Harvard University Department of Physics

EPB Annual Symposium

On Saturday, April 26, the annual Engineering and Physical Biology (EPB) Symposium will be held in Room B103 of the Northwest Building, 52 Oxford St. Speakers from constituent fields - Physics, Engineering, Chemistry and Molecular Biology - will present significant recent findings ranging from the physics of protein conformation to DNA knotting.

Reunion and Symposium for Graduate Alumni

On Friday, April 4, 2014, Harvard celebrated the venerable history of one of the country’s great physics programs.

David M. Lee Historical Lecture in Physics

François Englert: "The Brout-Englert-Higgs Mechanism And Its Scalar Bosons"

Fall 2013 Certificate of Distinction in Teaching Awards

Graduate students Prahar Mitra, Elliot Schneider, Elizabeth Petrik, Nicholas Schade, Alexandru Lupsasca, Chi-Ming Chang, and Timothy Koby have been awarded the Harvard University Certificate of Distinction in Teaching for the Fall 2013 term by the Derek Bok Center.

First Direct Evidence of Cosmic Inflation

The BICEP2 Collaboration, led by Professor John Kovac, has announced the discovery of first direct evidence of cosmic inflation, the expansion of space first proposed in 1981 by Alan Guth of MIT. Watch the VIDEO.

EPiQS Funding to Boost Quantum Materials Theory Research

Harvard has been chosen one of the six receipients of Gordon and Betty Mooore Foundation's Emergent Phenomena in Quantum Systems (EPiQS) grants...

SPOTLIGHT ON...

Professor Eric Mazur has published a groundbreaking, modern introductory physics textbook that builds up physics from conservation principles: Principles & Practice of Physics (Pearson, 2014).

"When students focus just on the equations they do not necessarily understand the concepts… What I found out was that, if you focus on solid conceptual understanding, students will not only get a better understanding of physics as a whole and appreciation of physics as a whole, they will actually perform better on traditional textbook problems…"
Watch Prof. Mazur's presentation and learn more about the book on the Publisher's website.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Yesterday

François Englert, "The Brout-Englert-Higgs Mechanism and Its Scalar Bosons"
- Lee Historical Lecture
  
  "A consistent approach to short range interactions through massive gauge vector fields was proposed by Robert Brout and me, and independently by Peter Higgs. I shall explain our motivations for constructing this BEH mechanism which also gives information on the origin of elementary particle masses. I shall discuss its content and its use. I will comment on the ATLAS and CMS discovery at CERN of the scalar boson predicted by the mechanism: I will show how it confirms its validity and how it may have implications on structures at yet unexplored energies."
  
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  François Englert is a co-recipients of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics “for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider”
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Today

Alessandro Tomasiello (Università di Milano-Bicocca)
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Monday, April 21st

Physics Colloquium Tea
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"Föppl, Fluctuations, and Feynman: Nonlinear Mechanics with Graphene and Nanotubes", Paul McEuen, Cornell University
- A carbon nanotube or graphene sheet can easily be many millions of times longer in one direction than another. This, combined with their diminutive size, makes them very interesting mechanical objects. Thin 2D structures, first studied in detail by August Föppl over a hundred years ago, are notoriously difficult to understand. The problem gets more interesting with graphene and nanotubes, as they undergo thermal fluctuations in their low energy modes that completely alter their emergent “macro” properties.
  
  In this talk, we will discuss experiments to probe these effects. First, individual nanotubes are picked up and strained with micron-sized tweezers, allowing us to simultaneously study the optical, electronic, and vibrational properties of these molecular rods. Similar tricks are performed with graphene. These experiments allow us to test decades-old predictions of the effects of fluctuations on Föpply structures and also create nanoscale optomechanical systems with record low masses. Finally, we discuss how the Japanese paper art of Kirigami (combined with 2D materials) offers a route to meeting Feynman’s last, as yet unmet, challenge: the construction of nanoscale machines.
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Tuesday, April 22nd

Michael Ramsey-Musolf (UMass-Amherst) "Electroweak baryogenesis: Searching for new scalars and new CPV"
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Wednesday, April 23rd

Special CMP Seminar: Saad Zaheer, University of Pennsylvania
- Title: Three dimensional Dirac semimetals
  
  Abstract: Dirac points on the Fermi surface of two dimensional graphene are responsible for its unique electronic behavior. One can ask whether any three dimensional materials support similar pseudorelativistic physics in their bulk electronic spectra. This possibility has been investigated theoretically and is now supported by two successful experimental demonstrations reported during the last year. In this talk, I will summarize the various ways in which Dirac semimetals can be realized in three dimensions with primary focus on a specific theory developed on the basis of representations of crystal spacegroups. A three dimensional Dirac (Weyl) semimetal can appear in the presence (absence) of inversion symmetry by tuning parameters to the phase boundary separating a bulk insulating and a topological insulating phase. More generally, we find that specific rules governing crystal symmetry representations of electrons with spin lead to robust Dirac points at high symmetry points in the Brillouin zone. Combining these rules with microscopic considerations identifies six candidate Dirac semimetals. Another method towards engineering Dirac semimetals involves combining crystal symmetry and band inversion. Several candidate materials have been proposed utilizing this mechanism and one of the candidates has been successfully demonstrated as a Dirac semimetal in two independent experiments.
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HQOC/ITAMP JQS Seminar - Igor Lesanovsky, University of Nottingham
- Igor Lesanovsky, University of Nottingham
  Talk Title: Out-of-equilibrium dynamics of strongly interacting Rydberg gases in a
  dissipative environment
  
  The most recent generation of cold atom experiments uses
  atoms in Rydberg states to explore many-body phenomena. In this talk I
  will focus on the non-equilibrium dynamics of such systems where
  non-trivial behaviour is generated by the competition between coherent
  laser excitation, dissipation and the strong interaction between Rydberg
  atoms. I will discuss the relaxation of Rydberg lattice gases, showing
  that it is hierarchical and strongly correlated. This establishes a
  connection to kinetically constrained systems that are used in soft
  condensed matter physics as models for the description of glassy phenomena.
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LPPC Seminar: Mike Wilkin
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Ken Kamrin; MIT
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