Colloquium
Junior and senior physics majors attend our biweekly colloquium series, held on Tuesday afternoons at 4:30 pm in Shanahan B460. The talks are open to all students and to the public, and are frequently attended by scientists from the other Claremont Colleges, Cal Poly Pomona, and others. The series features speakers from a broad range of institutions and fields of physics.
| Oct. 25, 2005 | Mark Beck, Whitman College Interference, Complementarity, Entanglement and All That Jazz |
Technology has advanced to the point where it is possible for undergraduates to perform experiments exploring fundamental aspects of quantum mechanics--experiments observing behavior such as wave-particle duality, entanglement, and nonlocality. At Whitman College we are developing a series of such undergraduate laboratories, and I will describe some of these. In one we perform an interference experiment with single photons where … | |
| Oct. 11, 2005 | Gabriela Canalizo, University of California at Riverside Galaxy Collisions and the Birth of Quasars |
Quasars are some of the most powerful objects in the Universe, and their study allows us to probe the early Universe. However, there are still many uncertainties regarding their nature and, in particular, the way in which they are formed. In this talk, I review the role of supermassive black holes, starbursts, and galaxy collisions in the life of quasars. | |
| Sept. 27, 2005 | Thomas D. Donnelly, Harvey Mudd College Production and Application of an Aerosol of Micron-Scale Particles |
A device that uses ultrasonic atomization of a liquid to produce an aerosol of micron-scale droplets will be discussed. This device represents a new approach to producing targets relevant to laser-driven fusion studies, and to the relatively untested subfield of nonlinear optics in which wavelength-scale targets are irradiated. The device has also made possible tests of fluid dynamics models in … | |
| Sept. 13, 2005 | Kerry Vahala, Caltech :mil:`Q` > Million Optical Microresonators on Silicon Chips |
A novel laser processing method has been applied to create optical micro-resonators having Q factors as high as 500 million on silicon wafers. The combination of Ultra-high-Q and small mode volume opens up new applications for wafer based resonators. In this talk I will first review the processing and passive optical properties of these devices and then describe their application … | |
| Sept. 6, 2005 | HMC juniors and seniors, Harvey Mudd College What I Did on My Summer Vacation: Off-Campus Summer Research Experiences |
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| April 26, 2005 | Mark Vagins, University of California at Irvine Close Encounters of the Absurd Kind — A Scientist Looks at UFO’s |
Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird? It’s a plane? It’s... a weather balloon? What’s the real deal with America’s ongoing UFO obsession, anyway? What does a professional astrophysicist with an interest in the offbeat think about the whole paranormal scene? Come on an exploration of the claims and issues involved, both from a scientific perspective and through the … | |
| April 19, 2005 | Jerry Gollub, Haverford College Chaotic Dynamics of Mixing in Fluids |
The process by which an impurity is dispersed in a stirred fluid is important for many areas of science and engineering. It can occur as a consequence of turbulence (e.g. in stirring coffee), but mixing also occurs even in some laminar flows that cause nearby fluid elements to separate exponentially in time. This process is sometimes called "chaotic mixing". Until … | |
| April 12, 2005 | Wilson Ho, University of California at Irvine Visualization of Quantum Phenomena |
The unique capabilities of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) enable new opportunities for the control and investigation of matter and its transformation at the atomic and molecular scales. Some of the problems that are routinely used in the introduction to quantum mechanics, such as the particle tunneling, Brownian motion of molecules, and particle in a one-dimensional box, can be realized … | |
| March 29, 2005 | Stanley Klein, University of California at Berkeley New Methods for Imaging Brain Activity in Space and Time |
When one looks at tiny flashing light, electrical currents are induced in the brain’s cortex and blood flow is altered. The altered blood flow can be measured using functional MRI, giving spatial information of the brain activity, but valuable information about the temporal dynamics is lost due to the sluggish nature of the blood flow. Our focus is on making … |
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| March 8, 2005 | Theresa Lynn, Caltech Dances With Atoms and Photons: Steps Toward Quantum Information Technology |
The Schrödinger-cat strangeness of quantum states threatens classical information technology but at the same time offers the potential for great advances in computing and communications. A principal challenge in designing actual quantum logic devices is the need to control quantum states and simultaneously protect delicate properties like quantum phase and entanglement. How can we protect information encoded in a quantum … | |
| Feb. 22, 2005 | David Hafemeister, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo National Academy Study on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty |
After the 51-48 defeat of the CTBT in the Senate, General John Schalikashvili (Former Chair, Joint Chiefs of Staff) commissioned the National Academy of Sciences to examine the following technical issues, which will be summarized*:
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| Feb. 8, 2005 | Scott Fraser (’76), Caltech Was Leonardo Right? New Insights into the Mechanics of Cardiovascular Development |
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| Jan. 25, 2005 | Kate Hutton, Caltech Seismological Laboratory The Largest Quake in 40 Years |
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| Dec. 7, 2004 | Jonathan L. Feng, University of California at Irvine Black Holes and Extra Dimensions |
Of the four known forces -- gravity, electromagnetism, and the weak and strong forces -- gravity is by far the weakest. The weakness of gravity may not be an intrinsic property, however, but may result from the dilution of gravity in extra spatial dimensions. Diverse experiments, ranging from tabletop probes of Newtonian gravity to km-scale cosmic ray detectors, are now … | |
| Nov. 23, 2004 | Kenneth N. Barish, University of California at Riverside Heating up the Vacuum: a New Spin on QCD at RHIC |
Why are the proton’s constituents confined? Where does its mass come from? What makes up its spin? The theory of the strong force, QCD, has proven strikingly successful (e.g. this year’s Nobel Prize), however, so far it cannot be used to understand these fundamental questions. We have begun an experimental program at Brookhaven National Laboratory utilizing the Relativistic Heavy Ion … |
