Optical fibers are the backbone of modern communications, shuttling information from A to B through thin glass filaments as pulses of light. They are used extensively in telecommunications, allowing information to travel at near the speed of light virtually without loss.
President Obama has just named 102 scientists and researchers as recipients of the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor bestowed by the United States Government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers. Adjunct Assistant Professor Nick Butch, a staff physicist at the NIST Center for Neutron Research, was honored for his significant contributions to understanding the interplay of magnetism with superconductivity and revealing observations about superconducting materials. Congratulations Nick!!!
The Fundamentals of Quantum Materials Winter School and Workshop, which begins Jan. 14, promises to be a unique event in North America, dedicated specifically to the synthesis, characterization and electronic modeling of quantum materials. It is organized by CNAM director Johnpierre Paglione; Assistant Professor Efrain Rodriguez of UMD's department of Chemistry; Dr. Nicholas Butch, NIST; and Professor Gabriel Kotliar of Rutgers University.
The FQM Winter School is aimed at providing fundamental training to our current and future generations of Quantum Materials scientists in synthesis and characterization techniques. It will bring together senior and junior scientists to address topics at the forefront of current research into quantum materials, while also providing pedagogical background and practical training for junior scientists. With an interdisciplinary and diverse crowd including physicists, chemists, and materials scientists, participants will gain a basic functional knowledge of how to plan and carry out synthesis relevant to the study of quantum materials, and will have a unique opportunity to interact with some of the top researchers in the field while networking with peers. The structure of the school will include mornings of pedagogical lectures by ten of the nation's top practicing quantum materials scientists, with afternoons devoted to practical demonstrations in laboratories in the University of Maryland's Center for Nanophysics and Advanced Materials. The school will also include a poster session that will be attended by senior scientists. The school received ~40 applications and seated 25 students.
The FQM Workshop, held the preceding weekend in collaboration with the BNL Center for Computational Design of Functional Strongly Correlated Materials and Theoretical Spectroscopy, covers both experimental and theoretical research on quantum materials, focusing on synthesis, characterization and computational approaches to research of quantum materials such as superconductors, strongly correlated electron systems and topological materials.
The event is sponsored by the Moore Foundation, ICAM, NIST, the University of Maryland's Office of Research and the College of Mathematics and Natural Sciences.
Invited Speakers include:
James Analytis, University of California, Berkeley
Ryan Baumbach, National High Magnetic Field Laboratory Brookhaven National Lab
Paul Canfield, Ames Laboratory
Julia Chan, University of Texas, Dallas
Sang-Wook Cheong, Rutgers University
David Mandrus, University of Tennessee
John Mitchell, Argonne National Laboratory
Efrain Rodriguez, University of Maryland
Brian Sales, Oak Ridge NationalLaboratory
Ichiro Takeuchi, University of Maryland
Echoes are not limited to sound reflecting off cave walls. A similar phenomenon—a delayed response following an immediate response to some stimulus—can occur after coupled oscillators are stimulated by a sequence of two input pulses. Researchers have now observed such an echo phenomenon in a system of coupled chemical oscillators.
Edward Ott of the University of Maryland in College Park, Kenneth Showalter of West Virginia University in Morgantown, and their colleagues studied a standard oscillating chemical system known as the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction. This light sensitive reaction involves transitions between an opaque state and one that transmits light. The team fixed more than 1000 tiny beads containing the relevant chemicals in a setup that allowed the beads—each with its own oscillation frequency—to be individually illuminated and the light transmitted through each bead to be separately detected.