Appropriate for physicists Appropriate for all lab staff and members of the public
| Raw date | Event date | Title | Speakers | Host | Summary | Links |
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| Jan. 4, 2023 | No colloquium | |||||
| Jan. 11, 2023 | Space Observatories for the Highest Energy Cosmic Particles: POEMMA & EUSO-SPB | Angela V Olinto, University of Chicago | Chris Stoughton | What are the mysterious sources of the most energetic particles ever observed? What astrophysical sources produce very energetic neutrinos? How do particles interact at extreme energies? Building on the progress achieved by the ground-based observations we are developing space and sub-orbital missions to answer these questions. The Extreme Universe Space Observatory (EUSO) on a super pressure balloon (SPB) is designed to detect ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) from above. EUSO-SPB1 flew in 2017 with a fluorescence telescope. Buit to observe both fluorescence and Cherenkov from UHECRs and neutrinos, EUSO-SPB2 is on its way to Wanaka, New Zealand for launch in April 2023. These sub-orbital missions lead to POEMMA (the Probe Of Extreme Multi-Messenger Astrophysics) a space mission designed to discover the sources of UHECRs and to observe neutrinos above tens of PeV from energetic transient events. POEMMA will open new Multi-Messenger windows onto the most energetic events in the Universe, enabling the study of new astrophysics and particle physics at these extreme energies. |
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| Jan. 18, 2023 | Postponed/no colloquium | Adam Anderson, Fermilab | Chris Stoughton | Measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) have been fundamental in establishing the cosmological standard model, ΛCDM, which describes the evolution of the universe from the earliest moments to the present day. Upcoming measurements with increasingly powerful cameras are now poised to search for physics beyond the standard model, including new particles that could leave an imprint in the pattern of the CMB. I will review the physics we can learn from these new CMB surveys and present the upcoming CMB-S4 project to which Fermilab is a major contributor. | ||
| Jan. 25, 2023 | Accelerator Directorate's Robotics Initiative | Mayling Wong-Squires, Fermilab | Chris Stoughton | The mission of the Accelerator Directorate’s (AD) Robotics Initiative is to develop and operate robotic platforms to enhance personnel safety and increase efficiency of accelerator operations. The use of robots in accelerator enclosures and near targets can empower personnel to accomplish tasks too hazardous or difficult for humans alone. We are a multi-disciplinary team with widely-ranging expertise and experience from different AD departments and other parts of the lab. We routinely support summer interns through Fermilab’s internship programs and collaborate with university students. We present recent accomplishments and current projects. |
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| Feb. 1, 2023 | Using anti-Neutrinos for precision measurements on free protons at MINERvA | Tejin Cai, University of Rochester and York University | Chris Stoughton | Antineutrino scattering on free protons (or neutrino scattering off free neutrons) gives a unique measurement of neutron and proton structure and is a building block for predicting neutrino scattering on more complex nuclei. Previous measurements have had to rely on scattering neutrinos off deuterium and then correct for nuclear effects, or use low intensity anti-neutrino beams. In this talk MINERvA will present the first high statistics cross section measurement of the charged current elastic process νμp → μ+n using the plastic scintillator (CH). The carbon background is significantly reduced and constrained with minimal model dependency using the kinematics of the reconstructed neutrons. The result can be directly compared with lattice QCD computations, and to electron scattering off free protons |
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| Feb. 8, 2023 | The Edge of Tomorrow: Real-time Artificial Intelligence for Science | Nhan Tran, Fermilab | Chris Stoughton | Pursuing answers to fundamental questions about our nature requires searches for the ultra-rare, very subtle, and the inspection of nature at extremely fine spatial and temporal scales. Cutting-edge experiments are often confronted with massive amounts of very rich data on which Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques provide powerful insights. To accelerate scientific discovery, enabling powerful AI algorithms across the data processing continuum, as close to sensor front-ends as possible, is becoming increasingly valuable. To deploy AI in these challenging scientific environments, we require robust and efficient learning and usable and accessible tool flows for optimized training and implementation across a broad range of scientific domains. This talk will introduce the motivations and requirements for real-time AI applications for physics and connections to broader science and industry applications, the development of modern techniques for deploying them into our experiments, and open research questions and challenges. |
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| Feb. 15, 2023 | Exploring the Universe with Cosmic Surveys | Alex Drlica-Wagner, Fermilab | Chris Stoughton | Cosmic surveys use observations of stars and galaxies to help ascertain the fundamental laws that govern the Universe. Over the last several decades, cosmic surveys using large optical and near-infrared telescopes, advanced digital cameras, and intricate spectroscopic instruments have revolutionized our understanding of the Universe. Measurements of the cosmic expansion history and the growth of cosmic structure have been shown to be sensitive to physics beyond the Standard Model, including the nature of dark energy, the properties of dark matter, the mass of neutrinos, and the initial conditions of the Universe (e.g., inflation). I will summarize some recent results from cosmic surveys and discuss the exciting future on the horizon. |
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| Feb. 22, 2023 | LBNF/DUNE: the Science, the Experiment, the Facility | Sam Zeller, Fermilab | Fermilab and the worldwide particle physics community are in the process of launching the most ambitious and exciting accelerator-based neutrino program in the world. The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) enabled by the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF) is the flagship neutrino program in the U.S. that is bringing the world together to perform cutting edge neutrino physics. LBNF/DUNE will include intense wideband beams of neutrinos and antineutrinos, massive liquid argon detectors positioned 800 miles away and a mile underground in South Dakota, as well as innovative near detectors that will precisely characterize the neutrinos closer to their source at Fermilab. Nothing quite like this exists any place else in the world. This talk will provide an overview and status of this endeavor with a focus on the physics we hope to uncover and the technological advances making this possible. | |||
| March 1, 2023 | The Engineering & Commissioning of the James Webb Space Telescope | Charlie Atkinson, Northrop Grumman | Chris Stoughton | “The Engineering & Commissioning of the James Webb Space Telescope” will describe the history of JWST from the very early days, all the way through final integration and test, launch, and commissioning and will provide the viewers with insight into what it took to put the Observatory together. |
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| March 8, 2023 | Science at Jefferson Laboratory: The amazing world of quarks and gluons | David Dean, Jefferson Lab | Chris Stoughton | Nuclei make up 99% of the mass in the visible universe, and all but the lightest nuclei are produced in cataclysmic stellar events such as supernova explosions and neutron star mergers. Every proton (and neutron) within all nuclei is governed by QCD, the theory of quarks, gluons, and their interactions. Understanding the amazing world inside... More » |
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| March 15, 2023 | Energy Research at Idaho National Laboratory: Nuclear energy and integrated energy systems for the nation’s low-carbon energy future | Marianne Walck, Idaho National Lab | Chris Stoughton | As the nation moves toward a new paradigm for the low-carbon energy system of the future, the role of nuclear energy is at a turning point. The future system requires an integrated approach that uses all available sources to produce electricity, fuels, and heat for the full spectrum of applications, including commercial uses, buildings, and... More » |
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| March 22, 2023 | Open | |||||
| March 29, 2023 | Probing Fundamental Physics with the Cosmic Microwave Background and CMB-S4 | Adam Anderson, Fermilab | Chris Stoughton | Measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) have been fundamental in establishing the cosmological standard model, ΛCDM, which describes the evolution of the universe from the earliest moments to the present day. Upcoming measurements with increasingly powerful cameras are now poised to search for physics beyond the standard model, including new particles that could leave... More » |
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| April 5, 2023 | Open | |||||
| April 12, 2023 | The Dark Cube: Hunting for lost German WWII Uranium | Tim Koeth, University of Maryland | Rick Tesarek | The Manhattan Project was spurred by the fear that Germany was building their own nuclear weapons and Allied anxiety continuously pondered the Nazi atomic progress. General Groves commissioned the military and scientific intelligence mission code-named Alsos, which uncovered that indeed the Germans had a two-year lead on the American nuclear program. In April 1945, in... More » |
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| April 19, 2023 | The Science of SLAC | JoAnne Hewett, SLAC | Dan Hooper | SLAC is a vibrant multi-purpose laboratory with national leadership in selected high energy physics programs. I will survey the principal programs of the SLAC science frontiers, including upgrades to the Linear Coherent Light Source which employs cryomodules fabricated at Fermilab, and I will review the SLAC HEP program in more detail. |
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| April 26, 2023 | No colloquium | |||||
| May 3, 2023 | Major R&D Thrusts at the National Energy Technology Lab | David Miller, National Energy Technology Laboratory | Chris Stoughton | For over a century, the National Energy Technology Laboratory has been a world-class center of innovation with global impact across the energy sector and beyond. Today, NETL continues to address critical energy, infrastructure, and manufacturing challenges by accelerating cutting-edge technology solutions to achieve the government’s net zero carbon emissions goals for 2035 and 2050. NETL works closely with the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management to implement DOE programs resulting in a broad intramural and extramural research and development portfolio focused on carbon management and resource sustainability. This presentation will provide an overview of the laboratory and our unique role within the national laboratory ecosystem. Recent activities in two growing areas – carbon dioxide removal and critical minerals – are highlighted to demonstrate the lab’s capabilities and collaborations with industry, universities, and other national laboratories. | ||
| May 10, 2023 | The Road Towards an African Light Source | Sekazi Mtingwa, IUPAP C13 Commission on Physics for Development | Chris Stoughton | Africa is the only habitable continent without a synchrotron light source. In this presentation, we will describe the history of synchrotron light source usage by African researchers and the 20-year effort to bring a multinational synchrotron facility to the African continent. We will highlight two major efforts. The first is LAAAMP (Lightsources for Africa, the Americas, Asia, Middle East and Pacific), whose goal is to enhance advanced light source and crystallographic sciences in developing countries. The second is the African Light Source Conceptual Design Report, which is due to be completed by June 2023. Finally, we will report on a new initiative to bring a multinational synchrotron light source to the Greater Caribbean Region. | ||
| May 17, 2023 | From ALPs to 'ZILLAS: Discovering Dark Matter In Novel Laboratories | Gordan Krnjaic, Fermilab | Chris Stoughton | Although the astrophysical evidence for the existence of dark matter is overwhelming, its microscopic properties remain elusive, despite decades of dedicated searches for the dominant weakly-interacting massive particle (WIMP) paradigm. In light of this experimental situation, there has recently been a surge of activity to broaden the search program by utilizing previously overlooked strategies, which... More » |
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| May 24, 2023 | CP-Violation or Nuclear Excitation: The crucial role of neutrino-nucleus interaction modelling in neutrino oscillation measurements | Stephen Joseph Dolan, CERN | Chris Stoughton | Accelerator-based neutrino oscillation experiments have the potential to revolutionise our understanding of fundamental physics, offering an opportunity to characterise charge-parity violation in the lepton section, to determine the neutrino mass ordering and to explore the possibility of physics beyond three-flavour neutrino mixing. However, as more data is collected the current and next-generation of experiments will... More » |
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| May 31, 2023 | Open | |||||
| June 7, 2023 | Ames National Laboratory: Delivering Critical Material Solutions for the Nation | James Morris, Ames National Laboratory | Chris Stoughton | For over 75 years, Ames National Laboratory has been delivering critical material solutions for the nation. From its start in the Manhattan project to today, Ames has used its foundational materials and chemical sciences, and translated that into practice. This talk will provide an overview of current research activities, grounded in fundamental science, and how... More » | ||
| June 14, 2023 | No colloquium | |||||
| June 21, 2023 | Overview of research highlights, growth, and diversification at PPPL | Jonathan E. Menard, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory | Chris Stoughton | The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) is pursuing three complementary research missions: (1) Developing the scientific knowledge and advanced engineering to enable fusion power, (2) Advancing the science of nanoscale fabrication and sustainable manufacturing, and (3) Furthering the development of the scientific understanding of the plasma universe, from laboratory to astrophysical scales. For Mission 1,... More » |
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| June 28, 2023 | No colloquium | |||||
| July 5, 2023 | No colloquium | |||||
| July 12, 2023 | The Bird Conservation Network | Eric Secker & Bob Fisher, Bird Conservation Network | Donna Kubik & Chris Stoughton | The Chicago region is a stronghold for breeding birds, representing an impressive green space that is of global importance for key avian species and notable for a metropolitan area. At the same time, many species face declines as a result of habitat loss and degradation, pesticide use, invasive species, climate change, and other threats. These... More » |
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| July 19, 2023 | Towards coherent synchrotron x-ray sources: the Upgrade of the Advanced Photon Source and Beyond | John Byrd, Argonne | Chris Stoughton | Synchrotron light sources are now transitioning to 4th generation storage rings with several new sources and upgrades of existing facilities around the world with the goal of decreasing the electron beam emittance, increasing the x-ray beam brightness and increasing the coherence of the x-ray beam with the goal of transforming x-ray science. The $815B Upgrade... More » |
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| July 26, 2023 | Open | |||||
| Aug. 2, 2023 | Breaking the Quantum Double-Slit Experiment to Peer Deep Within Atomic Nuclei | Daniel James Brandenburg, Ohio State University | Victor E Scarpine | ameThe quantum double-slit experiment is a powerful demonstration of the wave-particle duality of electrons, photons, and other quantum objects. When a single electron is shot through a double-slit, its wave-like nature leads to an interference pattern caused by the ‘particle’ traveling through both slits at once. However, quantum mechanics tells us that interference takes place... More » |
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| Aug. 9, 2023 | Cancelled | Chris Stoughton/Minerba Betancourt | ||||
| Aug. 16, 2023 | Phenomenology with Massive Neutrinos in 2023 | Maria Conception Gonzalez Garcia, Stony Brook University | Chris Stoughton/Minerba Betancourt | Neutrino oscillation experiments have provided us with our only direct proof of physics beyond the standard model in the form of lepton flavour violation in neutrino propagation due to neutrino masses and flavour mixing in the leptonic sector. In this talk I will briefly review the present status of neutrino masses and mixing in the... More » |
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| Aug. 23, 2023 | Open | |||||
| Aug. 30, 2023 | Open | |||||
| Sept. 6, 2023 | Open | |||||
| Sept. 13, 2023 | Open | |||||
| Sept. 20, 2023 | Excitement and Challenges in Nuclear Structure: Science of Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (a 30,000-foot view) | Witold Nazarewicz, Michigan State University | Chris Stoughton | The Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) at Michigan State University is a world-class research, teaching and training center, hosting what is designed to be the most powerful rare isotope accelerator. FRIB will be essential for gaining access to key regions of the nuclear chart, where the measured nuclear properties will challenge established concepts. The... More » |
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| Sept. 27, 2023 | No colloquium | |||||
| Oct. 4, 2023 | Open | |||||
| Oct. 11, 2023 | Thinking about Agriculture while Thinking like a Physicist | Chrstopher Fasano, Monmouth College | Chris Stoughton | Farmers and their modern machinery collect prodigious amounts of data. Thinking about agriculture and agricultural data like a physicist is an unusual but very fruitful way of approaching the complex problems of helping farmers maximize their profits and production while managing their environmental impact. The techniques that physicists regularly use for a wide range of... More » |
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| Oct. 18, 2023 | From the Nuclear Mill" to the Large Hadron Collider and Beyond | Chris Quigg, Fermilab | Chris Stoughton | A richly illustrated tour of a century of high-energy collisions featuring people, ideas, and stories, free of dense equations and impenetrable jargon. |
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| Oct. 25, 2023 | Open | |||||
| Nov. 1, 2023 | Patience is a virtue: The 15-year NANOGrav Gravitational Wave Results | Scott Ransom, National Radio Astronomy Observatory - University of Virginia | Chris Stoughton | Earlier this summer, the pulsar timing array community announced strong evidence for the presence of a stochastic background of nanoHertz frequency gravitational waves. This has been the primary goal of the community for the past two decades, and it took thousands of hours of telescope time, over 500,000 pulse arrival times from ~70 millisecond pulsars,... More » |
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| Nov. 8, 2023 | Open | |||||
| Nov. 15, 2023 | Open | Chris Stoughton | ||||
| Nov. 22, 2023 | No colloquium | |||||
| Nov. 29, 2023 | Open | |||||
| Dec. 6, 2023 | No colloquium | |||||
| Dec. 13, 2023 | Science & Symphony Films | Jose Francisco Salgado, KV265 | Mike Albrow | Since 2006 José Francisco Salgado (BS in Physics, Univ. of Puerto Rico; PhD in Astronomy, Univ. of Michigan) has been collaborating with orchestras, chamber musicians, and composers to present original science films that provoke curiosity and a sense of wonder about Earth and the Universe. The films are meticulously edited to accompany orchestral works and feature scientific visualizations, space probe images, historical documents, and Salgado’s photography of natural phenomena. The success of the first two films led to the formation of KV 265, a non-profit organization whose mission is the communication of science through the arts. To date, these Science & Symphony films have been presented in 257 concerts and 185 talks reaching a combined audience of 480,000 people in more than 100 cities spanning all continents. In this presentation, Salgado will talk about KV 265’s mission and the creative process of making these Science & Symphony films. |
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| Dec. 20, 2023 | No colloquium | |||||
| Dec. 27, 2023 | No colloquium | |||||
| Jan. 10, 2024 | Open | |||||
| Jan. 17, 2024 | Open | |||||
| Jan. 24, 2024 | Generation, Detection and Application of Twisted Waves of Light and Neutrons | Charles Clark, Joint Quantum Institute, National Institute of Standards and Technology and University of Maryland | Doğa M. Kürkçüoğlu | Dislocations in wave trains were manifest in the 1830s studies of ocean tides by William Whewell, who discovered “amphidromic points” in the sea, where there is no tidal motion. John Nye and Michael Berry’s 1970s investigations, of fine structure in radio echoes from the bottom of the Antarctic ice sheet, revealed wavefront dislocation as a generic phenomenon. It became a broad field of science in the 1990s, when “orbital angular momentum states” of light were produced, followed by similar realizations in beams of atoms, molecules. x-rays, electrons and neutrons. Robert R. Wilson's “Tractricious” sculpture at Fermilab provides a good framework for visualizing the unity of these phenomena. |
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| Jan. 31, 2024 | Open | |||||
| Feb. 7, 2024 | Muon Colliders –The hard part | Robert B Palmer, BNL (Emeritus} | Diktys Stratakis | If you can build a Muon Collider and do physics with it, that is great. But can you? Much of what is needed has been simulated on paper but still requires a lot of engineering and demonstration to know if they are buildable. For a few parts, like the final stages of emittance cooling, we do not even have even a paper solution. I will discuss this and other challenges. What sort of effort is needed? |
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| Feb. 14, 2024 | Quantum computing with neutral ytterbium atoms | Jeff Thompson, Princeton University | Chris Stoughton | Neutral atom quantum computing is a rapidly developing field. Exploring new atomic species, such as alkaline earth atoms, provides additional opportunities for cooling and trapping, measurement, qubit manipulation, high-fidelity gates and quantum error correction. In this talk, I will present recent results from our group on implementing high-fidelity gates on nuclear spins encoded in metastable 171Yb atoms, including mid-circuit detection of gate errors that give rise to leakage out of the qubit space, using erasure conversion. I will conclude by discussing ongoing experiments on quantum error correction and reaching very high gate fidelities, and the important role of real-time FPGA control electronics developed by Fermilab in reaching these goals. | ||
| Feb. 21, 2024 | Open | |||||
| Feb. 28, 2024 | Open | |||||
| March 6, 2024 | Saving the World 101: Teaching After Staying too Long at the Fair. | George Gollin, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | Chris Stoughton | During five decades in HEP, I have seen remarkable discoveries: three generations, Higgs, support for inflationary cosmology…; ideas that were so very, very compelling but were wrong (SU(5) ⟹ proton decay); a necessary evolution in how we work: larger collaborations and devices, longer time scales; growing preferences for the crippling, pyrrhic victories of turf protection... More » |
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| March 13, 2024 | Inside Nature | Federico Levi, Nature Magazine | Anna Grassellino | Since its launch in 1869, Nature has seen its mission as two-fold: facilitating the prompt communication of the most important scientific developments to the relevant research communities, while at the same time fostering a greater appreciation of these great works of science amongst the wider public. In this talk, I will endeavour to explain how Nature editors apply these principles in practice, in particular by determining which few of the many excellent research submissions that we receive make it through to publication. |
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| March 20, 2024 | Open | |||||
| March 27, 2024 | Open | |||||
| April 3, 2024 | Open | |||||
| April 10, 2024 | Open | |||||
| April 17, 2024 | There and Back again: Low mass physics at the LHC | Cristina Mantilla, Fermilab | Don Lincoln | The Large Hadron Collider has exceeded expectations in many ways, from the machine to the detector performance. Its general purpose experiments, ATLAS and CMS, have produced results that were thought to be unattainable or extremely unlikely to be reached with the current dataset. This is in part due to changes in the trigger strategy and identification techniques of both quarks and leptons in the "low mass" regime. In this talk, I will go through a few of the outcomes of these changes during the last 5 years and show prospects of what we are poised to uncover in the near future. | ||
| April 24, 2024 | Nature-Inspired Design: the way to a biobased material future | Joanne Rodriguez, Mycocycle, Inc. | Chris Stoughton | With a global rise in population we are faced with the unprecedented need to manufacture more materials for industrial and consumer markets. Within the built environment space specifically, 11% of greenhouse gas emissions come from materials used within the sector. Organizations like the World Economic Forum, Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the DOE National Labs, the U.S. EPA and White House are all looking at how we accelerate and promote the usage of biobased materials and nature-inspired design in an effort to lower greenhouse gases. This presentation will consider principles like biomimicry in design and the influence nature can have to a greener material future. |
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| May 1, 2024 | Open | |||||
| May 8, 2024 | Open | |||||
| May 15, 2024 | Cumulative Impacts – Science, Policy, Practice | Alan Walts, U.S. EPA Region 5, Environmental Justice, Community Health, and Environmental Review Division (EJCHERD) | Chris Stoughton | In everyday life, some people are exposed to numerous pollutants from a wide array of sources through multiple media and pathways. Chemical stressors in environmental media (air, water, land) and non-chemical stressors (e.g., social determinants of health, extreme weather events) aggregate and accumulate over time from one or more sources in the built, natural, and social environments, affecting individuals and communities. This is referred to as “cumulative impacts.” Such impacts disproportionately fall on communities with unequal environmental conditions and exposure to multiple stressors. And changes in climate can exacerbate many of these disproportionate impacts. As part of a historic investment to advance environmental justice and equity, EPA is working to improve its policy and practice in order to better assess and address cumulative impacts. This Colloquium will discuss some of the scientific and organizational work that is involved in this undertaking. | ||
| May 22, 2024 | Cancelled | |||||
| June 5, 2024 | Open | |||||
| June 26, 2024 | A Scalable Quantitative Imaging Platform with Integrated Machine Learning | Christopher R. Field, Theia Scientific | Chris Stoughton | Image analysis workflows are currently a non-scalable, biased process that requires extensive time and expertise. Attempts to generate a scalable and non-biased automated image analysis workflow using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) technologies have been thwarted by (i) limited, or impossible, access to external cloud computing resources and environments, (ii) lack of a consistent, streamlined end-user experience for distribution and deployment within these network-constrained environments, and (iii) poor interactivity of real-time image analysis results in closed image processing and analysis software. In collaboration with the University of Michigan and Idaho National Laboratory with support from the Department of Energy, Theia Scientific has developed a platform that addresses these deficiencies to enable real-time and post-acquisition quantitative image analysis with AI/ML-powered workflows. The platform utilizes a novel combination of edge or near-edge computing hardware and a modern web-based technology software stack to provide a fully customizable, simplified User Experience (UX) to run in-house or community developed AI/ML models. The platform embraces scalability by scaling hardware with AI/ML models through a novel ad-hoc clustering protocol enabling users to expand their computational resources on-the-fly. Results from recent in situ microscopy experiments at the University of Michigan and Idaho National Laboratory for nuclear materials characterization workflows will be presented along with a live demonstration and walkthrough of the web-based technology stack. |
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| July 10, 2024 | Open | |||||
| Aug. 7, 2024 | Cooking, Fishing and Jogging through Phase Space: A Practical Guide to Discovering and Understanding New Materials | Paul Canfield, Distinguished Professor of Physics, Iowa State University Senior Scientist, Ames Laboratory | Chris Stoughton | The design, discovery, characterization and control of novel materials is perhaps the most important research area for humanity as it moves into the 21rst century. A myriad of societal problems concerning energy, clean water and air, and medicine all need to be solved by the discovery of new compounds with dramatically improved, or even new, properties. The search for such materials requires a blending of skills and mindsets that, traditionally, have been segregated into different academic disciplines: physics, chemistry, metallurgy, materials science. In this colloquium I will outline the basic philosophy and techniques that we use to search for novel materials. These include a combination of intuition, experience, compulsive optimism and a desire to share discovery.[1] In the second half of the lecture, the specific case of superconductivity will be used as an example of one such search. Over the past couple of decades, a growing sense of where and even how to search for new superconductors has been developing, with the recent discoveries of MgB2 and the FeAs based materials providing, at least for me, clear guidance. [2] [1] Paul C. Canfield, Rep. Prog. Phys. 83 [2020] 016501. [2] Paul C. Canfield, Nature Materials 10 [2011] 259. | ||
| Aug. 14, 2024 | Open | |||||
| Aug. 22, 2024 | Getting to a Fusion Pilot Plant | Sir Steven Cowley, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory | Sam Posen | We are pleased to announce a special colloquium by Sir Steven Cowley, a renowned theoretical physicist, and an international authority on fusion energy. In March 2022, the White House announced a “bold decadal vision” to develop an electricity-producing fusion pilot plant by the end of the 2030s. During this lecture, Sir Steven Cowley will discuss... More » | ||
| Sept. 11, 2024 | Open | |||||
| Sept. 18, 2024 | Open | |||||
| Sept. 25, 2024 | Open | |||||
| Oct. 2, 2024 | Terrestrial tests of quantum gravity | Daniel Carney, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory | Chris Stoughton | I will give an overview of recent activity based on the idea that we can test quantum properties of the gravitational field in experiments. I will emphasize the need to state precisely what hypotheses are being tested, discuss some explicit models of low-energy gravity that violate the usual rules of effective quantum field theory, and discuss some of the basic experimental challenges to getting these tests done. | ||
| Oct. 9, 2024 | Open | |||||
| Oct. 16, 2024 | Open | |||||
| Oct. 23, 2024 | The Vector Calculus of Insect Navigation | Larry Abbott, Columbia University | Chris Stoughton | To navigate through the world, insects perform many of the vector computations that are taught in introductory physics classes. They do this using methods that are rigorous but would not be recognized by students in these classes. Recent advances in the techniques used to study the brains of fruit flies have revealed what these methods are. I will describe how flies construct, add, rotate, multiply and integrate vectors, and how they use these calculations to navigator to goals such as the sources of odor plumes. | ||
| Oct. 30, 2024 | Open | |||||
| Nov. 6, 2024 | Open | |||||
| Nov. 13, 2024 | Open | |||||
| Nov. 20, 2024 | Open | |||||
| Dec. 4, 2024 | Open | |||||
| Dec. 11, 2024 | Open | |||||
| Dec. 18, 2024 | National Lab Research SLAM | Varied | Natalie Johnson | In a 3-minute presentation, early career scientists (earned a Ph.D. in the last six years) will compete to represent Fermilab in Washington, DC! In DC, researchers will have the opportunity to highlight DOE’s impact on innovative research programs that educate policy makers and others about the key role that Fermilab plays in building the STEM... More » |