Title: Testing Fundamental Physics by Ranging to the Moon (Video)
Abstract: Lunar Laser Ranging has enabled comprehensive, precision tests of gravity for nearly 50 years. I will discuss my work on the Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation (APOLLO), which achieves millimeter-precision measurements of the lunar...
[more]Title: Approaching the Glass Transition From Different Directions (Video)
Abstract: In recent years a significant amount of experimental work has appeared on glassy systems, both polymeric and small molecule. However, this rich explosion in data has not been met with a concomitant leap in fundamental understanding. We have...
[more]Title: Gamma-Ray Polarimetry as a Probe of the Central Engine of Gamma-Ray Bursts (Video)
Abstract: Discovered nearly forty years ago, gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are brief, intense flashes of gamma-rays appearing randomly across the sky at a measurable rate of about once per day. Now known to originate at cosmological distances, they are the most luminous objects in the universe. It has been...
[more]Abstract: This presentation will begin by comparing progress in physical oceanography with that in particle physics, highlighting some of the aspects that make physical oceanography difficult to study. This will be followed with a brief introduction to the fundamental concepts in physical oceanography – done in...
[more]Title: Exoplanets: Under a Microscope, and Through a Wide-Field Lens (Video)
Abstract: The Solar System furnishes the most familiar planetary architecture: many planets, orbiting nearly coplanar to one another. We can examine the composition and atmospheres of the Solar System planets in detail, even occasionally in situ. Studies of planets orbiting other stars (exoplanets), in contrast, only...
[more]Title: Tying Knots in a Quantum Fluid (Video)
Abstract: Knots are familiar entities that appear at a captivating nexus of art, technology, mathematics,and science. Following a lengthy period of theoretical investigation and development, they have recently attracted great experimental interest in contexts ranging from knotted DNA and nanostructures to vortex knots in classical fluids. In this...
[more]Title: The Tonks-Girardeau Gas: Then, Now, and in the Future (Video)
Abstract: In this presentation, I will review the 55+ years of progress passed since Marvin Girardeau found, in 1960, a full nonperturbative solution for the quantum hard-core bosons, further extended to the finite strength interactions in 1963 by Lieb and Liniger. This discovery brought the multi-(all the way to infinite-)...
[more]Tuesday, May 31, 2016, Wilder 115, 10:00 AM
Lucas Valenca Soares Bezerra, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Dartmouth College
Title: Fast Wavefront Characterization of Optical Traps for Quantum Gases
Abstract: Ultracold quantum gases are frequently confined in optical dipole traps consisting of focused high power laser beams. In this project, we have designed and built a dynamically controllable dipole trap in which...
[more]Tuesday, May 31, 2016, Wilder 104, 3:00 PM
Muhammad H. Kiani, Department of Physics and Astronomy Dartmouth College
Title: Fabrication and Characterization of Graphene Devices
Abstract: Graphene is a one-atom-thick 2D crystal of carbon atoms that form a hexagonal lattice. As a consequence of this structure, graphene has a linear energy dispersion relation about the Dirac point where the valence and conduction bands meet...
[more]Thursday, June 2, 2016, Wilder 102, 2:00 PM
Oscar Friedman, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Dartmouth College
Title: The Wigner Flow Function for Open Quantum Systems
Abstract: In classical mechanics, one can fully describe the dynamics of any one-dimensional system using a single trajectory in phase space. Since the rules of quantum mechanics beget an inherent uncertainty associated with a simultaneous measurement of the...
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