Browsing School of Physics Colloquia Series by Title
Now showing items 1-20 of 91
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The American Physical Society Report on the Status of LGBT People in Physics
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-04-16)In this talk, I’ll discuss climatic issues faced by LGBT people in Physics, informed by findings of the recent American Physical Society report on the status of LGBT people in Physics. This report was prepared for the APS ... -
Arch and scaffold: Hilbert space and transformation theory
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-04-02)In early 1927, Paul Dirac and Pascual Jordan, independently of one another, published their versions of a general formalism tying the various forms of the new quantum theory together and giving the theory’s statistical ... -
The Astrophysics of Black Hole Spin
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2013-04-22)In addition to providing vital clues as to the formation and evolution of black holes, the spin of black holes may be an important energy source in the Universe. Over the past couple of years, tremendous progress has been ... -
Autonomous Motility in Soft Active Matter
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2015-04-06)The laws of equilibrium statistical mechanics impose severe constraints on the properties of conventional materials assembled from inanimate building blocks. Consequently, such materials cannot exhibit spontaneous motion ... -
The Biggest Little Molecules in Nature
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2011-12-07)This colloquium will discuss recent theoretical predictions and experimental confirmation of two unusual classes of ultra-long-range molecules. One class involves a highly-excited Rydberg electron that manages to bind a ... -
Building a Cell from the Bottom Up
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2015-11-09)Biology utilizes energy to organize itself from the nanoscale to the macroscopic scale. We seek to determine the universal principles of organization from the molecular scale that give rise to architecture on the cellular ... -
Cell Mechanics: The Active Polymer Networks Underlying Force Transmission in Living Cells
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2012-04-16)Many different types of biological cells have the capability of sensing and generating mechanical forces. These biophysical properties of cells are utilized for many different aspects of cell physiology, including cell ... -
Computation with Quanta
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2013-02-11)A quantum processor, using quantum states of light and matter, holds the promise of performing calculations and simulations that are not practical by a classical processor. Many of the key components for a quantum processor ... -
Consider the Icicle
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2013-02-04)Icicles are harmless and picturesque winter phenomena, at least in cold climates. The shape of an icicle emerges from a subtle feedback between ice formation, which is controlled by the release of latent heat, and the flow ... -
Cosmic Information Theory and Analysis: IT from BIT, from BITs in IT
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2011-11-30)We consider the Universe to be fundamentally quantum and statistical, the many-paths/many-worlds story. This lecture uses Cosmic Information Theory and Analysis, CITA, as a unifying theme to explore the vast sweep of our ... -
Course Reform MIT Style: Student Evaluations vs. Scientific Evidence
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2017-04-03)The evaluation of most course reforms typically rests heavily on teacher and student evaluations; I’ll argue that this is unwise. In contrast, I’ll discuss course reform MIT style: select objectives, adopt metrics, experiment, ... -
The crumpled state: crumpling dynamics and the evolution of damage networks
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2017-12-04)The simple process of crumpling a sheet of paper with our hands results in a complex network of interconnected permanent creases of many sizes and orientations. Sheet preferentially bends along these creases, introducing ... -
A Discovery! The Higgs? Why it is important. How it was done
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2013-03-04)The ATLAS Experiment at the Large Hadron Collider with its sister experiment CMS reported a discovery last summer of a new boson which is consistent with the Standard Model Higgs boson. The Higgs particle has been searched ... -
Effective field theory and ultracold atoms
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2012-02-06)The development of the technology for trapping atoms in the vacuum and cooling them to ultralow temperatures has opened up the exciting new field of cold atom physics. This field provides a new domain of applications for ... -
Exoplanets in HD
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2015-03-30)Exoplanet surveys have revealed an amazing diversity of planets orbiting other stars in the last two decades. Studying the atmospheres of representative exoplanets is the key next step in leveraging these detections to ... -
Exploring Quantum Electronic Transport in Flatland
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2017-04-10)Over the past decade, the physics of low dimensional electronic systems has been revolutionized by the discovery of materials with very unusual electronic properties where the behavior of the electrons is governed by the ... -
Fate of the Kinetic Ising Model
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2013-02-25)What could possibly be new in the Ising model, arguably the most-studied model of statistical physics? Plenty! Consider the Ising model initially at infinite temperature that is suddenly cooled to zero temperature and ... -
Fractionalized Quasi-Particles in Frustrated Quantum Magnets
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2013-02-18)I present inelastic neutron scattering data from one- two- and three-dimensional insulating magnetic materials at low temperatures that do not display a coherent resonant mode of excitation. Instead, momentum resolved ... -
From Microstructure to Morphology: Topological Defects and Shape Evolution in Soft Matter
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2017-11-06)Soft materials with orientational order can undergo dramatic shape transformations driven by change of temperature or other stimuli. Nematic elastomers, a form of liquid crystal polymer, have been patterned with topological ... -
From Social Intelligence of Bacteria to Cyber-war on Cancer
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2012-11-26)Cancer continues to elude us. Metastasis, relapse and drug resistance are all still poorly understood and clinically insuperable. Evidently, the prevailing paradigms need to be re-examined and out-of-the-box ideas ought ...