Colloidal systems consist of micrometer-size spheres suspended in a liquid. They closely mimic atomic systems, in that they form similar phases (liquids, crystals and glasses) and exhibit similar dynamics, such as, for example, dislocation motion and crystal nucleation. By tracking the particles by confocal microscopy it is possible… Continue reading »
A significant portion of the biomolecular world remains “dark,” limiting our ability to fully understand and engineer living systems. Among the most complex and challenging components is the proteome—the vast collection of proteins that serve as the molecular machines and information-processing elements of the cell. In this talk, I will… Continue reading »
Gamma rays, with frequencies billions of times higher than visible light, provide a window on extremely energetic astrophysical processes occurring in our Milky Way Galaxy and beyond. At the same time, the mysterious dark matter of the universe could imprint a range of clues to its existence in the gamma-ray… Continue reading »
In its short history, X-ray astronomy has revealed our Universe to be fascinating far beyond the visible. Over its 25+ years of operations, the Chandra X-ray Telescope has examined, with unparalleled clarity and sensitivity, incredibly violent and energetic phenomena and unbelievably hot and dense material. Chandra is the most powerful… Continue reading »
When we think of a galaxy, we often imagine aspinning disk of stars and gas surrounding aglowing center. But galaxies are more than meetsthe eye, and the disks we see are just a small partof the whole. We now know galaxies to besurrounded by huge halos of gas that provide… Continue reading »
Over the last 30 years, trapped ions have become a versatile platform for everything from quantum computers and quantum sensors to atomic clocks and probes of fundamental physics. To minimize the impact of errors in these applications, the ions must first be cooled to the ground state of their motion. Continue reading »
How can we make new materials and better understand how their underlying structures form? The direct observation of crystal growth and transitions remains supremely challenging, but gaining insight into these fundamental processes is central to our quest of creating materials in a rational and targeted way, connecting structure to functionality. Continue reading »
The modern view of galaxy evolution links gas availability to star formation, with the depletion / removal of gas seen as the end of a galaxy’s active life. However, about 10% of local spirals are gas rich, yet host little star formation. The paradox presented by these “classical low surface… Continue reading »
Techniques to directly laser cool and trap molecules at ultracold temperatures have revealed a new route towards the full quantum control of a diverse group of species with a variety of internal structures and properties. Our experimental effort capitalizes on this generality by aiming to directly laser cool and trap… Continue reading »
The fluid dynamics of the ocean, influenced by the Earth’s rotation, create fascinating wave phenomena, such as the El Niño effect. In contrast, the Quantum Hall Effect (QHE) occurs in two-dimensional systems of electrons under a strong magnetic field and is governed by the Schrödinger equation, while ocean dynamics follow… Continue reading »
The Schrödinger Cat idea was an early thought experiment intended to point out the weirdness of quantum mechanics. It is a paradigmatic example of the quantum principles of superposition and entanglement. With the vast experimental progress in the last two decades, we can now routinely carry out this… Continue reading »
While the Standard Model of particle physics describes all known laboratory measurements with astonishing accuracy, it is incapable of answering simple questions, like “Why is the universe here, and why is it filled with matter?” Theories attempting to explain the prevalence of matter over antimatter typically introduce “new” particles (those… Continue reading »
One of the main challenges of our time is the energy crisis. We need green energy resources to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and tackle climate change. Photocatalytic water splitting has been a promising area of research for clean energy applications, as it can potentially provide hydrogen as sustainable… Continue reading »
MCLA Renee Horton Poster… Continue reading »
Supernova explosions mark the spectacular deaths of massive stars, and play a pivotal role in astrophysics: they create many of the elements essential for planets and life, they give rise to neutrinos, cosmic rays, and gravitational radiation, and they play an essential part in the evolution of galaxies. Yet these… Continue reading »
Sept. 8 Ice Cream Social! Science quad or Eco Cafe if weather is bad Sept. 15 Tanya Zelevinsky (Columbia) Title: “Clocks with ultra cold molecules” Sept. 22 Physics after Williams: grad school, jobs Sept. 29 Chelsea Davis (U Delaware Mechanical Engineering) Title: “Illuminating Interfacial Mechanics:… Continue reading »
Organic-inorganic hybrid perovskite solar cells have set efficiency records at least once a year in the past decade. This material offers numerous possibilities and presents several mysteries. Among them, the optical properties are widely tunable by mixing halide compositions, but at the same time halide segregation under illumination… Continue reading »
Addressing the critical need for reliable adhesion in soft substrates and medical applications, we will discuss in this seminar how we can improve adhesive properties by changing its architecture to tailor to specific challenges and materials compatibility. In medicine, structured adhesives inspired by gecko fibrillar structures show reliable… Continue reading »
Although low-mass dwarf galaxies are useful laboratories for testing models of galaxy formation and evolution, they are especially susceptible to environmental effects. One way to untangle the effect of environment on galaxy evolution is to study galaxies located in extremely under-dense regions: cosmic voids. In this talk, I will present… Continue reading »
Many functional RNAs have evolutionarily conserved secondary structures, and conserved RNA base pairing induces strong pairwise sequence correlations between the interacting positions in RNA multiple sequence alignments. This distinctive and powerful statistical signal can be exploited in many kinds of comparative genome sequence analysis of… Continue reading »
Debris disks are tenuous reservoirs of dust and gas around main sequence stars which probe the critical time domain between planet formation (in protoplanetary disks at ≲10 Myr) and mature planetary systems (mostly detected at ages of Gyrs). Millimeter wavelength observations are particularly important for dust characterization; larger grains probed… Continue reading »
Integration of control technologies like integrated photonics into trapped ion chips is critical for advancing quantum information sciences and improving scalability and portability. Trapped ions are a leading approach for high-fidelity quantum computing, high-accuracy optical clocks, and precision quantum sensors. However, current ion-based systems rely on bulky, lab-scale precision lasers… Continue reading »
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2023 was awarded to the discovery and application of attosecond pulses, as it allowed to measure processes at the natural time scale of the electron. I will present some of the results from our group highlighting access and applications of new time scales (zepto seconds)… Continue reading »
Optical nanofibers are produced by gradually reducing an ordinary single-mode optical fiber to half-micron diameters, less than the typical wavelength of light that we use at 780 nm. A propagating electric field induces a torque in the nanofiber depending on the angle between the birefringent axis of the fiber and… Continue reading »
Quantum mechanics is one of the pillars of contemporary physics; it is the mathematical language necessary to describe nature at the microscopic level. The founders realized that their formulation implies new properties of nature that are far from intuitive, for example a special class of correlations we call entanglement. When… Continue reading »
The Fermilab muon g-2 experiment recently released a new measurement of the magnetic moment anomaly of the muon. Muons are like electrons, but heavier and short-lived. Their magnetic properties can be predicted with impressive precision. This prediction requires the careful consideration of quantum corrections that arise due the interactions of… Continue reading »
The Arctic Ocean has been and is continuing to change dramatically due to climate change. Under-ice physical oceanography measurements are critical to understanding its dynamics, and the remoteness and inaccessibility of the ice-covered Arctic in winter means that much of the sampling must be done by… Continue reading »
The recent release of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer has generated renewed commentary about the use of atomic weapons at the end of World War II. Christopher Nolan sees the story of the Manhattan Project as relevant to considerations about the development and use of new and emerging technologies. Continue reading »
Turbulence within protoplanetary disks plays a crucial role in the formation and evolution of planets, through its influence on processes ranging from the collisional velocity of small dust grains to the ability of gas-giant planets to open gaps in the disk. Because of this importance, more observational constraints are needed. Continue reading »
Tradition holds that special relativity emerged from Einstein’s 1905 paper “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies.” However, many of the phenomena that we consider consequences of special relativity—time dilation, length contraction, mass increase—were understood (if only partially) before 1905. This understanding was part of an electromagnetic view of the world,… Continue reading »
Many properties of polymeric systems are determined almost exclusively by the interfaces between various material components. The research in the Illuminating Interfacial Mechanics Lab focuses on the development of novel measurement tools to assess the micromechanical behavior of polymer surfaces and interfaces while observing the resulting deformation with… Continue reading »
Ultracold atom technologies have transformed our ability to perform precise spectroscopy and apply it to time and frequency metrology. Many of the highest-performing atomic clocks are based on laser-cooled atoms trapped in optical interference patterns. These clocks can be applied to fundamental questions, for example to improve our understanding of… Continue reading »
Unless otherwise noted, all talks take place at 2:35 p.m. in Thompson Physical Laboratory 205 Sept. 9 Field Day Sept. 16 Katherine Aidala, Mount Holyoke College Title: Studying charge trapping in organic semiconductors using time resolved Kelvin probe force microscopy Sept. 23 Physics after Williams: grad school, jobs… Continue reading »
Physics, in the form that we do it today, has long been the domain of cis males (and in western countries, cis white males). Happily, this is changing. But the past casts a long shadow, and we live in a real world where race and gender identity strongly define us. Continue reading »
Interstellar interlopers are objects formed outside the solar system, but observed passing through it. The only two interlopers identified to date are the asteroid 1I/`Oumuamua and the comet 2I/Borisov. I will describe our understanding of how such objects are likely to have formed, what they are likely to be composed of,… Continue reading »
Granular systems are ubiquitous in daily life. By “granular” we mean not only hard objects like salt, rice, or sand; but also soft objects like bubbles, living cells and flocks of animals or people. Dense systems can behave dramatically by suddenly solidifying from a granular liquid to a disordered “jammed”… Continue reading »
A fundamental understanding of planetary histories and characteristics requires an empirical connection between planet formation and evolved planets—a long-sought goal of astrophysics. This connection is now increasingly possible due to simultaneous revolutions in the observations of protoplanetary disks and exoplanet atmospheres. A key step towards relating these observations of different… Continue reading »
RNA binding proteins (RBPs) are key regulators of gene expression. I will describe a new resource, the RBPzoo, which contains RNA motifs derived from in vitro selection data for 381 eukaryotic RBPs. I will also introduce a new machine learning algorithm, Joint Protein-Ligand Embedding (JPLE), which we trained… Continue reading »
The neutrino is one of nature’s most elusive constituents, yet this tiny, neutral particle may be the key to unlocking some of the universe’s oldest secrets. With hopes of learning more about the neutrino, members of the nEXO collaboration are on a quest to detect a process called… Continue reading »
Over the last few decades, scientists have found thousands of planets beyond our own. Some of those planets might be habitable, and perhaps even inhabited already; but how can we tell? Clara Sousa-Silva investigates how molecules interact with light so that they can be detected on faraway worlds, in particular those… Continue reading »
The dynamical and chemical signatures of a planetary system are independent fossil records of its past. Orbital parameters are vestiges of its formation and dynamical evolution, while chemical compositions of planets and hosts are fingerprints of the stellar nursery and the protoplanetary disk where they formed. In this talk, I… Continue reading »
Continuing to keep pace with the demands of Moore’s Law (where the number of transistors on a computer chip must double at an approximately a yearly cadence), the current era of semiconductor fabrication has entered the regime where the smallest transistor feature is on the order of single… Continue reading »
In 1964, John Bell published a theorem that effectively turned a metaphysical question into a physical question. He showed that no local model of reality satisfying certain common-sense conditions could possibly account for the predictions of quantum theory. The winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in physics—John Clauser,… Continue reading »
(POSTPONED from 11/4/22; new date 4/14/23) Soft materials, such as polymer gels, have long been realized as a potential platform for actuation; however, several challenges have limited their integration into translatable technologies. In particular, soft matter actuators are slow, unable to generate significant power, and typically require external intervention to… Continue reading »
“M dwarfs, stars with masses 10% < solar mass < 60%, are under increasing scrutiny because these stars afford the most accessible near-future opportunity to study the atmospheres of terrestrial planets. Our knowledge of these precious planets depends critically upon understanding their faint host stars. I will discuss our volume-complete,… Continue reading »
Robots today remain hidden in factories, welding car parts and placing microchips. I envision a future where robots assist in our homes, hospitals, and nursing facilities. These human-centric domains involve a wide range of tasks, demanding robots with an unprecedented blend of traits. For example, the ideal nursing home robot… Continue reading »
RNA is a fundamental biomolecule present in all living organisms. Its fate in a cell is determined by its physical interactions with various proteins. It is thus important to understand which protein binds which RNA how strongly. One major complication in predicting binding affinity of a protein to an RNA… Continue reading »
Organic semiconductors offer the promise of solution processible, flexible electronics, but the charge transport in these disordered films is not fully understood. Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) brings a nanoscale tip close to or in contact with the surface of a sample and is best known for measuring the topography of… Continue reading »
2021-2022 Physics & Astronomy Colloquium Series Unless otherwise noted, all talks take place at 2:35 p.m. in Thompson Physical Laboratory 205. Sept. 17 Physics and Astronomy Beyond Williams: Careers and Grad School Oct. 15 Kevin Forkey and Brough Morris Title: “Old and New Offerings from the Cave of Wonders… Continue reading »
As astronomers near the commissioning of the extremely large telescopes, the Rubin Observatory, as well as new space-based observatories like the Roman Space Telescope and JWST to peer more deeply into our Universe, our community is challenged to develop a theoretical and modeling framework to characterize and study what will… Continue reading »
A Science + Society Double Header! On Thursday, 4/28 at 4pm in TPL 203: “Towards an inclusive environment for LGBT+ Scientists” In this talk, I’ll present the results of a recently published study – the first ever to focus on physics – highlighting how subgroups of the LGBT+ community experience… Continue reading »
Supermassive black holes, and the active galactic nuclei (AGN) that they power, are thought to play an integral role in the evolution of galaxies by acting to regulate, and eventually suppress, the star formation activity of their host galaxies. I will discuss recent efforts to test this proposed connection by studying the demographics of galaxies experiencing active black… Continue reading »
The Schrodinger’s Cat thought experiment was originally put forward as a demonstration reductio ad absurdum that quantum theory had a problem. Surely a cat cannot exist in superposition state of being both alive and dead until a concerned pet owner checks in on its status. And yet, unitary evolution… Continue reading »
In the cleaning of works of art, conservators rely on an array of cleaning materials, all with different physical properties best suited to specific applications. One class of cleaning materials are gels, which have been found to be useful for cleaning a wide-range of surfaces in cases where using free-flowing… Continue reading »
An equation of state is something you hear about in introductory thermodynamics, for example, the Ideal gas equation. The ideal gas equation relates the pressure, volume, and the number of particles of the gas, to its temperature, uniquely defining its state. Such a description is possible in physics when the… Continue reading »
Professor Gabrielse’s group probes the predictions, symmetries and proposed extensions to the standard model with exquisite sensitivity, using small-scale apparatus and methods that derive sensitivity from precision rather than energy. His electron and positron magnetic moment measurements with a single trapped particle (the most accurate measurments of propertes of elementary… Continue reading »
Abstract Physics degree holders are highly employable in both the private and public sectors. However, students and early career scientists are often unaware of the types of career paths available to them. This talk will provide data on the number of physics degree holders and where they typically find… Continue reading »
In this talk I review the phenomenological picture of tunneling defects in low-temperature glasses. Despite the successes of this model, it has been very difficult to verify its microscopic foundations. Leveraging the power of a novel Monte Carlo method, we have prepared in silico glasses annealed in a manner that corresponds… Continue reading »
Measurement of the faintest signals has become a vital part of disciplines as diverse as medicine, astronomy, interplanetary communications and intelligence gathering. While our curiosity has drive us to probe ever-weaker signals in Nature, the framework and philosophy for our measurement tools has remained largely unchanged for centuries, entrenched in… Continue reading »
Douglas Onyango is Staff Technical Program Manager at Rivian. He is responsible for overseeing battery manufacturing engineering projects from concept to factory launch. Before Rivian, Douglas was a Manufacturing Engineer at Tesla where he deployed pioneering custom automation manufacturing equipment for Tesla Model 3 batteries. He holds a BA in… Continue reading »
Abstract: Quantum mechanics is famously ‘weird,’ which was noted by both Einstein and Feynman, and which can cause both dread and delight in aspiring physicists. But what exactly is the source of the weirdness? In this talk, I will give an overview of contextuality, which is an obstacle to classical,… Continue reading »
25 Sept. Physics and Astronomy beyond Williams: Careers and Grad School 2 Oct. A Modular Quantum Computer with Trapped Ions and Single Photons: Allison Carter ’16, University of Maryland 16 Oct. Atomic Doctors, James Nolan, Williams College 23 Oct. Duane Bailey, Professor of Computer Science/Sigma Xi… Continue reading »
In every field of science, the possibility of discovering and understanding new phenomena, or testing new hypotheses, is strongly related to and limited by the capability of observation. Here, we will discuss recent advances in experimental boiling heat transfer research made possible by unique experimental facilities and non-intrusive high-resolution optical… Continue reading »
I will discuss how trapped-ion crystals can be used to simulate models of quantum magnetism and describe in more detail experiments with single-plane crystals of hundreds of trapped ions. Benchmarking quantum dynamics is a challenge as the number of trapped ions grows. To benchmark quantum dynamics, we measure the evolution… Continue reading »
This general-audience talk will present the science of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioTtech vaccines and of messages in translation. Continue reading »
Historically, our understanding of planet formation and the origins of planets’ compositions has been largely informed by our Solar System. However, we are just one system, and now with facilities like NASA’s Kepler and TESS telescopes, we are discovering a wide variety of planet types and architectures, many of which… Continue reading »
The present-day population of supermassive black holes in low-mass galaxies offers a window into massive black hole formation in the early universe. While we cannot yet observe the formation of “black hole seeds” at high redshift, the fraction of small galaxies that host a supermassive black hole — and the… Continue reading »
More than 80% of matter in the universe is dark: it doesn’t interact with light, and it’s not made of any of the known elementary particles. What could this dark matter be? Looking at the known particles, also known as the Standard Model, we see many different forces (strong, weak,… Continue reading »
The formation of galaxies like our Milky Way began soon after the Big Bang, as pristine gas poured into clumps of dark matter to form the first groups of stars. However, the lives and deaths of these stars soon made galaxy growth much more complex. Through their intense ultraviolet radiation,… Continue reading »
Reactions between ions and radical molecules play an important role in the chemistry that drives dynamics in the interstellar medium and during combustion of hydrocarbons. Unfortunately, experimental measurements of these reactions are very challenging, and thus very rare. We use tools borrowed from the cold atom community to measure… Continue reading »
Over the last century, quantum has grown from quantum mechanics, with explanatory power, to quantum engineering which has ushered in a wave of new commercial technology. Just as computers have become an integral part of the scientific tool set, quantum computation is likely to become equally impactful in… Continue reading »
We take a fresh, broad look at the symbiotic relationship between software and its enabler, hardware. After decades of development of general purpose machines, we find ourselves on the cusp of a new era — what computer architects John Hennessy and David Patterson call “a new golden age” for computation… Continue reading »
Quantum computing promises to revolutionize how we compute, but current devices are limited by noisy qubits. In this talk, I will first discuss the difference between standard computers and quantum computers. I will then explain how the rules of quantum mechanics makes error correction more difficult than in the classical… Continue reading »
Quantum computers, which take advantage of the strange quantum properties of superposition and entanglement, can theoretically solve certain problems exponentially faster than classical computers. Current systems, however, are orders of magnitude smaller than what would be needed for the most interesting applications, and all leading platforms have challenges… Continue reading »
2019-2020 Physics & Astronomy Colloquium Series Unless otherwise noted, all talks take place at 2:30 p.m. in Thompson Physical Laboratory 205. 6 Sept. Field Day 13 Sept. Don Fahey, Joint Quantum Institute Title: “Squeezing the Spin in a Bose-Einstein Condensate“ 20 Sept. David Poland, Yale Title: “Critical… Continue reading »
The region around the center of the Milky Way contains a well-measured glow of gamma rays, which has garnered great interest as a possible signal of either dark matter particles colliding and annihilating each other, or a previously undiscovered population of pulsars in the stellar bulge. Analyses of the photon… Continue reading »
The Earth is composed of a rocky mantle with a metallic iron-rich core at its center. The segregation of the metallic core from the mantle was a formative event in the planet’s history. The mantle’s composition indicates that chemical interactions between Fe-rich metal and molten silicate rocks played an important… Continue reading »
Here is an opportunity to hear about how a physics degree can help prepare one for a career (gasp) outside of academia. We’ll talk about how a background in liberal arts can additionally serve you well for the many challenges today’s work environment can provide. Also, we’ll discuss the dangers… Continue reading »
Polar materials play a large role in the electronics industry, but many of the leading materials rely on the chemistry of lead for enhanced performance. Several types of materials have been explored in an effort to find lead-free alternatives for use in electronic devices, but there are still many challenges… Continue reading »
By taking ordinary materials and rearranging them into complex shapes on the same scale as the wavelength of light, it is well known that one can drastically enhance the interactions between light and matter, from resonant absorption to spontaneous emission to surface-enhanced Raman scattering. In this talk, we… Continue reading »
Hawking showed in 1974 that, once quantum mechanics is taken into consideration, black holes emit a blackbody spectrum of particles. This leads to the celebrated information paradox, which has evaded a completely satisfactory explanation to date. This topic involves a confluence of a lot of rich concepts in physics: general relativity (horizons… Continue reading »
Buildings are responsible for roughly 40% of U.S. primary energy consumption and greenhouse gas emission. Reducing energy use in buildings is a necessary component of any plan to address climate change. Green building certification programs are being promoted as a pathway to lower building energy use. The U.S. Green Building… Continue reading »
Membranes are essential for the existence of life as we know it because they define a barrier between the inside and outside of an organism. However, cells also need to exchange nutrients, chemicals and information with the environment, which they achieve with the help of proteins embedded into the membrane… Continue reading »
There is evidence of circumstellar (CS) material around main sequence (MS), giant, and white dwarf (WD) stars that originates from the small-body population of planetary systems. How (if at all) are the planetesimals around MS and WD stars related? One way to address this question is to begin at the… Continue reading »
Solar eruptions are the largest explosions in the solar system. They frequently (once per day as a rough average) eject coronal mass ejections (CMEs) into the heliosphere. Some CMEs are capable of damaging satellites in Earth orbit, and are potentially a danger to astronauts traveling beyond the Earth’s protective magnetic… Continue reading »
Coronal holes, like the one at the center of this September 25, 2019 Fe XII 193 A image, are regions where the magnetic fields are open to interplanetary space. They are the source of high speed solar wind streams that sweep past Earth, inducing geomagnetic activity and auroras. I will… Continue reading »
Bose-Einstein condensates possessing a spin degree of freedom that can evolve freely serve both as a testbed for many-body entanglement and for extending our understanding of out-of-equilibrium dynamics in degenerate gases. Well isolated from the environment in an optical dipole trap, collisions are the dominant mechanism for thermalization and pre-thermalization… Continue reading »
From critical phenomena to quantum gravity, conformal field theories describe the universal scale-invariant structures that lie at the heart of theoretical physics. The conformal bootstrap is the powerful idea, dating back to the 70’s, that one can use fundamental consistency conditions to constrain, solve, and map out the… Continue reading »
The stereotypes of most science, technology, engineering, and math fields is that “STEM is for men.” Additionally, men are over-represented at almost every level of STEM participation, both inside and outside of academia. Together, this gender imbalance in scientific environments and the gendered nature of science stereotypes signal to women… Continue reading »
The retreat of Arctic sea ice is one of the most dramatic signals of recent climate change in the observational record. It involves an amplifying factor associated with changes in the surface albedo (i.e., reflectiveness) called the ice-albedo feedback. If the ice-albedo feedback becomes dominant in the Arctic as the… Continue reading »
Integration of quantum optical devices with other quantum technologies onto a compact and scalable platform is critical for widespread applications of quantum information science. An integrated quantum optoelectronic circuit would bring these technologies together on a single chip and enable mass-producible, robust, and low cost devices for “real world” applications. Continue reading »
Unlike the Sun, the vast majority of the nearest stars are known as M-dwarf stars: small, dim, red stars that make up over 70% of the stars in our galaxy. Given their great abundance and the relative ease of detecting their planets, M-dwarfs form ideal targets for large upcoming exoplanet… Continue reading »
Living cells and tissues are highly mechanically sensitive and active. Mechanical forces and stimuli influence the shape, motility, and functions of cells, modulate the behavior of tissues, and play a key role in diseases as different as osteoarthritis and cancer metastasis. In this talk, I will discuss the mechanical structure… Continue reading »
Meandering river channels evolve as a result of fluid mechanic and sedimentary processes. Their evolution can be described by differential equations that dictate how channel curvature gives rise to local perturbations in fluid velocity, prompting preferential erosion and sediment deposition–which is exactly the process of meandering. Here we extend standard… Continue reading »
Time resolved spectroscopy aims to follow molecular dynamics in real time and make ‘molecular movies’, with the aim of understanding fundamental processes in nature, such as photosynthesis, vision, and the photoprotection of DNA. I will describe a series of experiments which follow the flow of energy and changing structure of… Continue reading »
Can a material be made of light? To answer this, we first ask what is necessary for a material to form, and then how to go about engineering each of these properties for photons. We trap photons inside of a curved-mirror optical resonator, which harmonically traps the transverse motion of… Continue reading »
Proteins and DNA constantly interact with one another and are inextricably linked by both the central dogma of molecular biology and the critical need for maintenance and faithful transfer of genomic information from mother to daughter cells. However, many important protein-DNA interactions are transient and dynamic, which makes them particularly… Continue reading »
Light has momentum. But over a century after the experimental confirmation of radiation pressure, and on the heels of Ashkin’s Nobel Prize for exploiting this effect in optical tweezers, we may still not have a detailed understanding of how it works. How, exactly, does a simple metal feel radiation pressure?… Continue reading »
The cell is a complex autonomous machine taking in information, performing computations, and responding to the environment. Many of the internal structures and architecture is transient and created through active processes. Recent advances in active matter physics with biological elements are opening new insights into the physics behind how cellular… Continue reading »
Contextuality and nonlocality are two fundamental but surprising properties of nature. Some years ago, Lucien Hardy provided a proof of nonlocality that is widely considered the simplest such proof. After first explaining the meanings of the terms “contextuality” and “nonlocality,” I show in this talk that there is a simple,… Continue reading »