Events at Physics |
Events During the Week of March 14th through March 21st, 2010
Monday, March 15th, 2010
- Plasma Theory Seminar
- Double-Diffusive Magnetic Buoyancy and Shear Dynamics
- Time: 4:00 pm
- Place: 514 ERB
- Speaker: Dr. Geoff Vasil, Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophyiscs
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010
- Chaos & Complex Systems Seminar
- Exploring the Conformational Search Leading to Protein Folding in Vitro and in the Cell
- Time: 12:05 pm
- Place: 4274 Chamberlin Hall
- Speaker: Silvia Cavagnero, UW-Madison, Dept. of Chemistry
- Abstract: Proteins are key components of all living cells and their correct in vivo function is intimately connected to the well-being of every living organism. The large conformational freedom of a protein chain and its structural complexity suggests that understanding folding mechanisms and predicting protein structure from amino acid sequence may be dauntingly difficult. What have we learned from the studies carried out on protein folding mechanisms over the last three decades; are there any leading trends; and how do these trends change (or are predicted to change) for proteins folding in the cellular environment, where a lot of the relevant parameters are dramatically tuned by various cellular components? This talk will attempt to address some key aspects of the above topics and highlight research directions in crucial need of further exploration.
- Astronomy Colloquium
- Synergistic Transient Searches in the Ultraviolet and Optical
- Time: 3:30 pm - 5:00 pm
- Place: 3425 Sterling Hall
- Speaker: Suvi Gezari, Hubble Fellow, John Hopkins
- Abstract: Motivated by the successful discovery of UV/optical transients with serendipitous contemporaneous observations between the GALEX Deep Imaging Survey and the optical CFHT Legacy Deep Survey, GALEX has begun a dedicated time domain survey that operates in parallel with the Pan-STARRS Medium Deep Survey. With simultaneous UV and optical coverage of 7 deg2 of sky with a cadence of days, we have the unique ability to detect UV bright phenomena at early times, including shock breakout and hot ejecta in core-collapse SNe, as well as probe the simultaneous UV and optical properties of variable AGNs and flares from dormant supermassive black holes caught in the act of tidally disrupting a star. In this talk, I will present our transient detection and classification methods and the first results of our survey.
- String Theory Seminar
- Non-perturbative effects on seven-brane Yukawa couplings
- Time: 4:00 pm
- Place: 5280 Chamberlin Hall
- Speaker: Fernando Marchesano, CERN
- Host: Shiu
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010
- Department Meeting
- Time: 12:15 pm
- Place: 5310 Chamberlin Hall
Thursday, March 18th, 2010
- R. G. Herb Condensed Matter Seminar
- Quantum Information Science with Trapped Ca<sup>+</sup> Ions
- Time: 10:00 am
- Place: 5310 Chamberlin
- Speaker: Rainer Blatt, Universitat Innsbruck
- Abstract: Trapped strings of cold ions provide an ideal system for quantum information processing. The quantum information can be stored in individual ions and these qubits can be individually prepared; the corresponding quantum states can be manipulated and measured with nearly 100% detection efficiency. With a small ion-trap quantum computer based on up to eight trapped Ca+ ions as qubits we have generated genuine quantum states in a pre-programmed way. In particular, we have generated GHZ and W states in a fast and scalable way and we have demonstrated for the first time a Toffoli gate with trapped ions which is analyzed via state and process tomography. High fidelity CNOT-gate operations are investigated towards fault-tolerant quantum computing and using logical qubits encoded in decoherence-free subspaces, a universal set of gate operations was implemented and analyzed. As applications of quantum information processing, an experimental state-independent test of quantum contextuality was performed, a simulation of the Dirac equation was implemented and a quantum walk with a trapped ion was realized. This work is supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), by the European Commission (CONQUEST, SCALA) and in parts by IARPA.
- Host: Mark Saffman
Friday, March 19th, 2010
- Theory/Phenomenology Seminar
- Electroweak Contributions to Squark and Gluino Production at the LHC
- Time: 2:30 pm - 3:30 pm
- Place: 5280 Chamberlin Hall
- Speaker: Maike Trenkel, UW-Madison, Physics Department
- Host: V. Barger
- Physics Department Colloquium
- Quantum Computer: Dream and Realization
- Time: 4:00 pm
- Place: 2241 Chamberlin Hall (coffee at 3:30 pm)
- Speaker: Rainer Blatt, Institute for Experimental Physics University of Innsbruck and Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information
- Abstract: Computational operations always rely on real physical processes, which are data input, data representation in a memory, data manipulation using algorithms and finally, the data output. With conventional computers all the processes are classical processes and can be described accordingly. It is known for several years now that certain computations could be processed much more efficiently using quantum mechanical operations. Therefore, it would be desirable to build a quantum computer. This requires the implementation of quantum bits (qubits), quantum registers and quantum gates and the development of quantum algorithms. In this talk, several techniques for the implementation of a quantum computer will be briefly reviewed. In particular, an approach based on laser-cooled trapped ions will be highlighted in detail and experimental realizations of quantum registers and quantum gate operations using strings of trapped ions in a linear Paul trap will be discussed. In particular, the quantum way of doing computations will be illustrated by means of quantum algorithms for the creation of entangled states and their analysis using tomography measurements. More generally, applications of such states for quantum metrology will be presented.
- Host: Saffman