Events at Physics |
Events During the Week of March 2nd through March 9th, 2008
Monday, March 3rd, 2008
- Plasma Physics (Physics/ECE/NE 922) Seminar
- Anomalous Diffusion in Satellite Data and Tokamaks
- Time: 12:05 pm
- Place: 2241 Chamberlin Hall
- Speaker: George Rowlands, University of Warwick, United Kingdom
- High Energy Seminar
- Low Mass Higgs Searches at CDF
- Time: 4:00 pm
- Place: 4274 Chamberlin (coffee & cookies at 3:30 pm)
- Speaker: Ben Kilminster, Ohio State University
- Medical Physics Seminar
- Protons
- Time: 4:00 pm
- Place: 1345 Health Science Learning Center (refreshments will be served)
- Speaker: Rockwell Mackie, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Medical Physics, UW-School of Medicine and Public Health
Tuesday, March 4th, 2008
- R. G. Herb Condensed Matter Seminar
- Title to be announced
- Time: 10:00 am
- Place: 5310 Chamberlin Hall
- Speaker: Larry Schulman, Clarkson University
- Host: Perkins
- Chaos & Complex Systems Seminar
- How does your garden grow: the complex nature of plant growth below ground
- Time: 12:05 pm
- Place: 4274 Chamberlin Hall
- Speaker: Simon Gilroy, Botany
- Abstract: Nutrient and water uptake by the root system is a critical component of plant productivity and plant root systems have evolved to be extremely effective at exploring and exploiting the soil. However, we still have a remarkably poor understanding of the dynamics of the development of the root systems and how, at a cellular and molecular level, control systems operate to precisely regulate the direction and extent of growth. Similarly, we are now only just beginning to appreciate how these features of growth are integrated into the role of the root system in nutrient and water uptake. Our research has revealed a highly dynamic and complex regulatory network involving rapid, fluctuating patterns of acidity, chemical oxidation and classic signaling molecules such as the calcium ion that are integrated to modulate root growth. I will discuss how these patterns play out with time courses of a few seconds, bringing the regulation of plant growth into the temporal realm we usually associate with animal responses.
- Astronomy Colloquium
- Gone with the Wind: Galactic Outflows driven by Stars and Quasars and their Impact on Galaxy Evolution
- Time: 3:45 pm
- Place: 6515 Sterling Hall (coffee at 3:30 pm)
- Speaker: Christy Tremonti, University of AZ- Steward Observatory
Wednesday, March 5th, 2008
- Undergraduate Resume Writing/Career Planning Workshop
- (none)
- Time: 3:45 pm
- Place: 2241 Chamberlin Hall
- Speaker: Greg Iaccarino
Thursday, March 6th, 2008
- R. G. Herb Condensed Matter Seminar
- Title to be announced
- Time: 10:00 am
- Place: 5310 Chamberlin Hall
- Speaker: Klaus Molmer, University of Aarhus, Denmark
- Host: Saffman
- Physics Teaching Forum
- Women in Physics: Data and Strategies
- Time: 12:30 pm
- Place: 5310 Chamberlin Hall
- Speaker: Various Speakers
- NPAC (Nuclear/Particle/Astro/Cosmo) Forum
- The Heterotic Road to the MSSM
- Time: 4:00 pm
- Place: 4274 Chamberlin Hall
- Speaker: Stuart Raby, Ohio
- Abstract: String theory has been around for over 30 years. The string vacuum determines the spectrum of states and gauge interactions of the low energy theory. Some talk about on the order of 10^{300} vacua for string theory, BUT to date there are only a handfull of candidate vacua which look anything like our observed low energy world. In this talk I will discuss a new strategy for finding the minimal supersymmetric standard model in the immense string landscape.
Friday, March 7th, 2008
- Physics Department Colloquium
- Quantum Measurements: From a Philosophical Dilemma to a Technological Resource
- Time: 4:00 pm
- Place: 2241 Chamberlin Hall (coffee at 3:30 pm)
- Speaker: Klaus Molmer, Department of Physics and Astronomy University of Aarhus, Denmark
- Abstract: The famous discussions between Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein on the interpretation of quantum mechanics did not resolve their main issue which concerned the indeterminacy of measurements on individual quantum systems, and even today there is no, commonly agreed upon, understanding of the quantum measurement problem. The experimental situation and hence the subjects of theoretical investigations have, however, been considerably refined since the early days of quantum mechanics. Without claiming a solution to the more philosophical questions we now have an effective formalism that describes quantum systems that are made subject to measurements. After a brief review of the development of this formalism, we will turn to its use and consequences. We will discuss how, e.g., an atomic quantum system is not only driven by the fields that we shine on the atoms but also by the measurements that we perform on the fields that they emit. This has far reaching applications for our means to control quantum systems, and a few key examples will be presented of schemes for the preparation of specific quantum states, generation of entanglement, and transfer and processing of quantum information that rely on measurements and perform with much higher success probability than if they were based on the time evolution under a given Hamiltonian. We conclude with a discussion of the prospects of applying conditional feedback to continuously observed quantum systems.
- Host: Saffman