• Research News

    Superconductivity’s Halo: Physicists Map Rare High-field Phase

     A puzzling form of superconductivity that arises only under strong magnetic fields has been mapped and explained by a research team of UMD, NIST and Rice University including  professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University. Their findings,  published in Science July 31, detail how uranium Read More
  • Research News

    New Protocol Demonstrates and Verifies Quantum Speedups in a Jiffy

    While breakthrough results over the past few years have garnered headlines proclaiming the dawn of quantum supremacy, they have also masked a nagging problem that researchers have been staring at for decades: Demonstrating the advantages of a quantum computer is only half the battle; Read More
  • Research News

    Work on 2D Magnets Featured in Nature Physics Journal

    University of Maryland Professor Cheng Gong (ECE), along with his postdocs Dr. Ti Xie, Dr. Jierui Liang and collaborators in Georgetown University (Professor Kai Liu group), UC Berkeley (Professor Ziqiang Qiu), University of Tennessee, Knoxville (Professor David Mandrus group) and UMD Physics (Professor Victor M. Yakovenko), have made Read More
  • Research News

    NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Reveals a Key Particle Accelerator Near the Sun

    Flying closer to the sun than any spacecraft before it, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe uncovered a new source of energetic particles near Earth’s star, according to a new study co-authored by University of Maryland researchers.  Published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on May 29, 2025, Read More
  • Research News

    Time Crystal Research Enters a New Phase

    Our world only exists thanks to the diverse properties of the many materials that make it up. The differences between all those materials result from more than just which atoms and molecules form them. A material’s properties also depend on how those basic building Read More
  • Research News

    Mysteriously Mundane Turbulence Revealed in 2D Superfluid

    Despite existing everywhere, the quantum world is a foreign place where many of the rules of daily life don’t apply. Quantum objects jump through solid walls; quantum entanglement connects the fates of particles no matter how far they are separated; and quantum objects may Read More
  • Research News

    A New Piece in the Matter–Antimatter Puzzle

    aOn March 24, 2025 at the annual Rencontres de Moriond conference taking place in La Thuile, Italy, the LHCb collaboration at CERN reported a new milestone in our understanding of the subtle yet profound differences between matter and antimatter. In its analysis of large Read More
  • Research News

    Researchers Play a Microscopic Game of Darts with Melted Gold

    Sometimes, what seems like a fantastical or improbable chain of events is just another day at the office for a physicist. In a recent experiment by University of Maryland researchers at the Laboratory for Physical Sciences, a scene played out that would be right Read More
  • Research News

    IceCube Search for Extremely High-energy Neutrinos Contributes to Understanding of Cosmic Rays

    Neutrinos are chargeless, weakly interacting particles that are able to travel undeflected through the cosmos. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole searches for the sources of these astrophysical neutrinos in order to understand the origin of high-energy particles called cosmic rays and, Read More
  • 1 Superconductivity’s Halo: Physicists Map Rare High-field Phase
  • 2 New Protocol Demonstrates and Verifies Quantum Speedups in a Jiffy
  • 3 Work on 2D Magnets Featured in Nature Physics Journal
  • 4 NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Reveals a Key Particle Accelerator Near the Sun
  • 5 Time Crystal Research Enters a New Phase
  • 6 Mysteriously Mundane Turbulence Revealed in 2D Superfluid
  • 7 A New Piece in the Matter–Antimatter Puzzle
  • 8 Researchers Play a Microscopic Game of Darts with Melted Gold
  • 9 IceCube Search for Extremely High-energy Neutrinos Contributes to Understanding of Cosmic Rays

Physics is Phun

Department News

  • UMD Appoints Renowned Physicist to Lead Quantum Research and Education The University of Maryland has named Gretchen Campbell, an internationally recognized researcher and national leader in advancing the field of quantum science, as associate vice president for quantum research and education, effective July 13, 2025. In this newly established position, Campbell will collaborate with faculty, Read More
  • UMD Physics Rated #19 in the World The University of Maryland Department of Physics was ranked No. 19 globally in U.S. News & World Report’s list of 2025-26 Best Global Universities. Of U.S. campuses, only three public universities--and 10 overall--ranked higher in physics. "This is a tribute to all of us working Read More
  • Alumni Honored with NSF Fellowships Physics graduates Jade LeSchack, Elaine Taylor and Jeffrey Wack have received prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowships, which recognize outstanding graduate students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. This year’s awardees from the University of Maryland’s College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences (CMNS) Read More
  • Hafezi Receives Humboldt Research Award Mohammad Hafezi has received a Humboldt Research Award, which acknowledges his history of impactful research and supports visiting Germany to collaborate with colleagues there. Each year, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation gives the award, which is supported by the Federal Foreign Office and the Federal Ministry of Read More
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Upcoming Events

5 Aug
QuICS Special Seminar: Andrew Tanggara
Date Tue, Aug 5, 2025 11:00 am - 12:00 pm
6 Aug
ECE Dissertation Defense
Wed, Aug 6, 2025 10:00 am - 11:00 am
13 Aug
Adinkra Hangout III
Wed, Aug 13, 2025 - Thu, Aug 14, 2025
29 Aug
JQI-QuICS Special Seminar: Lukas Bödeker
Fri, Aug 29, 2025 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
8 Sep
JQI Seminar - TBD
Mon, Sep 8, 2025 11:00 am - 12:00 pm
15 Sep
JQI Seminar - TBD
Mon, Sep 15, 2025 11:00 am - 12:00 pm
22 Sep
JQI Seminar - TBD
Mon, Sep 22, 2025 11:00 am - 12:00 pm
29 Sep
JQI Seminar - Adam Kaufman
Mon, Sep 29, 2025 11:00 am - 12:00 pm

Gates Receives National Medal of Science, Regents Professorship

 

gates

University of Maryland Professor of Physics Sylvester James "Jim" Gates Jr. was one of 23 extraordinary scientists and innovators honored recently with the National Medal of Science and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.  Gates, the John S. Toll Professor of Physics, is Director of the Center for String and Particle Theory and, most recently, a University System of Maryland Regents Professor. 

President Obama presented the National Medal of Science to Gates in a White House ceremony on Friday, Feb. 1.

Dr. Gates was featured in The Washington Post on Feb. 1.

The White House features the ceremony in a blog post on STEM education, and has posted a video online.

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Rudimentary Atom Capacitor

First came electronics, the processing of information in terms of the charge of electrons flowing through circuits. Later a new form of tronics, spintronics, was invented to exploit the magnetic properties of electrons. Over the past decade or so still another information modality, atomtronics, has been under development, one employing not electrons but neutral atoms as the vehicle for information. The latest chapter in this development is the demonstration of a rudimentary atomtronic analog of capacitance.

The new results, undertaken by a group led by Wendell Hill at the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI), are published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.

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Redish to be Awarded 2013 Oersted Medal

Edward (Joe) Redish will be awarded the 2013 Oersted Medal from the American Association of Physics Teachers, at their national meeting in New Orleans, next January. This prestigious medal recognizes those who have had an outstanding, widespread and lasting impact on the teaching of physics.

Professor Redish joined the department in 1968 after receiving his Ph.D. in theoretical nuclear physics from MIT. For the past 20 years his research effort has focused on physics education with an emphasis on the role of student expectations and understanding the kinds of difficulties physics students have with problem solving from introductory to upper division physics. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the AAAS, and the Washington Academy of Science and has received awards for his work in education from the Washington Academy of Science, the Maryland Association for Higher Education, Dickinson College, Vanderbilt University, and the Robert A. Millikan Medal from the AAPT. 

Hassan Jawahery Named Distinguished University Professor

Dr. Hassan Jawahery, the Gus T. Zorn Professor of Physics, has been named a Distinguished University Professor. This designation is the campus’ highest academic honor, reserved for those whose scholarly achievements “have brought distinction to the University of Maryland.” It recognizes Jawahery’s efforts in precision measurements of the properties and interactions of subatomic particles, part of the quest to solve fundamental puzzles such as the matter/anti-matter asymmetry in the Universe.

After graduating from Tehran University in 1976, Jawahery moved to Tufts University and received his Ph.D. in 1981. He accepted postdoctoral and research assistant professor appointments at Syracuse University and was named the physics coordinator of the CLEO particle experiment (1987-1988) based at Cornell. In 1987, he joined the University of Maryland, and worked on the Omni-Purpose Apparatus (OPAL) experiment at CERN’s Large Electron-Positron collider (LEP).

Jawahery was one of the founding members of the celebrated BaBar particle physics experiment, designed, built and operated by an international collaboration of over 600 physicists from 10 countries at the Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC). He served as the physics analysis coordinator of the experiment (2001-2002), and for two years (2006-2008) served as BaBar “spokesperson,” a role combining the functions of chief scientist and CEO. BaBar observed a process that violates matter/anti-matter symmetry (and consequently time-reversal symmetry), and the effect was substantial: in 2008, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Kobayashi and Maskawa, whose 1973 prediction of broken symmetry in the framework of the Standard Model initiated the thirty-year experimental verification effort finally achieved by BaBar and a competing experiment in Japan.

Recently, Jawahery has been playing a leading role in the development of future experiments, such as the Super-B experiment at the Frascati Lab near Rome. The aim is to increase the production of bottom/anti-bottom quarks by several orders of magnitude over that produced at SLAC, which will allow for precision measurements that may reveal evidence for new physics, in synergy with the current efforts at CERN’S LHC supercollider.

Jawahery is the Associate Editor of the Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science, the field’s most prestigious journal for summary publications. He was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2004 and the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2010.

Jawahery will be recognized at the University of Maryland’s 29th Annual Faculty and Staff Convocation on Tuesday, October 9 at 3:00 p.m. in the Memorial Chapel.

Unusual 'Collapsing' Iron Superconductor Sets Record for Its Class

A team from the University of Maryland, led by Physics Professor Johnpierre Paglione, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has found an iron-based superconductor that operates at the highest known temperature for a material in its class. The discovery inches iron-based superconductors closer to being useful in many practical applications.

Iron-based superconductors, discovered only about four years ago, are a hot research topic, in part because they are more amenable to commercial applications than copper-based superconductors, which are more difficult to make and are frequently brittle. Of the four broad classes of iron-based superconductors, the 1:2:2 class-so named because their crystals are built around a hub of one atom of calcium, two of iron and two of arsenic-is particularly promising because these superconductors' properties can be custom-tailored by substituting other atoms for these basic elements.

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