A new set of calibration techniques has once again dramatically improved the sensitivity of the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) dark matter experiment, which operates nearly a mile underground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Read More

Particles can be classified as bosons or fermions. A defining characteristic of a boson is its ability to pile into a single quantum state with other bosons. Fermions are not allowed to do this. One broad impact of fermionic anti-social behavior is that it allows for carbon-based life forms, like us, to exist. If the universe were solely made from bosons, life would certainly not look like it does. Recently, JQI theorists* have proposed an elegant method for achieving transmutation--that is, making bosons act like fermions. This work was published in the journal Physical Review Letters. Read More

Researchers from the Center for Nanophysics and Advanced Materials, find evidence of one-dimensional surface transport with a quantized conductance value of e²/h originating from the chiral edge channels of ferromagnetic domain walls, providing strong evidence that topologically non-trivial surface states exist in SmB₆. Read More

UMD Research Scientist Erik Blaufuss, Distinguished University Professor Jordan Goodman and Professor Greg Sullivan will be sharing the 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics award for their studies in neutrino oscillations. The $3 million prize will be shared equally among five experiments comprised of more than 1,300 physicists;Daya Bay, KamLAND, K2k/T2K,Sudbury Neutrino Observatory and Super-Kamiokande.

The University of Maryland physicists were part of the team of scientists that built and participated on the Super-Kamiokande experiment (for which Takaaki Kajita shared the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics).The team’s experimental data demonstrated that neutrinos change identities. This metamorphosis requires that neutrinos have mass. The discovery has changed our understanding of the innermost workings of matter and can prove crucial to our view of the universe.

The Breakthrough Prizes were established by Yuri Milner, Julia Milner, Sergey Brin, Anne Wojcicki, Mark Zuckerberg, Priscilla Chan, Jack Ma, and Cathy Zhang. Their goal is to bring important figures of the science and technology communities into the public eye.

The University of Maryland’s Women in Physics group recently received the Women in Physics Grant from the American Physical Society. This grant is given to support Women in Physics groups in their efforts to improve recruitment and/or retention of undergraduate women in physics. The funding will support their mentoring program for the 2016 calendar year.

The Women in Physics group provides a welcoming environment for female members of the Physics community at the University of Maryland by including undergraduates, graduate students, post-docs, faculty, and staff of all genders. They developed a mentoring program to foster supportive relationships between graduate and undergraduate students, host regular professional development lunches, and organize other professional development, social, and outreach events.

Information on the award: http://www.aps.org/programs/women/scholarships/wipgrantees.cfm