Joseph Sucher, 1930-2019

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Published: Monday, October 21 2019 07:29

Professor Emeritus Joe Sucher, a UMD faculty member for 41 years, died on Oct. 18 at the age of 89.  A memorial was planned for Sunday, March 15, 2020, but was postponed indefinitely due to coronavirus concerns.  In commemoration of Joe's 90th birthday in September, 2020, his son Anatol produced a memorial program, which can be downloaded here.

Joe joined UMD in 1957, after earning his Ph.D. from Columbia University with a thesis on the quantum electrodynamics of the helium atom. He is best known for work on the relativistic theory of many-electron atoms, the quantum theory of long-range forces, the foundations of relativistic quantum theory, the Gellman-Low-Sucher level-shift formula, the no-pair Hamiltonian for many-electron atoms, the Levy-Sucher identity, the Dirac-Sucher equation and the Feinberg-Sucher formula for the long-range force between neutral atoms. He was a devoted educator and was named a UMD Distinguished Scholar-Teacher in 1989.

Two years ago, he established the Joseph and Dorothy Sucher Graduate Prize in Relativistic Theoretical Physics to remember Dorothy, his wife of 58 years. She was a psychotherapist and a writer for the Greenbelt News Review whose work resulted in a landmark Supreme Court decision upholding freedom of the press. Her last writing project took her to Russia and Belarus shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, as she tried to piece together the history of her grandparents before they emigrated to the U.S. After her death, Joe and his son Anatol completed the work, Return to the Shtetl.

A native of Vienna, Joe was forced with his family to flee Hitler’s Nazism.  He escaped from Austria in 1938, and after a harrowing trek though Germany, Luxembourg, France, Spain and Portugal, arrived in the United States at age 10. He described the odyssey in a 2014 oral history interview with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Joe was well-known in the department for his great wit, his unfailing charm and his memorable lyrics; he often graced departmental gatherings with impressive poems, such as one he wrote on the 50^th anniversary of the tradition of Physics Tea.

Joe Sucher and alumnus Ravi Kuchimanchi, who won the 2018 APS Andrei Sakharov Award for his work in science, sustainabile development and human rights in India.

Sucher speaks with Deborah Toll at the 2011 Physics Department memorial for Chancellor Emeritus John Sampson Toll.

Sucher recalls his friend John Toll.

Jim Gates, Joe Sucher and Jogesh Pati at the anniversary of Physics Tea.

Sucher congratulates Jordan Goodman as Goodman's term as Physics Chair ends in 2006.

UMD Theory Group, with Joe Sucher seated second from right.

Dieter Brill and Sucher chat with Judy Franz of the American Physical Society.

Postdoc Harry Lam and Professors Dan Fivel and  Joe Sucher in 1965.

Jogesh Pati, Harry Lam, Dan Fivel, Joe Sucher in 1965.

Dan Fivel, Joe Sucher, Sadao Oneda and Harry Lam.

Hans R. Griem, 1928-2019

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Published: Friday, October 04 2019 07:00

Prof. Emeritus Hans R. Griem, a noted expert in high-temperature plasmas and spectroscopy, died on October 2, 2019.

Prof. Griem received his Ph.D. from the Universität of Kiel, Germany, in 1954 and accepted a Fulbright Fellowship working on upper atmospheric physics at UMD. He returned to Universität Kiel for a two-year appointment before joining the UMD faculty in 1957.   He was well known for his research on radiation from highly ionized atoms in high temperature plasmas, and for his work on spectral line broadening (and shifts) in dense plasmas.  He was a consultant with Los Alamos National Laboratory during most of his career, and retired from UMD in 1994.

He was a fellow of the American Physical Society and a referee for several journals, including Physical Review Letters.  Among his accolades were a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Humboldt Award and the William F. Meggers Award of the Optical Society.  In 1991 he received the James Clerk Maxwell Prize in Plasma Physics for "his numerous contributions to experimental plasma physics and spectroscopy, particularly in the area of improved diagnostic methods for high temperature plasmas, and for his books on plasma spectroscopy and spectral line broadening in plasmas that have become standard references in the field."

Prof. Griem was instrumental in founding the UMD Institute Research in Electronics and Applied Physics, and served as one of the first directors of IREAP. He advised over 40 doctoral students in his time at UMD.

Jim Griffin, Hans Griem and Doug Currie in 2001.

In The Washington Post obituary published Oct. 6, 2019, the Griem family kindly directed donations in Prof. Griem's name to UMD Physics.

https://www.legacy.com/amp/obituaries/washingtonpost/194085051 

Workshop Explores Novel Ideas for Dark Matter Searches

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Published: Tuesday, October 01 2019 07:29

Joel Dahlin Receives Ronald Davidson Award

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Published: Friday, September 27 2019 11:07

Joel Dahlin

Alumnus Joel Dahlin, who earned his Ph.D. in 2015, has received the 2019 Ronald C. Davidson Award for Plasma Physics from AIP Publishing. Dahlin, who was advised by Distinguished University Professor James Drake and Marc Swisdak of the Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics­­, is now a postdoctoral fellow at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

AIP Publishing sponsors the award in collaboration with the American Physical Society’s Division of Plasma Physics (APS-DPP), to recognize one researcher each year whose outstanding work has been published in the journal Physics of Plasmas.

"AIP Publishing and Physics of Plasmas are delighted to award Joel T. Dahlin the 2019 Ronald C. Davidson Award for Plasmas Physics," said Jason Wilde, chief publishing officer at AIP Publishing. "Now in its fourth year, this award is in honor of the late Ron Davidson, the long-time Editor-in-Chief of Physics of Plasmas."

Dahlin is being honored for his article, "The mechanisms of electron heating and acceleration during magnetic reconnection," written with Drake and Swisdak. It was selected from the most highly cited and most highly downloaded articles published in Physics of Plasmas during the past five years. 

“It is a great honor to be recognized with an award bearing Ron Davidson’s name, given his broad and influential contributions to the field of plasma physics. Since my co-authors and I published our work, it has been exciting and deeply gratifying to see how other researchers have used and built on the ideas we laid out,” Dahlin said.

The paper explored the mechanisms for electron acceleration caused by collision-less magnetic reconnection in plasma with a magnetic guide field sufficient for adiabatic electron motion. In a follow-up paper, “Electron acceleration in three-dimensional magnetic reconnection with a guide field,” Physics of Plasmas 22, 100704 (2015), Dahlin and his co-authors showed a dramatic enhancement of energetic electron production in 3D systems where stochastic magnetic fields enable continuous access to volume-filling acceleration regions.

According to Spiro K. Antiochos of NASA GSFC, "Joel Dahlin's results on particle acceleration during magnetic reconnection, especially on the effects of a guide field, may well be the key to finally understanding two decades-old major puzzles in the plasma physics of solar flares: How are flares so efficient at accelerating electrons, and why does the acceleration occur only during the early, impulsive phase of a flare?”

Dahlin will be presented with the award during the 61^st Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Plasma Physics on Tues., Oct. 22.

For more information, please see the AIP announcement here.

Quantum Materials Symposium to Showcase Local Expertise and Highlight Partnerships in D.C. Region

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Published: Wednesday, September 25 2019 11:07

The University of Maryland held a one-day symposium focusing on local research into quantum materials—condensed matter systems that exhibit strong quantum effects and hold promise as potential components in next-generation computers, sensors and other devices on Sept. 26, 2019, in the Kim Engineering Building.  

Hosted by UMD’s Center for Nanophysics and Advanced Materials (CNAM)—which will be renamed the Quantum Materials Center next month—the event broght together researchers from the university’s Departments of Physics, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Materials Science and Engineering, in addition to researchers from the nearby National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Laboratory for Physical Sciences. Around 50 quantum materials researchers and institutional leaders were expected to attend.

CNAM Director and Professor of Physics Johnpierre Paglione, together with Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) Fellow and Assistant Professor of Physics James Williams, organized the event, which included talks on recent quantum materials research as well as reflections on collaborations that have formed among UMD researchers and also between researchers at UMD and area partners such as NIST.

“Fundamental studies of quantum materials play a critical role in not only supporting current development of quantum technologies, but also the discovery of new phenomena that hold promise for future applications,” Paglione said. “This symposium will bring together the top experts from our local community and will hopefully sprout new collaborations and partnerships.”

Amitabh Varshney, dean of UMD’s College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences, and Robert Briber, associate dean of UMD’s A. James Clark School of Engineering, delivered their perspectives on campus initiatives in quantum science, including the newly formed Quantum Technology Center. Carl Williams, a JQI Fellow and the acting director of the Physical Measurement Laboratory at NIST, discussed aspects of the National Quantum Initiative, and Dan Neumann, group leader of neutron condensed matter science at the NIST Center for Neutron Research (NCNR), discussed the partnership between CNAM and NCNR, which recently led to the discovery of a superconductor that may be useful in future quantum computers.

“CNAM maintains strong interdisciplinary collaborations with researchers across several departments and institutes,” Paglione said. “Going forward, we want to strengthen those partnerships, which have contributed to the success of CNAM’s fundamental research on quantum materials.”

Jeffrey Lynn, a NIST Fellow and adjunct professor of physics at UMD, is the team leader for condensed matter physics at NCNR. He noted, “There have been longstanding multidisciplinary cooperative research collaborations between NIST and UMD in general, and the NCNR and CNAM in particular,” Lynn says. “In addition to the research output, these collaborations provide cross-institutional research capabilities for students, postdoctoral fellows, and scientific staff that are essential to perform the best quantum materials research.”

 QMC @ UMD

Story by Chris Cesare, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.