News - UMD Physics

Department Recalls John S. Toll

Details: Category: Department News; Published: Wednesday, December 21 2011 13:38

http://www.umdphysics.umd.edu/john-toll

5 UMD Faculty Named AAAS Fellows

Details: Category: Department News; Published: Tuesday, December 20 2011 15:23

Daniel Lathrop, John Mather, Steve Rolston, Raman Sundrum and John Weeks have been named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Election as a Fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers.

This year 539 members have been awarded this honor by AAAS because of their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications. New Fellows will be presented with an official certificate and a rosette pin on Saturday, 18 February at the AAAS Fellows Forum during the 2012 AAAS Annual Meeting in Vancouver, B.C., Canada.

Lathrop was honored for novel turbulence experiments and diagnostics uncovering the effects of rotation, magnetic fields, and long-range quantum order in superfluid helium.

Mather was honored for outstanding scientific leadership of NASA's astronomy missions including his Nobel Prize-winning Cosmic Background Explorer and the future James Webb Space Telescope. He is a College Park Professor and adjunct in the Department of Physics.

Rolston was honored for research with ultracold atoms, in particular for the development of optical lattices and ultracold plasmas.

Sundrum was honored for fundamental contributions including anomaly-mediation in supergravity theories and the "Randall-Sundrum" mechanism within higher-dimensional warped compactifications, and associated phenomenological implications.

Weeks was honored for seminal contributions to the statistical physics of liquids, interfaces and other condensed-phase systems. He is a Distinguished University Professor and an affiliate in the Department of Physics.

This year’s AAAS Fellows will be formally announced in the AAAS News & Notes section of the journal Science on 23 December 2011.

Topological Matter in Optical Lattices

Details: Category: Research News; Published: Friday, December 09 2011 09:20

Atoms trapped by laser light have become excellent platforms for simulating solid state systems. These systems are also a playground for exploring quantum matter and even uncovering new phenomena not yet seen in nature.

Researchers at the Joint Quantum Institute* have shown that an optical lattice system exhibits a never-before-seen quantum state called a topological semimetal. The semimetal, which debuts in this week’s Advance Online Publication for the journal Nature Physics (DOI:10.1038/NPHYS2134}, can undergo a new type of phase transition to a topological insulator.

Topological insulators are one of the hottest topics in condensed matter research because of their dual-personality. They are insulators throughout the bulk of the material but are conductors along the edges.