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Department of Physics and Astronomy

Colloquia

These lectures feature speakers from around the country and globe. Each colloquium lasts about an hour and gives you a deeper understanding of the types of physics and astronomy researching going on around the world.

Colloquia will be held in a hybrid format and a recurring Zoom link is provided to access the virtual format.

The talks will be on Thursdays at 4:15PM in the Rogers Room (Jones PSC 409).

If you are interested in being added to our e-mail distribution list regarding upcoming colloquia, please contact Ms. Nancy Kesar via e-mail at nkesar@mailbox.sc.edu. We appreciate your interest!

Upcoming Colloquium:

Virtual Exploration of Quantum Spin Liquid Materials

Speaker: Tom Berlijn
Affiliation: Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Date: November 11th

Abstract: 

In recent years, quantum computing has emerged as a promising technology to revolutionize fields like cryptography, quantum simulation, and drug discovery. A crucial step towards fault-tolerant quantum computation lies in harnessing non-Abelian anyons, exotic quasiparticles that can be braided to perform quantum logic operations. Quantum spin liquids, a state of matter characterized by long-range quantum entanglement without magnetic order, are promising platforms for realizing such anyons. While theoretical models have significantly advanced our understanding of quantum spin liquids, a critical challenge remains: bridging the gap between idealized models and the complex reality of materials. This colloquium will present our research efforts to address this challenge using realistic first-principles calculations.

Fall 2024 Schedule:

Date

Speaker

Affiliation

Title

8/29 Meet and Greet    
9/5 Milind Kunchur University of South Carolina "Time and information resolution in human hearing and its implications for high-fidelity audio and psychophysics"
9/12 Ashely Byrd White  University of South Carolina  
9/19 Steven Ray Elliott  Los Alamos National Laboratory “Isomers and Dark Matter: 180mTa and 178mHf"
9/26 Lucas Lindsay Oak Ridge National Laboratory "Insights from vibrational thermal transport modeling"
10/3 Maura McLaughlin West Virginia University "Pulsar Timing Arrays: A New Window on the Gravitational Wave Universe"
10/10 Scott Watson Syracuse University “Early Universe Cosmology as a Probe of Physics Beyond the Standard Model”
10/17 Fall Break    
10/24 Edward “Rocky” Kolb University of Chicago "Schrödinger’s Alarming Phenomenon"
10/31 Mark Pederson University of Texas, El Paso "Magneto-Electric Coupling, Chirality, and Symmetry Considerations in Molecular Spin Systems"
11/7      
11/14 Tom Berlijn Oak Ridge National Laboratory "Virtual Exploration of Quantum Spin Liquid Materials"

Past Colloquia:

April 20, 2023 - Dr. Sebastian König
"Nuclear Physics in a Box"

April 13, 2023 - Dr. Qui Wang
"Onsager Principle, Mathematical Modeling, and Numerical Algorithm Design"

April 06, 2023 - Dr. Maxim Tsoi
"Antiferromagnetic Spintronics: from Metals to Functional Oxides"

March 23, 2023 - Dr. David Tanner
"Shining Light Through Walls:  Generation and Detection of Axions with ALPS II"

March 16, 2023 - Dr. Kai Schweda
"The ALICE Experiment at the Large Hadron Collider"

March 02, 2023 - Dr. John Singleton
"Neutral Fermions and a New State of Matter: Weird Metals Disguised as Electrical Insulators"

February 23, 2023 - Dr. George Androulakis
"An Excursion into Quantum Information, with Highlights from Some of My Latest Research"

February 16, 2023 - Dr. Christopher Jarzynski
"Scaling Down the Laws of Thermodynamics"

February 9, 2023 - Dr. Ed Cackett
"Mapping the Accretion Disk Around Supermassive Black Holes"

February 2, 2023 - Dr. Alexander Monin
"XXI Century Challenges of Theoretical Physics"

January 26, 2023 - Dr. Lori Ziolkowski
"The Physics of Climate Change"

January 19, 2023 - Dr. Joseph E. Johnson
"Riemannian Geometry Framed as a Generalized Lie Algebra to Incorporate General Relativity with Quantum Theory"

November 17, 2022 - Dr. Ignatios Antoniadis
"Challenges in Particle Physics and Cosmology"

November 10, 2022 - Dr. Gang Cao
"Power and Control of Internal Loop Currents in an Exotic Quantum State"

November 3, 2022 - Dr. Shmuel Nussinov
"Dark Matter - or Matter in the Dark?"

October 27, 2022 - Dr. Mariama Rebello de Sousa Dias
"Advancements in the Design of Optical Components for Efficient Optoelectronic Devices Operating at High Temperature"

October 20, 2022 - Dr. Bob Bernstein
"Charged Lepton Flavor Violation and the Mu2e Experiment"

October 6, 2022 - Dr. Paul Reimer
"Exploring the Flavor Asymmetry of Antimatter in the Proton"

September 29, 2022 - Dr. Michael Dickson
"Anthropic Principles, Fine-Tuning Arguments, and Other Mistakes"

September 22, 2022 - Dr. Alexander Yankovsky
"Dynamics of Coastal Buoyancy Currents"

September 15, 2022 - Dr. Alexey Petrov
"Charming Asymmetry Between Matter and Antimatter"

December 2, 2021 - Dr. Jeffrey Hazboun
"Searching for Nanohertz Gravitational Waves with a Galactic-Scale Detector"

November 18, 2021 - Dr. David Ceperley
"The Physics of Dense Hydrogen"

November 11, 2021 - Mr. Travis Dore
"The Quark Gluon Plasma:  Exploring a Physics Crossroads"

November 4, 2021 - Dr. Frank T. Avignone, III
"The Search for the Majorana Neutrino Under an Italian Mountain"

October 14, 2021 - Dr. Jerome Goldstein
"Is Diffusion Described by the Heat Equation or the Damped Wave Equation"?

September 16, 2021 - Dr. Robert Cava
"Finding New Materials - A Chemical Perspective"

April 29, 2021 - Dr. Michael Susner
"Functional Van der Waals Materials:  A New Avenue for Next-Generation Electronics"

April 1, 2021 - Dr. James Tour
"Flash Graphene"

March 18, 2021 - Dr. Hariharan Srikanth
"Anisotropic Magnetic Particles for Nanomedicine Applications"

March 11, 2021 - Dr. Rongying Jin
"Topological Physics:  Entering a New Era of Fundamental Science"

March 4, 2021 - Dr. Luis Balicas
"Two-Dimensional and Topological Materials Research at the NHMFL"

January 21, 2021 - Dr. Larry Ford
"Quantum Energy Density Fluctuations"

November 19, 2020 - Dr. Pawel Mazur
"On the Physical Nature of Super-Compact Objects in the Merging Binaries Discovered by Gravitational Wave Detectors"

November 12, 2020 - Dr. Michael Osofsky
"Engineering Superconductivity in Metamaterials"

October 22, 2020 - Dr. Rocky Kolb
"Schrödinger’s Alarming Phenomenon"

October 8, 2020 - Dr. Yuriy Pershin
"Are Resistance Switching Memories Memristors?"

February 27, 2020 - Dr. Thomas Crawford, Dr. Scott Crittenden, and Dr. Yanwen Wu
"Research Directions at the SmartState Center for Experimental Nanoscale Physics (Experimental)"

February 20, 2020 - Dr. Yaroslaw Bazaliy and Dr. Yuriy Pershin
"Research Directions at the SmartState Center  for Experimental Nanoscale Physics (Theoretical)"

February 13, 2020 - Dr. Ward Plummer
"Quantum Materials Driven Renaissance in Surface Physics"

February 6, 2020 - Dr. Smita Mathur
"The Warm-Hot Circumgalactic Medium"

January 30, 2020 - Dr. Richard Creswick
"A Laboratory Search for Axions/ALPS"

December 5, 2019 - Dr. William E. Mustain
"Founding and Emerging Materials for Li-ion Batteries"

November 21, 2019 - Dr. Dennis Bodewits
"Atomic and Molecular Physics of Comets"

November 14, 2019 - Dr. Daniel Scolnic
"New Excitement in Measurements of Dark Energy and the Hubble Constant"

October 31, 2019 - Dr. Varsha Kulkarni
"Extrasolar Planets:  Understanding Earth's Place in the Cosmos"

October 3, 2019 - Dr. J. Michael Shull
"Where Do Galaxies End"?

September 26, 2019 - Dr. Craig Group
"A Renaissance for Muon Physics:  (Who Ordered That?)"

September 19, 2019 - Dr. Peter Mättig
"Beyond the Higgs:  LHC Physics in the Light of Philosophy"

September 5, 2019 - Dr. Revaz Ramazashvili
"Zeeman Spin-Orbit Coupling and Magnetic Quantum Oscillations in Antiferromagnetic Conductors"

May 7, 2019 - Dr. Laurie E. McNeil
"Transforming Teaching and Learning:  Self-Renewal and Institution-Building"

April 25, 2019 - Dr. Megan Donahue
"The Role of Supermassive Black Holes in the Growth of Galaxies"

April 18, 2019 - Dr. Monique Aller
"Investigating the Dust Grains in Galaxies Using Quasar Absorption Systems"

April 11, 2019 - Dr. Massimiliano Di Ventra
"Memcomputing:  Leaveraging Memory and Physics to Compute Efficiently"

April 4, 2019 - Dr. Leonid Pryadko
"Quantum Computation and Quantum Error Correction:  A Contemporary Overview"

March 28, 2019 - Dr. Oleg Tchernyshyov
"Mechanics of Magnetic Solitons"

March 21, 2019 - Dr. Ashot Gasparian
"The Proton Radius: Preliminary Results from the PRad Experiment"

March 7, 2019 - Dr. Raul Briceno
"The Exotic World of Quarks and Gluons"

March 4, 2019 - Dr. Alexander Monin
"Current Challenges of Particle Physics and How to Address Them"

February 28, 2019 - Dr. Karen Livesey
"Magnetization Relaxation in Magnetic Nanoparticle Systems"

February 25, 2019 - Dr. Andrey Katz
"Beyond the Standard Model:  Search for a Shadow World"

February 18, 2019 - Dr. Kimberly Boddy
"Unraveling the Structure of Dark Matter Throughout Cosmic History"

February 7, 2019 - Dr. Igor Altfeder
"Scanning Tunneling Microscopy of Quantum Materials"

January 31, 2019
"Remembering Dr. Horacio Farach"

December 6, 2018 - Dr. Yanwen Wu
"Tools Made of Light - An Overview of the Ideas Behind the 2018 Physics Nobel Prize"

November 29, 2018 - Prof. Valery Nesvizhevsky
"Gravitational Quantum States of Neutrons, Atoms, and Antiatoms"

November 15, 2018 - Ms. Lisa Hunter and Mr. Rafael Palomino
"ISEE's Professional Development Program: Preparation for Effective and Inclusive Teaching and Mentoring"

November 8, 2018 - Dr. Sylvester N. Ekpenuma
"Efficient Modeling of Defects and Impurities in Semiconductors"

November 2, 2018 - Dr. Arthur Hebard
"Heterogeneous Interfaces with High-Tc Crystalline Bi-2212 for Teasing Out Proximity and Electric-Field Screening Effects"

October 25, 2018 - Dr. Marco Ajello
"The Star-Formation History of the Universe Revealed by Gamma Rays"

October 4, 2018 - Dr. Luca Guazzotto
"A Physics-Based Criterion for Nuclear Fusion Energy Production"

September 27, 2018 - Dr. Pawel Mazur
"Superfluid Universe, the Ground State in Quantum Gravity, and Gravastars"

September 20, 2018 - Dr. Frank Avignone, III
"Dark Matter from Z to A and Beyond:  The History and Status of Direct Searches"

September 6, 2018 - Dr. Nahum Arav
"Quasar Outflows and Their Contribution to Galactic-Scale Feedback Processes"

April 26, 2018 - Dr. Yordanka Ilieva
"Gluon Imaging"

April 19, 2018 - Dr. Robin Shelton
"The Clouds Around Our Galaxy"

April 12, 2018 - Dr. Vincente Guiseppe
"The (76)Ge Program to Search for Neutrinoless Double-Beta Decay"

April 5, 2018 - Dr. Yanwen Wu
"Make Your Particles And Play With Them Too"

March 29, 2018 - Dr. Dean Lee
"Nuclear Lattice Simulations"

March 8, 2018 - Prof. Sergey Alekhin
"Strange, Non-Strange, and Heavy Quark Distributions"

March 1, 2018 - Dr. Joseph E. Johnson
"On Integrating General Relativity with Quantum Theory by Reframing Riemannian Geometry as a Generalized Heisenberg Lie Algebra”

February 22, 2018 - Dr. Alessandro Pilloni
“Challenges for Hadron Spectroscopy”

February 15, 2018 - Dr. David B. Tanner
“The Search for the Invisible Axion: The Current Status of ADMX”

February 1, 2018 - Dr. Andrew B. Greytak
“Assembling the Future Through Control of Nanoscale Interfaces”

January 25, 2018 - Dr. Ronald D. Edge
“70 Years of Physics”

January 18, 2018 - Dr. Juan I. Collar
“News from PICO and COHERENT”

 


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