News Archives

2010 - 2009 - 2008 - 2007 - 2006 - 2005

2010 News

  • An ICAM workshop entitled "Novel Emhttp://www.phys.lsu.edu/ICAM/ergent Phenomena Created by Spatial Confinement", organized by our research group, was held at LSU on October 27-30, 2010. The focus of this workshop combines two of the major material themes of the 21st ICM groupcentury—nano and complexity with the expectation the new emergent phenomena will appear. The challenge and the opportunity is to use what we learn to either design or discover new materials or new functionality. There were approximately 50 participants attending the workshop coming from the United States, Asia, and Europe. The workshop had a total of 20 invited talks with extended times for exciting discussions. Professor Thomas Klei, the LSU Interim Vice Chancellor of Research & Economic Development, gave the welcome speech at the workshop. This workshop was dedicated to Professor E. Ward Plummer, who turned 70 at the end of October 2010. Ward has a central scientific concern of combining the knowledge from surface physics with materials science in order to gain a better understanding of emergent phenomena in complex correlated electron materials driven by broken symmetry and spatial confinement. This class of materials include high-temperature superconducting copper oxides and newly discovered iron-based superconductors. We also had a birthday celebration for Professor Plummer at Nottoway Plantation. The entire event was a complete success.
  • Charles Wilson, graduate student in the Medical and Health Physics program, is one of eight students from across the country who have been appointed to the Health Physics Society (HPS) Committee for Student Support.
  • Jorge Pullin has been named a Founding Editor of Physical Review X, the new, open access, all-electronic journal in the Physics Review series, set to cover all areas of physics and begin publishing in September 2011. As founding editor, Pullin will have to set up the initial editorial board, recruit the initial batch of articles, and promote the journal at physics meetings worldwide.
  • RESEARCH NEWS! - Condensed Matter Physics - Ward Plummer and his colleagues have demonstrated that self-assembled nanostructures (SANs) can be used to fabricate the worlds smallest capacitor, setting up the stage for investigating unusual electron behavior and exploring unique opportunities for energy applications. The SANs consist of pairs of 10 to 20-nm long lines separated by 1.2 nm and act as a quantum well on the surface TiO2(110). Inside the quantum well, a long wavelength oscillatory feature of the local density of states is observed at room temperature by scanning tunneling microscopy and attributed to the formation of electronic standing wave for the lowest energy quantum state using first principles calculations. This observation is the first attempt ever made to experimentally image the transition from a strongly correlated regime in a zero-dimensional system to a quasi-independent particle or band-like behavior in an extended one-dimensional system. TiO2 is an important energy material as it is one of the main support used in industrial catalytic reactions. The unusual electronic behavior demonstrated here opens up new possibilities for highly efficient chemical reactivity with unprecedented applications in energy conversion and harvesting. ABSTRACT -- RESEARCH ARTICLE
  • RESEARCH NEWS!  - As part of a program to develop a model of quantum cosmology, Kristina Giesel and colleagues from the University of Warsaw have proposed a new theory to describe the evolution of space-time in the very early Universe.  Their paper (in Phys. Rev. D 82, 104038) describes their approach to couple the gravitational field to a scalar field using loop quantum gravity techniques to complete the quantization.
  • The U.S. Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity (USAMRAA) recently awarded Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center and LSU (Ken Hogstrom, PI) a $2.2 million research contract to fund proton therapy research that could result in targeting cancer treatments more effectively. A major advantage of proton therapy comes from the possibility of delivering high radiation doses to a targeted tumor while sparing surrounding healthy tissues and organs. Additional work on bolus electron conformal therapy, a new electron beam technology for individualized treatment of skin cancers, is described in the recent issue of Mary Bird Perkins Perspective.
  • James Matthews has been elected co-spokesman for the Pierre Auger Observatory. The Auger Observatory, located in Argentina and operated by a collaboration of over 470 scientists from 17 countries, is the world's largest ultra-high energy cosmic ray experiment.
  • Jorge Pullin has been appointed to the Executive Board of the Executive Council of the American Physical Society.
  • Gabriela Gonzalez has been appointed Chair of the search committee for the new LIGO director.
  • Rongying Jin has been elected Fellow of the American Physical Society "for her significant contributions to materials physics, including science-driven materials development and pioneering studies of their underlying physics."
  • A paper by Kristina Giesel has been listed among the "highlights" of the Editorial Board of Classical and Quantum Gravity, published by the Institute of Physics in the UK. The LSU gravity group has made the highlights list every year since 2001.
  • Jorge Pullin has been appointed editor for the space-time and gravity section of Scholarpedia. Scholarpedia is a wiki based encyclopedia using the same software as wikipedia, but with articles written by experts and peer reviewed.
  • LSU Researchers Awarded One of the Largest NSF Grants in Louisiana History: LA-SiGMA will enhance materials science research capabilities for the state – Researchers at LSU, together with those at universities across the state, recently received one of Louisiana’s largest grants ever from the National Science Foundation, or NSF. The Louisiana Alliance for Simulation-Guided Materials Applications, or LA-SiGMA, received $20 million in NSF support. The alliance is led by LSU Professors Mark Jarrell of the Department of Physics & Astronomy and Randall Hall of the Department of Chemistry, Louisiana Tech University Professor Ramu Ramachandran of chemistry and Tulane Professor Lawrence Pratt of chemical and bimolecular engineering.
  • The Editorial Office in Singapore has appointed Parampreet Singh as Editor of the International Journal of Modern Physics D.  This is the leading journal in gravitational physics in Asia, published by World Scientific Publishing Company in Singapore.
  • RESEARCH NEWS! - Jeff Blackmon and colleagues have used a beam of short-lived 132-Sn at the Holifield Radioactive Ion Beam Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to provide a new test of the shell model. 132-Sn, with doubly magic numbers of both protons and neutrons and an excess of 8 neutrons over its number of protons, provides a test of the validity of the shell model and lies at the border of the astrophysically interesting r-process region, where it is thought that heavy nuclei are synthesized by neutron bombardment during supernova explosions. The results have been published in Nature 465, 454 (2010) and were featured on the cover of the August Physics Today.
  • Welcome to four new faculty → Kristina Giesel and Parampreet Singh in Theoretical Gravity, Martin Tzanov in Experimental Neutrino Physics, and Yimin Xiong in Experimental Material Science.
  • RESEARCH NEWS! - Carlos Palenzuela, Luis Lehner, and Steven Liebling have described a mechanism for producing the highly collimated relativistic jets observed in black hole systems (Science 329, 927, 2010; Science 329, 908, 2010). Based on numerical simulations of the coalescence of two supermassive black holes during a galaxy merger, they describe a scenario in which a characteristic electron synchrotron signal is produced in association with a gravitational radiation event, and predict that the combined electromagnetic-gravitational wave signature might be observable out to a redshift of z ~ 1.
  • Work by the LSU Physics & Astronomy Numerical Relativity Group is featured in HPC Wire. At the recent TeraGrid '10 conference, Gabrielle Allen described the work by Allen, Erik Schnetter, and Ed Seidel in developing new software tools to attack the binary black hole problem in relativistic astrophysics.
  • RESEARCH NEWS! - William Metcalf and his collaborators on the MiniBoone neutrino oscillation experiment have previously presented results showing that their neutrino data are inconsistent with a two-neutrino oscillation interpretation of the earlier results from the LSND experiment. At the recent Neutrino 2010 meeting in Greece, they have now reported that their antineutrino data are consistent with an LSND-like excess above 450 MeV.
  • RESEARCH NEWS! - Gary Case, Mike Cherry, James Rodi, and the Gamma ray Burst Monitor collaboration analyzing earth occultation data from the hard x-ray instrument on the Fermi gamma ray telescope mission have reported a sudden decrease in the hard x-ray (50-300 keV) emission from the black hole candidate Cygnus X-1 at the same time as an increase in the flux in the 8-25 keV band. The observed behavior appears to be the start of a hard-to-soft-state transition also observed at lower energies by the MAXI and RXTE missions and at higher energies by AGILE.
  • LSU Professor Invited to Attend Science and Technology Meeting -
    LSU Professor, Hearne Chair of Theoretical Physics and Interim Co-Director for the Center for Computation and Technology Jorge Pullin has been invited to attend a joint commission meeting on science and technology cooperation between the United States and Argentina in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in September. The meeting is organized by the United States Science & Technology Cooperation and the Ministry of Science and Technology in Argentina and will be attended by representatives of many U.S. agencies that fund science and technology projects, as well as their counterparts in Argentina. Pullin was asked to attend the meeting because of his previous experience in cooperation with Argentina and his expertise in the area.
  • Richard Kurtz has been named a Fellow of the AVS for his "experimental and theoretical work in interpreting intensities in photoelectron angular distributions."
  • H. Edward Seidel has been appointed as Assistant Director of the Mathematics and Physical Sciences (MPS) Directorate at the National Science Foundation. Ed has been serving as Acting Assistant Director of MPS since August 2009 and Head of the NSF Office of Cyberinfrastructure since September 2008. At LSU, he serves as Floating Point Systems Professor in the Departments of Physics and Astronomy and Computer Science, and was previously founding Director of the LSU Center for Computation & Technology.
  • RESEARCH NEWS! - As described in a recent Gemini Observatory newsletter, luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs) at high redshift contain great amounts of dust, but a complete account of the origin of the dust so early in the history of the universe remains lacking. Jen Andrews, Geoff Clayton, James Clem, Joey Chatelain, Joe Gallagher et al. have found evidence for early dust formation in a supernova remnant, but the quantity means that supernovae are not likely the primary source of dust in LIRGs, even allowing for dust formation in circumstellar interactions as well as in the ejecta. Their results are published in the Astrophysical Journal 715, 541 (2010).
  • Congratulations! to the following faculty who were honored at the University Distinguished Faculty Awards Reception:
  • CONGRATULATIONS!

    students awardsThe following students were honored at the recent College of Basic Sciences Honors Convocation:    

         Keen-Morris Award - Mary Dean, James Hostetter, Chris Peeler

        Distinguished Research and Public Service Award -  Zach Cummings

        Hussey Award for Outstanding Research -  Richard Strope

       Outstanding Senior, College of Basic Sciences -  James Hostetter
     

 

  • Jessica Brinson, Honors College Physics major who graduated in December 2009, has been awarded an NSF graduate fellowship. Jessica's honors thesis on neutrino oscillation physics also won the Outstanding Thesis Award from the Honors College. Jessica is currently working with Dr. Thomas Kutter's group as a Research Associate on the T2K neutrino oscillation experiment until she starts graduate school in the fall.
  • The Louisiana Space Consortium, directed by John Wefel, has been named among the 2010 Top Supporters of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and minority-serving institutions in the survey conducted annually of engineering school deans of ABET-accredited HBCU and minority institutions.
  • NANODAYS held at the Highland Road Park Observatory as part of a nationwide program to encourage public interest in science attracted over 100 people to an event highlighting nanotechnology.
  • Congratulations to Robert Hynes who was awarded a Non-Tenured Faculty Research Award at the College of Basic Sciences' recent Choppin Honors Convocation, and to Phillip Sprunger who received the College's Undergraduate Teaching Award.
  • RESEARCH NEWS! - Quantum Sensor Developed by LSU Researcher Breaks New Limits -
    Researchers at LSU have invented an optical sensor that surpasses a quantum limit to sensitivity previously believed to be unbeatable. the breakthrough has a broad array of applications, from gravity wave observatories seeking to observe distant and bizarre astrophysical phenomena, to optical gyroscopes used in commercial navigation. The paper is published in Physical Review Letters 104, 103602 (2010).
  • Jorge Pullin has been appointed to the Advisory Panel of the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity of the Institute of Physics (UK). The advisory panel is composted of 20 high caliber researchers from around the world and will provide advice to the journal on fast track communications and other high priority research papers in order for the journal to apply the highest possible quality standards.
  • O'ConnellRobert O'Connell is the longest serving tenured professor at the University. First working at LSU in 1964. O'Connell teaches theoretical physics. O'Connell has taught Physics since 1964.

 

 

 

  • cosmicrayRESEARCH NEWS! - LSU Researchers Detect First Neutrino Events at Facilities in Japan: T2K experiment off to good start. - Thomas Kutter and his colleagues on the Tokai to Kamioka Long Baseline Neutrino Oscillation Experiment (T2K) have detected the first neutrino events generated by their newly built neutrino beam at the J-PARC accelerator laboratory in Tokai, Japan. The initial neutrino events were detected in a “near” detector (INGRID) whose purpose is to determine the neutrino beam’s direction and profile before it travels to the “far” detector at the Super-Kamiokande neutrino laboratory 183 miles away near Toyama. Super-Kamiokande, a 50,000 ton tank of ultra-pure water located over half a mile underground, will be used together with the near detectors to perform the most sensitive search for oscillations between all three types of neutrinos at the same time. PHOTO: The picture shows a cosmic ray event entering from the top left, showering in the tracker with a photon and charged particles depositing energy downstream in the electromagnetic calorimeter. Click the image for a bigger view.

2009 News

  • Victor Taveras, Postdoctoral Researcher in Physics and Astronomy and CCT, is the winner of the Bergmann-Wheeler prize of the International Society of General Relativity and Gravitation. Victor's citation reads "For contributions to loop quantum cosmology and the development of a novel extension of loop quantum gravity."
  • Beverly Rodriguez has been awarded a 2009 LSU Foundation Outstanding Staff Service award in recognition of all she does for the Department and all of us. Congratulations Beverly!
  •  KurtzCAMD offers unique research opportunities - PHOTO: Benjamin Oliver Hicks/The Daily Reveille - Richard Kurtz Interim Director of CAMD

 

 

  • Thank you to Entergy Corp. for a $100,000 gift to the Department to support the new Health Physics and Nuclear Power Industry Workforce Development Initiative being developed jointly by the Departments of Physics and Astronomy and Mechanical Engineering. With support from Entergy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the program is designed to establish a new curriculum, support new faculty, and train students to fill a growing need for trained scientists and engineers in the nuclear power industry. Erno Sajo is the Principal Investigator of the NRC grants and director of the new program.
  • hasp balloonThe HASP (High Altitude Student Platform) balloon instrument was successfully launched on September 11, 2009 from Ft. Sumner, NM with payloads provided by student groups from Virginia Tech, Univ. of North Dakota/Univ. of North Florida, Louisiana-Lafayette, Maryland-College Park, Colorado-Boulder, and Montana State University. The flight lasted for 14 hours and reached an altitude of 120,000'. The news report from Channel 12 News in Phoenix shows a photograph of the balloon at night shortly before cutdown as seen from the Gilbert-Rotary Observatory in Gilbert, AZ.

 

  • Dana Browne, Ray Chastain, Mike Cherry, Juana Moreno, and Adjunct Assistant Professor Cyrill Slezak have joined with the Math Department, Chemistry, College of Basic Sciences, and the Gordon A. Cain Center for Scientific, Technological, Engineering and Mathematical Literacy to offer a Masters in Natural Science program for Louisiana science teachers. Twenty teachers are currently enrolled in the program to provide advanced content and pedagogy training, enhance the quality of local science education, and provide increased access to advanced high school courses. The program has recently received National Science Foundation funding to continue for another five years.
  • The National Science Foundation has awarded a grant of $1,400,000 to Louisiana State University & Agricultural and Mechanical College for support of the project "PetaCactus: Unraveling the Supernova -- Gamma-Ray Burst Mystery" under the direction of Erik Schnetter, Adam Burrows, Christian D. Ott, and Gabrielle D. Allen.
  • Undergraduate physics majors Casey Pangan and Christopher Dupuis, working with Jeff Blackmon have received travel awards from the American Physical Society to present posters on their work at the Joint Meeting of the APS Division of Nuclear Physics and the Physical Society of Japan in Hawaii in October. M.M. White, Jeff Blackmon, Laura Lindhardt, Casey Pangan and collaborators will present posters on "Electronics and Data Acquisition for miniLENS" and "Performance of a 2m prototype neutron detector for VANDLE", and Chris Dupuis, Blackmon, Lindhardt, Milan Matos, and collaborators will present a poster on "Development of a large acceptance, tracking gas ionization chamber".
  • The Physics Intensive Orientation for Students (PhIOS), a one-week intensive program specifically for incoming Physics, Astronomy, and Medical Physics majors designed to prepare students for their college coursework and enhance their student skills, operated for the first time in August 2009 under the direction of Associate Chair Dana Browne. The College's full set of summer orientation programs, including PHIOS, is described in an article in LSU News.
  • milkwayA gallery of Undergraduate Physics Major, James Champagne's astrophotography images can be found here. The image at the left is a wide field view of the Rho Ophiucus star-forming region of the Milky Way, with antares the bright star near the center of the view. The images were taken between November 2007 and June 2009.

 

 

  • A team led by Adjunct Professor Gabrielle Allen has won the IEEE SCALE 09 (International Scalable Computing Challenge) competition in Shanghai. The team's application involved a scalable end-to-end interactive system for the simulation and visualization of black holes that depended on the 10Gbps LONI network and machines. The team, a collaboration involving CCT Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering, included Physics and Astronomy Research Assistant Professors Erik Schnetter and Peter Diener and graduate student Oleg Korobkin. Article in the Baton Rouge newspaper, The Advocate, can be found here. More information can be found here.
  • Mette Gaarde has been elected to the Executive Committee of the APS Topical Group on Few-Body Systems.
  • Jonathan Dowling has been invited to speak to a meeting in Washington, D.C. organized by the White House on the National Quantum Information Science Initiative. This is a planning meeting to disucss the future of quantum information.
  • TeraGrid'09 Keynote Speakers include Ed Seidel, Paul Avery and Thomas Cheatham -
    CHICAGO - Edward Seidel, a globally recognized physicist and the leader of the National Science Foundation's Office of Cyberinfrastructure; Paul Avery, a recognized leader in advanced grid and networking for science; and Thomas Cheatham, a professor well known for his work in biomolecular simulations, will deliver keynote speeches at the TeraGrid'09, the fourth annual National Science Foundation (NSF) TeraGrid conference, June 22-25 in Arlington, Virginia.
  • Graduate student, Sarah Caudill, has been nominated as an "alternate" to attend the annual meeting of Nobel Laureates in Lindau, Germany this summer. She has also been selected to be nominated as a member of the U.S delegation to the 2010 Lindau Meeting. Nominations of graduate students whose work is funded by the National Science Foundation were solicited from research institutions across the country; each institution was permitted to submit a single nomination. Sarah was the outstanding graduate student nominated for this program by LSU. Former LSU Physics PhD student, Cindy Roundtree, was nominated and attended the 50th anniversary Nobel Laureates meeting in Lindau, Germany in June, 2000.
  • Kenneth Schafer's attosecond stroboscope work was chosen as one of Discover Magazine's top 100 stories of 2008.

2008 News

  • In addition to the recent reference to the department's research on the popular TV series "The Big Bang Theory", we have two additional media stars: Juana Moreno has been invited to attend the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Education Workshop November 13th and 14th in Arlington, Virginia. The presentations and discussions can be viewed on live webcast by registering at this web address. Also, an interview with Geoffrey Clayton at the American Association of Variable Star Observers meeting on R Coronae Borealis stars can be viewed at this web address.
  • Research News! - D. Uskov and A. R. P. Rau: Geometric phases and Bloch-sphere constructions for SU(N) groups with a complete description of the SU(4) group", Phys. Rev. A 78, 022331 (2008), provides a geometrical view of two-spin quantum systems. The quantum system of a pair of spins (qubits) lies at the heart of quantum computing, quantum cryptography and related areas of current research. This paper develops a geometrical picture for the time evolution of such systems that closely parallels a similar picture, called the Bloch sphere, which has been very influential over the decades for the quantum mechanics of a single spin in magnetic fields. This latter picture of a unit vector rotating on a sphere provides both basic insight into magnetic resonance and guides its applications in chemistry, biology and medical magnetic resonance imaging. Extension to two (or more) spins provides analogous geometrical objects, albeit of higher dimension, including spheres of larger dimension. The quantum evolution is mapped into that of real vectors rotating on such geometrical manifolds.
  • As part of a major expansion of LSU's materials science program, six new faculty have joined the department in the area of condensed matter and materials science: Assoc. Prof. Shane Stadler (experimental condensed matter, with a joint appointment at CAMD) and Asst. Prof. Juana Moreno (theoretical and computational material science, with a joint appointment at CCT) joined the department in August 2008. Both are the recipients of NSF CAREER grants. In January 2009, we will be joined by Prof. Mark Jarrell, also working in computational material science with a joint appointment at CCT. Prof. Jarrell is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and will act as head of the Materials World Focus Area at CCT. His appointment is also associated with the LONI Institute and the Materials Science Multidisciplinary Hiring Initiative. Prof. Ward Plummer, also joining the department in January, is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and currently Distinguished Professor of Physics and Director of the Tennessee Advanced Materials Laboratory at the University of Tennessee, and Distinguished Scientist at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He is the holder of numerous honors including Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Vacuum Society. He has been awarded the Davisson-Germer Prize of the American Physical Society and the Medard W. Welch Award of the American Vacuum Society. Also joining the department in January and working with Prof. Plummer in experimental materials science are Prof. Jiandi Zhang and Assoc. Prof. Rongying Jin. Prof. Jin has been awarded the Excellent Young Scientist Award from the Chinese Academy of Science and the IBM Corporation Rising Star of Technology Award, and Prof. Zhang is the recipient of an NSF CAREER award.
  • LSU appears on the CBS TV show "The Big Bang Theory"! This undoubtedly a first for LSU! Slightly after the 2:20 mark, a couple can be seen arguing the merits of loop quantum gravity vs string theory. The lady cites two achievements of loop quantum gravity, the calculation of black hole entropy and "minute differences in the speed of light for different colors." The second item refers to a paper by Pullin and Gambini.
  • Welcome to Dr. Ray Chastain, who has joined the department as an instructor. Dr. Chastain's expertise is in observational radio astronomy. He comes to LSU from Bucknell University.
  • Richard Kurtz has been appointed Associate Dean for Research in the College of Basic Sciences.
  • Interim co-directors picked for LSU research center: Jorge Pullin has been named interim co-director, with Stephen Beck of the School of Music, of the Center for Computation and Technology (CCT). Beck and Pullin will jointly lead the center while LSU starts an international search to replace Ed Seidel, who recently accepted a job as the National Science Foundation’s cyber-infrastructure director.
  • RESEARCH NEWS ! - By replacing a few percent of iron atoms with manganese in the semiconductor ferrosilicon (FeSi), John DiTusa, former student Ncholu Manyala, and colleagues have demonstrated a possible method for systematically inducing non-Landau Fermi liquid behavior in doped semiconductors. ("Doping a semiconductor to create an unconventional metal", Nature 454, 976, 2008). See also the News and Views article "Materials Science: A metal left spinning", Nature 454, 951 (2008). The effect is apparently due to too few mobile electrons to compensate for the spins of unpaired electrons on the impurity atoms. The behavior can be turned on or off by applying a magnetic field at low temperature. More information.
  • Ph.D. student, Jennifer Andrews has been awarded a NASA Graduate Student Researchers Program (GSRP) Fellowship for her thesis research on "A Multi-Wavelength Study of Dust Production in Type II Supernovae." She has also been successful in applying for observing time on the Hubble Space Telescope, Spitzer Space Telescope, and at the Gemini Observatory.
  • RESEARCH NEWS ! - Three papers by the theoretical and experimental gravity group have been highlighted by the editorial board of the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity this year: [1] In "Rotating collapse of stellar iron cores in general relativity" (Class. Quantum Grav. 24, S139 2007), B. Zink, E. Schnetter, and colleagues present the results of simulations of the collapse of rotating stellar iron cores, focusing on the gravitational wave emission during the collapse, core bounce, and post-bounce phases. [2] In "Late-time tails in the Kerr spacetime" (Class. Quantum Grav. 25, 072001, 2008), Jorge Pullin and colleagues describe the decay with time of perturbation fields outside a black hole. [3] In "Search for gravitational-wave bursts in LIGO data from the fourth science run" (Class. Quantum Grav. 24, 5343, 2007), the LIGO Science Collaboration (including R. Amin, L. Blackburn, J. Giaime, G. Gonzalez, C. Hanna, W. Johnson, A. Rodriguez, J. Slutsky, and M. Sung at LSU) describe the results of the fourth science run with the LIGO and GEO 600 gravitational wave detectors. With significantly lower noise and greater sensitivity than previous runs, no positive signals from supernova or binary black hole merger events were detected. The theoretical gravity group has made the Classical and Quantum Gravity highlights list every year since the groupt started at LSU in 2001!
  • RESEARCH NEWS ! - The binary pulsar system PSR J0737-3039A/B consists of two closely spaced neutron stars in an edge-on configuration such that one pulsar eclipses the other once in every 2.45 hr orbit. The spin of one compact rotating star couples with the orbital angular momentum and the spin of the other, analogous to spin-orbit and spin-spin coupling in an atomic system, providing a test of general relativity in the strong-field regime. The relativistic spin precession of pulsar B has now been measured to be about 4.80/year, R. Breton et al., Science 321, 104, 2008 , in agreement with the prediction of 5.10/yr made by B. Barker and R.F. O'Connell, Phys. Rev. D12, 329 (1975), within an observational uncertainty of 13%. See also R.F. O'Connell , http://arxiv.org/abs/0804.3806 (2008) which reviews both strong and weak-field tests. The terminology spin-orbit and spin-spin in the gravitational context was introduced by R.F. O'Connell, in Experimental Gravitation:Proceedings of Course 56 of the International School of Physics "Enrico Fermi," B. Bertotti, Ed. (Academic Press, New York, 1974), p. 496.
  • RESEARCH NEWS ! - The Auger Collaboration (including Jim Matthews, Alexei Dorofeev, Javier Gonzalez at LSU, and Megan McEwan, Roger McNeil, and Rishi Meyhanden formerly in the department) has published evidence for a cutoff at the high end of the cosmic ray spectrum. Auger previously showed that the arrival directions of cosmic rays at energies above 6 x 1019 eV were correlated with the directions of Active Galactic Nuclei -- i.e., that the highest energy cosmic rays are extragalactic in origin. Now, at the same energy, Auger has demonstrated the presence of the predicted GZK cutoff due to the interaction of extragalactic protons with the cosmic microwave background. The scientific article appears in Physical Review Letters 101, 061101 (2008). A commentary by Mike Cherry appears on the APS Physics Viewpoint web site.
  • RESEARCH NEWS ! - LSU and Florida State University (FSU) are collaborating to develop the Array for Nuclear Astrophysics Studies with Exotic Nuclei (ANASEN). ANASEN combines three different types of detectors to achieve an efficient and selective instrument for studies of nuclear reactions induced by low intensity beams of exotic nuclei. Solid-state and gaseous detector technologies are being developed with state-of-the-art electronics systems to provide accurate measurements of the energies and trajectories of charged ions over a large angular range. Students at LSU and FSU will develop and test detector elements that will be combined into a completed array and used in experiments with beams of exotic nuclei at the Fox Superconducting Accelerator Laboratory at FSU. ANASEN will allow new direct measurements of nuclear reaction cross sections that are important for understanding stellar explosions like X-ray bursts and the structure of short-lived nuclei. ANASEN will also be a portable instrument that will be moved to the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory at Michigan State University and potentially to other laboratories. LSU and FSU students will have a unique opportunity to conduct leading research in nuclear physics and nuclear astrophysics with ANASEN at major national accelerator facilities. Students will also gain invaluable hands-on experience in forefront instrumentation and techniques that are important for various fields from health care to national security. ANASEN is funded by the by the National Science Foundation's Major Research Instrumentation Program and by LSU and FSU, and led at LSU by Jeff Blackmon.
  • RESEARCH NEWS ! - The LIGO collaboration (including the LSU group led by Profs. Joe Giaime, Gabriela González, Bill Hamilton, and Warren Johnson), has presented upper limits on gravitational wave emission from the Crab pulsar, giving an upper limit on gravitational wave emission that beats indirect limits inferred from the spin-down and braking index of the pulsar and the energetics of the nebula. The scientific paper can be found here. A popular writeup can be found here.
  • RESEARCH NEWS ! - Titanium dioxide (TiO2) has a number of uses in catalysis, photochemistry, and sensing that are linked to the reducibility of the oxide. Usually, bridging oxygen (Obr) vacancies are assumed to cause the Ti 3d defect state in the TiO2 band gap. Phil Sprunger and colleagues from the Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Center, Department of Physics and Astronomy, and Institute for Storage Ring Facilities at the University of Aarhus in Denmark propose that Ti interstitials in the near-surface region may be largely responsible for the defect state in the band gap. Based on data from high-resolution scanning tunneling microscopy and photoelectron spectroscopy measurements, they argue that these donor-specific sites play a key role in and may dictate the ensuing surface chemistry. Density functional theory calculations support the experimental observations. The scientific paper was published in Science 320, 1755 (2008).
  • Spin Helicity Workshop Aims to Bring Together Several Communities of Electron Physicists - "Matthias Eschrig and Gerd Schön of the Universität Karlsruhe and Ilya Vekhter of Louisiana State University are organizing an I2CAM Exploratory Workshop entitled “Spin Helicity and Chirality in Superconductor and Semiconductor Nanostructures” to be held in Karlsruhe, Germany July 13-17.
  • RESEARCH NEWS ! - Matthew Anderson, Luis Lehner, Patrick Motl, David Neilsen, Carlos Palenzuela, and Joel Tohline, together with colleagues from Brigham Young University and Long Island University, recently published a discussion of magnetic field effects on neutron star mergers and the electromagnetic and gravitational wave radiation that results. An article from the Salt Lake Tribune describing the work can be found here. An article about the implications for neutron stars with very high magnetic fields ("magnetars") can be found on the Science Magazine website here. The original paper can be found here. Anderson and Neilsen were recent Postdoctoral Researchers at LSU and are now working at BYU.
  • Arlo U. Landolt is a member of the National Research Council's Space Studies Board Committee on Science Opportunities Enabled by NASA's Constellation Systems, NASA's new launch systems being designed to implement the lunar exploration component of the Vision for Space Exploration and the NASA Authorization Act of 2005. The committee's web site can be found here.
  • Boyd Professor Joseph Callaway was honored posthumously as one of four new inductees into the College of Basic Sciences Hall of Distinction.
  • Congratulations to the Physics and Astronomy students honored at the 2008 College of Basic Sciences Choppin Honors Convocation:
    •  Keen-Morris Prize - Nickolas Van Mete
    • Undergraduate Research Award - Stacey Bright and Brad Corso
    • Undergraduate Service Award - Rachel Mannino
    • College Honors - Shawn Wilkinson
  • Physics and Astronomy faculty were successful on eight separate Enhancement, Research Competitiveness, and Graduate Fellows awards recently announced by the Louisiana Board of Regents:
    • P. Adams, J. DiTusa, D. Young, "Upgrade of the LSU Helium Liquefier Facility"
    • J. Blackmon, "Development of a Novel Prototype Detector of Low Energy Neutrinos"
    • D. Browne, M. Cherry, G. Gonzalez, B. Schaefer, "Graduate Fellows in Physics and Astronomy"
    • S. Guo (Mech. Eng.), D. Young et al., "A Quantum-Design Physical Property Measurement System (PPMS) for Novel Thermoelectric Material Studies"
    • R. Kurtz, P. Sprunger et al., "Acquisition of a Variable-Temperature SPM for Multidisciplinary Materials Research and Education"
    • J. Madden (Math), M. Cherry et al., "Professional Master's Degree Programs for K-12 STEM Teachers"
    • D. Sheehy, "Superfluidity and Strong Correlations in Ultracold Atomic Gases"
    • M. Cherry, T.G. Guzik, J.G. Stacy et al., "Science Teacher Training Using Astrophysics Research".
  • One of the prestigious prizes awarded at the American Physical Society meeting in New Orleans in March 2008, was the Aneesur Rahman Prize to Gary S. Grest of Sandia Laboratories for "his ground-breaking development of computational methods and their applications". Gary received his Ph.D. from our department in 1974 (thesis advisor: A.K. Rajagopal) and was recently elected to the National Academy of Engineering.
  • RESEARCH NEWS ! - John Gibbons, chief of clinical physics at Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center and an adjunct professor in the Department of GibbsonsPhysics and Astronomy, has helped introduce a new treatment for a rare form of eye cancer, choroidal melanoma, in which low-dose radiation is applied to the affected area in an ingenious way: Radioactive "seeds" about 3 millimeters long are placed inside a solid gold cap, or plaque, that is attached to the eyeball. Approximately two thousand new cases of choroidal melanoma are diagnosed in the United States every year. Gibbons' new treatment procedure is available through a partnership between Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center and Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center and is described in the March 25, 2008 issue of the Baton Rouge Business Report.
  • RESEARCH NEWS ! - Ken Schafer and colleagues from Lund and Amsterdam have demonstrated that a train of attosecond UV pulses phase locked to an infrared field can be used to control the ionization of helium atoms with extremely rapid precision. Their work is highlighted in a Nature Photonics Research Highlights article. In a separate article, Schafer and his collaborators demonstrate the use of a train of ultrafast infrared laser pulses to produce images of electron motion on sub-femtosecond timescales. The "electron stroboscope" enables "unprecedented control of electron dynamics" and is expected to lead to detailed, precise studies of electron-atom interactions. A Physical Review Focus article describes the electron stroboscope.
  • Congratulations to Dana Browne, who will receive the 2008 Basic Sciences Tiger Athletic Foundation President's Award at the University's Distinguished Faculty Award Reception at Lod Cook Alumni Center May 6 at 4:00 p.m.
  • Congratulations to Bob O'Connell and Ravi Rau, who were honored as "Outstanding Referees" by the American Physical Society at its recent March meeting. This recognition was awarded to referees who "have been truly exceptional in their contributions to the physics community by their hard work and careful attention to the peer review process." The complete list of awardees can be found at http://publish.aps.org/OutstandingReferees.
  • The Wired Campus - Education-technology news from around the web - Universities Win $9-Million to Create High-Speed Computing Tools

2007 News

  • RESEARCH NEWS ! - LIGO Sheds Light on Cosmic Event - The non-detection of gamma ray burst GRB070201 by LIGO indicated that this event was not caused by the merger of two neutron stars or black holes, contrary to the expectations for a short-duration gamma ray burst observed in a nearby galaxy. The scientific article can be found here.
  • RESEARCH NEWS ! - LSU Faculty are involved in two of the top 10 physics stories of the year   according to the list published by the American Institute of Physics. LSU faculty are involved in the MiniBooNE experiment and the Auger experiment. MiniBoone (which involves Professor William Metcalf and his research group) recently showed evidence that appears to rule out a fourth generation of neutrinos. Previous measurements of neutrino oscillations had provided tentative evidence for a family of "sterile" neutrinos; MiniBooNE has ruled that out, leaving only the standard three neutrino families associated with the electron, muon, and tau particles. Auger, the world's largest cosmic ray telescope, involves Professor James Matthews; Auger has provided the first direct evidence that the highest energy cosmic rays are produced by active galactic nuclei powered by massive black holes at the cores of galaxies.
  • Diola Bagayoko, Professor of Physics at Southern University and Adjunct Professor at LSU, along with the Timbuktu Academy he founded and currently directs, received the 2007 Benjamin Banneker Legacy Award for their work and excellent results in grade school education (K-8th grade). The award ceremony took place on November 7, 2007 in Washington, D.C. Dr. William (Bill) Cosby presented the award to Dr. Bagayoko. The Benjamin Banneker Legacy Awards are made by the Benjamin Banneker Institute for Science and Technology in Washington. More information on the K-16 systemic mentoring and research participation programs of the Timbuktu Academy, click the link above. Congratulations to Diola and the Timbuktu Academy.
  • Gabriela González has been appointed Chair of the committee that will select the winner of the GWIC thesis prize. GWIC is the Gravitational Wave International Committee, a sub-committee of the IUPAP, International Union of Pure and Applied Physics. The committee selects the winner based on the best thesis in gravitational wave research worldwide.
  • Gabriela González has been named a Fellow of the American Physical Society in recognition of "her experimental contributions to the field of gravitational wave detection, her leadership in the analysis of LIGO data for gravitational wave signals, and for her skill in communicating the excitement of physics to students and the public."
  • LSU and Southern Receive Awards: Board of Regents provides matching funds to stimulate research in Louisiana.  Winning proposal - "Multi-Wavelength and Multi-Messenger Observations in Conjunction with the Gamma Ray Large Area Space Telescope, or GLAST, Satellite Mission," submitted by Michael Cherry, with J. Gregory Stacy, Rob Hynes, Jim Matthews and Ali Fazely (Southern).

 

  • ScienceRESEARCH NEWS ! - The Auger experiment has announced the first correlation of ultra-high energy (1020 eV) cosmic ray arrival directions with extragalactic sources. Based on a sample of data taken between 2004 and 2007, Auger sees evidence for their highest energy events coming from the directions of nearby active galactic nuclei. The scientific article appears in Science.

 

 

  • Cosmic ray ballonRESEARCH NEWS ! - The ATIC cosmic ray balloon experiment is featured on LSU's home page as part of LSU's Antarctic research program. ATIC is preparing for its third flight to measure the composition and energy spectrum of high energy cosmic ray nuclei and electrons. Details and the latest news regarding the current flight campaign can be found here.
  • isotopeRESEARCH NEWS ! - At the 209th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, Washington, astronomers announced findings of unusually high levels of the oxygen isotope 18O in two extremely rare types of stars. This breakthrough has led astronomers to believe that the origin of these odd stars could be the merging of white dwarf stars, the burnt-out remnants of normal stars like the Sun. Read the entire article in our Fall 2007 departmental newsletter. For more information, The Gemini Observatory website press release can be found here. The Gemini press release recorded more hits (more than 50,000) in the first three months after its release than any previous Gemini press release.

 

  • AugerRESEARCH NEWS ! - "The Pierre Auger Observatory: Measuring the Highest Energy Cosmic Rays" - In July 2007, the initial Auger results were presented at the 30th International Cosmic Ray Conference in Mexico. The data indicated a clear cutoff in the spectrum near 1020 eV, a result known as the "GZK cutoff" and expected due to interactions of high energy cosmic ray protons with the cosmic microwave background. The Auger Collaboration consists of over 200 scientists from more than 20 countries. The group participating from LSU is led by Prof. James Matthews and includes Prof. Roger McNeil, postdocs Alexei Dorofeev and Javier Gonzalez, graduate student Megan McEwen, and undergraduate students Rachel Mannino and Brittan Farmers. Prof. Matthews has been a part of the project since it was first conceived in 1992. More information about Auger can be found by visiting Nature.com, Science Magazine, or the Auger Observatory website. Read the entire article in our Fall 2007 departmental newsletter. Links to additional news articles about the Auger discovery can be found at Google News (search for "Auger cosmic rays").
  • RESEARCH NEWS ! - "The Relativistic Turducken Approach to Stuffing a Black Hole" - Erik Schnetter, Manuel Tiglio, and Peter Diener from LSU's Physics and Astronomy Department and the Center for Computation and Technology, working together with colleagues from the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolas de Hidalgo in Mexico, North Carolina State University, the University of Southampton in Britain, and the Albert Einstein Institute in Germany, have shown how to stuff a black hole. The result is that their "turducken" approach to stuffing a back hole may lead to useful methods of simulating the behavior of real black holes irrespective of many of the unobservable details of how the interior stuffing is arranged. A preprint of the paper can be found on the web. More information can be found in the article in our Fall 2007 departmental newsletter.
  • RESEARCH NEWS ! - "Medical Physics is a fundamental science concerned with improving people's lives," said Dr. Polad Shikhaliev, who joined the LSU faculty in January, 2007 as an Assistant Professor in its joint Medical Physics Program with Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center. "Medical Physics has a direct impact on people's health, helping cure breast cancer. As a medical physicist, I conduct research with detector technology to find cancer earlier". Dr. Shikhaliev's current research is focused on developing a new breast CT system that will allow detecting breast cancer at its very early stages. Breast CT, as proposed by Dr. Shikhaliev, should be able to detect breast lesions as small as 2-3 mm, compared to 10mm, which is often the case in current mammography x-rays. He also expects his research to acquire the CT scan with less radiation dose to the breast than current low-risk mammography techniques and with no pain or discomfort. Read the entire article in our Fall 2007 departmental newsletter.
  • Joel Tohline has been elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Each year the Council elects members whose "efforts on behalf of the advancement of science or its applications are scientifically or socially distinguished." Dr. Tohline is being honored for his " . . . contributions in the astrophysical application of numerical hydrodynamics, in particular to star formation, galactic dynamics, and compact objects, and for contributions to the development of computational astrophysics in Louisiana."
  • Ravi Rau has been elected Vice-Chair of the American Physical Society (APS) Topical Group on Few-Body Problems.

  • Joel Tohline has been invited to serve a 3-year term on the National Science Foundation's Directorate of Math & Physical Sciences Advisory Committee (MPSAC). The MPSAC is the only official advisory body to the Divisions within the Math and Physical Sciences Directorate, and the Directorate relies on the AC for both high level advice and connection to the community. More information on the MPSAC can be found here.

  • Luis Lehner has been appointed to the Selection Committee of the Nicholas Metropolis Prize of the American Physical Society. The prize is awarded every year for the best dissertation in computational physics. Lehner was the first recipient of the prize in 1999.

  • Profs. Jerry Draayer and Jorge Pullin have been appointed to the editorial board of Research Letters in Physics, an open access journal.

  • The conference Profs. Rodolfo Gambini (University of the Republic, Uruguay) and Jorge Pullin are organizing in Uruguay in October has been decleared "of national interest" by the government in Uruguay. Signatures at the bottom of the document are those of the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Education, and the President of the Republic.

  • Luis Lehner will be one of the participants in the invitation-only workshop "Enabling Science Discoveries through Visual Exploration", organized by the National Science Foundation in Washington, D.C. on September 27-28, 2007.

  • Two papers by Physics and Astronomy Professors Manuel Tiglio and Peter Diener with Research Associate, Eric Schnetter, and by former LSU graduate student and PhD graduate Gioel Calabrese (currently in England) have been chosen among the highlights of 2006/2007 by the Editorial Board of the Journal "Classical and Quantum Gravity", published by the Institute of Physics of the UK. Papers published by members of the LSU Relativity Group have made the highlights list for the last six years.
    The proceedings of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific conference series entitled "The Future of Photometric, Spectrophotometric and Polarimetric Standardization" that took place in Blankenberge, Belgium was dedicated to Arlo U. Landolt in recognition of his life work of setting standars in photometry.

  • RESEARCH NEWS ! - John DiTusa and a group of international colleagues have discovered an unusual magnetic material that has major implications in Quantum Physics. Their findings were published online July 26, 2007 by Science in an article entitled "Mesoscopic Phase Coherence in a Quantum Spin Fluid."

  • Jonathan Dowling was elected Fellow of the Optical Society of America.

  • Jorge Pullin has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). In addition, he also has been elected corresponding member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences (Academia Mexicana de Ciencias), a non-profit organization comprising over 1,800 distinguished Mexican scientists.

  • Faculty Awards
    Jerry Draayer - Distinguished Research Master by the LSU Council on Research
    Richard Kurtz - LSU Distinguished Faculty Award
    Michael Cherry - LSU Alumni Association Faculty Excellence Award
    Juhan Frank - Tiger Athletic Foundation President's Award
    Jonathan Dowling has been appointed to the Oak Ridge Associated Universities National Security Experts Team.

  • LSU Professor Receives Award for Work with International Neutrino Experiment Thomas Kutter has received an Outstanding Junior Investivator Award from the Department of Energy for his work on the large-scale T2K neutrino oscillation project in Japan in hopes of solving neutrino mysteries. - - posted August 22, 2007

  • Dr. Polad Shikhaliev has just received a $389K NIH grant beginning June 1, 2007 entitled "In-vivo intravascular autoradiography with storage phosphor detector". - - posted

  • Prof. Bradley Schaefer has just won a share of the 2007 Gruber Cosmology Prize as a particiapant in the discovery that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating, not decelerating as expected. By measuring the brightnesses of a large number of very distant supernovae, two competing teams -- the Supernova Cosmology Project and the High-z Supernova Search team -- simultaneously determined that the expansion of our Universe is accelerating, a surprising result since confirmed by several independent methods. The conclusion is that approximately 70% of the mass/energy of our Universe is due to a previously unknown 'force' now called 'Dark Energy'. The $500,000 prize money will be shared amongst the co-authors of the original papers, with the award ceremony being held on 7 September 2007 at Trinity College in Cambridge. Past winners of the Gruber Cosmology Prize are John Mather and the COBE team, Martin Rees, Vera Rubin, and Allan Sandage. The Gruber Award is described in more detail here.  - - posted August 7, 2007

  • Profs. Jonathan Dowling (PI) and Hwang Lee (Co-PI), have just received a $600K grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Strategic Technology Office (STO) Quantum Sensors Program (QSP).

    The objective of QSP is to develop pratical sensors operating outside of a controlled laboratory environment that exploit non-classical photon states to surpass classical sensor resolution. The Phase I grant has a duration of 18 months, and could lead to additional phase grants. Co-investigators include scientists from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Raytheon Corporation, and MathSense Analytics, all well as collaborators from the University of Calgary and the University of Toronto.

  • Former LSU Physics undergraduate, Barrett Deris, has received an NSF Graduate Fellowship. Deris is currently a graduate student at Univ. of California-San Diego.

  • LSU Physics & Astronomy graduate student, Enrique Pazos, won the prize for the best graduate student presentation at the 3rd Gulf Coast Gravity Conference held at the University of Alabama-Huntsville.

  • The SPIRES bibliographical service at Stanford University has compiled a list of the most cited articles of all time to appear in the GR-QC preprint repository. This repository contains almost all papers in gravitation starting in 1992. Jorge Pullin's paper with Dr. Rodolfo Gambini, "Nonstandard Optics in Quantum Space-time", cited 240 times, is the 21st most cited paper ever in the repository.

  • LSU Professor Hosts "Ask the Astronomer" Event Observatory - Topic will be antimatter, but all space related questions welcomed.

  • Jorge Pullin has been elected corresponding member of the National Academy of Science of Argentina.

  • LSU Professor Named LIGO Head - Joseph A. Giaime, Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy at LSU, was recently named head of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, or LIGO, based in Livingston, LA.

2006 News

  • LSU Medical Physics Program Gain Full Accreditation - Partnership with Mary Bird Perkins provides research in cancer treatment.

  • Gerard Milburn, Adjunct Professor of Physics at LSU was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS).

  • Endowed Chair Supports Cancer Research Through LSU and Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center Partnership - Dr. Charles M. Smith Chair of Medical Physics Established

  • The American Institute of Physics (AIP) and the IEEE-Computer Society have appointed Professor Joel Tohline as an editor of the Visualizations department for their technical magazine Computing in Science and Engineering. The constituent readerships that CiSE serves include scientists and engineers from many disciplines as well as applied mathematicians and computer professionals, whose collaboration drives the cutting edge of computational science and education.

  • Sudbury Neutrino Observatory Team Wins First John C. Polanyi Prize - LSU researchers among those honored

  • Professor Philip Adams has been selected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS). His citation reads, "For his major contributions to the understanding of high field superconductivity and two dimensional electron localization." Election to Fellowship in the American Physical Society (APS) is limited to no more than one half of one percent of the membership.

  • Professor Jorge Pullin was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

  • LSU Physics Department Racks up Prestigious Awards

  • Professor Jorge Pullin has been elected as a Corresponding Member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences.

  • Professor Jerry P. Draayer has been awarded the 2006 SESAPS Francis G. Slack Award. This award is made by the Southeastern Section of the American Physics Society.

  • Physics Faculty receive major awards -
    • Gabriela González, Edward Bouchet Award of the American Physical Society (APS);
    • Edward Seidel, Sidney Fernbach Award of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE);
    • Rainer Weiss, Einstein Prize of the American Physical Society (APS)

  • LSU students participate in NASA's HASP balloon experiment.

  • The paper "Multi-block simulations in general relativity: high-order discretizations, numerical stability and applications" by Luis Lehner, Manuel Tiglio, and Oscar Reula was highlighted by the editorial board of the journal "Classical and Quantum Gravity".

  • Jorge Pullin has been appointed to the Basilis Xanthopoulos Prize selection committee. This prestigious international prize is awarded every three years to a physicist under the age of 40 for contributions in gravitational physics. It consists of $10,000 and the opportunity to give a plenary lecture at the International meeting on General Relativity and Gravitation. The prize is funded by the Greek Foundation for Science and Technology (FORTH).

  • Physics faculty involved in $1M National Science Foundation (NSF) Computer Science initiative at LSU.

  • Professor Rainer Weiss of MIT (LSU Physics Adjunct Professor), received the Gruber Prize.

  • Luis Lehner guest edited a special issue of the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity (Institut of Physics, UK), collecting the papers of the program on numerical relativity at the Banff International Research Station.

  • Luis Lehner has been appointed to the NSF cyberinfrastructure User Advisory Committee. Taken from his invitation to join this new committee, "Your nationally renowned research expertise and experience with cyberinfrastructure make you an ideal choice as one of the initial members of this new advisory committee. You will be among one of the initial twelve members asked to serve on this CUAC.

  • Article published in Physical Review Focus by Philip Adams, et al. - out of hundreds of papers published every week in the Physical Review series, one is chosen for a Focus coverage.

  • Gabriela Gonzalez is quoted in "Black Holes Collide, and Gravity Quivers", The New York Times, May 2, 2006 article.

  • Scientists pitch regional hurricane center.

  • Nicholas Van Meter, Senior Undergraduate Physics Major, has been named a 2006 Goldwater Scholar

  • News Release - Local Astronomy and Educational Groups to Celebrate Sun-Earth Day with a Special Event.

  • "Boundary Conditions for Einstein's Field Equations: Mathematical and Numerical Analysis", by Olivier Sarbach and Manuel Tiglio, published in The Journal of Hyperbolic Differential Equations 2,839-883 (2005), has been chosen as featured article of the Journal.

  • The Louisiana Board of Regents gave their final approval to the creation of the Horace Hearne, Jr. Institute of Theoretical Physics.

  • Bradley Schaefer made announcement through a Press Release on Wednesday, January 11 at the 207th meeting of the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington, D.C., described his GRB results and its implications for the not-so-constant cosmological constant. See and hear "All Things Considered" on NPR and read more in the New York Times.

  • Dmitry Uskov and Ravi Rau have developed a very compact solution of time dependent operator equations in quantum physics. A general problem for N quantum states has been formulated as analogous to one with two states. The N dimensions are viewed as split into (N-1) and one dimensions, and effective Hamiltonians derived for each of those two sets. Thereby, a stepwise solution is provided for any N. A specific focus is on phases of the evolution operator and their decomposition into dynamical and geometrical contributions, these considerations of interest today in the fields of quantum computation and quantum information. Among recent papers submitted for publication is one which draws parallels between effective Hamiltonians for time-dependent and time-independent problems in quantum physics.

  • Jorge Pullin has been appointed Managing Editor of the International Journal of Modern Physics D. This is a peer reviewed journal published by World Scientific in Singapore and is the leading journal in gravitation and cosmology published in Asia.

2005 News

  • Assistant Professor, Hwang Lee , has been awarded as Principal Investigator of a $400K one year grant from the prestigious National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) Directors Innovation Initiative (DII) program for a seed research project entitled "Photonic-Crystal Satellite Reflectors and Radiators: A New Approach to Satellite Thermal Control."

  • Visiting Professor, Rodolfo Gambini, has been elected to the Academy of Sciences of the Third World (Trieste).

  • Jonathan Dowling was elected a Fellow of the Optical Society of America (OSA) by the OSA Board of Directors at the October 18th meeting. He is being recognized for "fundamental contributions to optics in the areas of photonic crystals, quantum imaging, quantum metrology, and quantum information processing, and for service to OSA." Dowling will receive the award at the Quantum Electronics and Laser Science Conference in May, 2006.

  • Book Authored by LSU Researcher Published - Carlos Palenzuela, Postdoctoral Researcher at LSU in Physics and Astronomy and the Center for Computation & Technology, celebrated the publication of his first book, "Elements of Numerical Relativity: From Einstein's Equations to Black Hole Simulations."

  • Jorge Pullin has been elected as a corresponding member of the Latin American Academy of Sciences. The Academy has 205 members from Argentina, Brazil, Columbia, Costa Rica, Chile, Ecuador, France, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Uruguay, USA and Venezuela.

  • Research paper by M. Tiglio, L. Lehner, and O. Reula highlighted in Classical and Quantum Gravity journal (PAPERS 5819).

  • Jonathan Dowling has been awarded a NASA Tech Brief Award for NTR no 40552: "High Power Fiber Laser Technology Using Linear and Nonlinear Photonic Bandgap Materials" by the NASA Inventions and Contributions Board.

  • Jorge Pullin and Rodolfo Gambini receive 2005 Essay Award from the Gravity Research Foundation. "Classical and Quantum General Relativity: A New Paradigm", R. Gambini, Instit. de Fisica, Montevideo, Uruguay and J. Pullin, LSU Physics and Astronomy.

  • Jonathan Dowling and Hwang Lee are Co-Investigators on a new four-year, Quantum Computation Concept Maturation (QCCM) grant on Linear Optical Quantum Computing, awarded by the National Security Agency (NSA) in conjunction with the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARDA) and Army Research Office (ARO).

  • Jonathan Dowling is Co-Investigator on a new 5-year, Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) on Quantum Imaging, awarded by the Army Research Office (ARO).

  • Picture of a binary black hole simulation of the LSU Relativity Group on the cover of the National Science Foundation (NSF) budget.

  • LSU Physics & Astronomy Assistant Professor receives prestigious NSF CAREER Award. Grant will support research related to superconductors, education initiative targeting
    - - posted February 1, 2005

 

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