICRC2019 here

Researchers at the Wisconsin Quantum Institute (WQI) have been awarded a US Department of Energy grant to study the noise that hampers advances in quantum systems, including quantum computers.

The three-year, $4 million funding will allow the researchers to apply emerging tools to identify new materials and fabrication methods that can improve the performance of these systems.

Full story

The Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center welcomes hundreds of physicists from around the world as part of the annual International Cosmic Ray Conference at Memorial Union. Accompanying the conference is an art exhibit by UW-Madison art professor Faisal Abdu-Allahr, called Event Horizon, which includes portraits of three physicists holding objects that inspired their careers. The conference and the exhibit run through August 1. 

Photo credit: Jim Madsen, UW-River Falls

Full Story

This month, the National Science Foundation (NSF) approved $23 million in funding to expand the IceCube detector and its scientific capabilities. Seven new strings of optical modules will be added to the 86 existing strings, adding more than 700 new, enhanced optical modules to the 5,160 sensors already embedded in the ice beneath the geographic South Pole.

Photo Credit: Johannes Werthebach, IceCube / NSF

Full Story

Prof. Yamaç (Pehlivan) Deliduman from Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University in Istanbul, Turkey received the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Fundamental Physics Innovation Award from the American Physical Society to visit University of Wisconsin, Madison Physics Department in the summer of 2019. She collaborates with Prof. Baha Balantekin on quantum information theory as applied to neutrino physics.

Smartphones get a workout in a two-semester accelerated introduction to physics for potential University of Wisconsin–Madison physics, astronomy, and applied math, engineering and physics majors.

Phones get dropped, says Duncan Carlsmith, a professor of physics. They get thrown like a football. They get strapped to a pendulum or lashed to a bicycle.

Later, the phones spew out the data gathered by a surprisingly broad array of sensors: accelerometers, gyroscopes, audio and light sensors, magnetometers, and a precise timer.

Full Story

In “A Driving Force,” Stephanie Awe writes about Fatima Ebrahimi’s quest with roots in the UW-Madison Physics Department:

Fatima Ebrahimi PhD’03 is determined to unravel one of today’s most pressing needs. Ebrahimi is a principal research physicist in the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory’s Theory Department and an affiliated research scholar in Princeton University’s Department of Astrophysical Sciences. She strives to fully understand what many believe could be the answer to unlimited, clean, and reliable energy: nuclear fusion. She mirrors the very subject she studies, driven by seemingly limitless energy to help direct the future of the field.

Full Story

In an article titled, “A Pioneer’s Preserverence,” Preston Schmitt describes the inspiring story of Physics Professor Sau Lan Wu:

The UW–Madison Vilas Professor’s story is a lesson in dichotomy. She grew up in dire poverty on the streets of Hong Kong as her wealthy father traveled the globe as the Ginger King, so named for his success in the preserved-ginger industry. She had $40 to her name when she arrived in the United States — 10 years later, she had a PhD from Harvard. And then she devoted her life to a rarely reciprocal field dominated by men.

Wu has played a core role in three major discoveries in particle physics, advancing what we know about the tiniest parts of matter — and therefore, the world around us. Along the way, she’s advised more than 60 UW graduate students and 40 postdoctoral researchers.

Full Story