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DukePhysics
Annual Newsletter
Summer 2005
Department Happenings
—from the outgoing Chair, Professor Harold U. Baranger
W
In this Issue:
Department Happenings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
News from the Associate Chair . . . . . . . . . . . .3
Graduate News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4
The Undergraduate Corner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5
Graduate Student Organization Activities . . . .7
Professor George Rogosa . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
Outreach Program in Durham Schools . . . . .12
Experimental Condensed Matter/Nanoscience 14
Ongoing Research in High Energy Physics . .15
The Computational Challenge of Quantum
Many Body Physics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16
Discovery of Hollow Electron Beams in the
Duke Storage Ring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17
Department of Physics
Duke University
Durham, NC
Phone: 919.660.2500
Fax: 919.660.2525
Editors:
Henry Greenside & Delphenia Avent
http://www.phy.duke.edu
e have had a good and active year here in Duke Physics: research groups
are expanding, graduate recruitment was excellent, funding is holding
steady despite the difficult financial climate, several notable research results were
obtained (see articles), and the revamping of our teaching of introductory
physics continues.
In this first section,
I'll touch on general
issues that affect the
department as well
as faculty news. The
following sections
cover developments
in our teaching programs, and then
present several excitFrom left to right: Director of Undergraduate Studies Professor
ing research topics
Calvin Howell, Physics outgoing Chair Professor Harold Baranger,
currently being purDirector of Graduate Studies Professor Roxanne Springer, and
sued here at Duke.
Associate Chair Professor Ronen Plesser.
Bricks and Mortar
Construction of a new sciences building continued this year. The French
Sciences Center (FSC, named after donor Melinda French Gates) is going up
behind the Physics and Biology buildings, bridging the gap between them.
Currently the skeleton of all 5 floors is in place.
Occupation is expected in about a year and a half (winter '07). Physics is
currently alotted 9,500 net square feet in the new building. It will accommodate individual labs for Profs. Chang, Gao, and Lin, a joint TUNL assembly
space, and a 2,000 sq. ft. reserve for new hires, plus associated student, postdoc, and faculty office space. The FSC will have a new cafe on its ground
floor and lots of interaction and seminar
space for general use.
continued on page 2
The front of the new French
Sciences Center as seen from
Science Drive on July 15, 2005.
The Physics building
is on the right.
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Department Happenings (continued)
Administration & Faculty
ADMINISTRATION
Daniel J. Gauthier, Chair
M. Ronen Plesser,
Assoc. Chair
Roxanne Springer, DGS
Calvin R. Howell, DUS
Maxine Stern, Adm. Mgr.
Faculty News
We had the pleasure of welcoming two of our junior faculty
to the tenured ranks: both Shailesh Chandrasekharan and
Ashutosh Kotwal were promoted to Associate Professor with
tenure. Prof. Chandrasekharan works on computational
approaches to many-body fermion physics in both QCD and
condensed matter contexts (see article this issue). Prof. Kotwal
works in high energy experimental physics at Fermilab (see his
article "How do particles acquire mass?" in the 2003 newsletter).
Joshua E. Socolar
Roxanne Springer
Stephen W. Teitsworth
John E. Thomas
Werner Tornow
Christopher Walter
Henry R. Weller
Ying Wu
The University started a new Graduate Program in
Nanoscience (GPNano) this year. It is an interdisciplinary program leading to a certificate which supplements the student's
masters or doctoral degree. The Physics Department has a close
connection with this program: Prof. Stephen Teitsworth is
the Director of Graduate Studies (DGS) for GPNano.
PROFESSORS
Paul S. Aspinwall
Harold U. Baranger
Steffen A. Bass
Robert P. Behringer
Shailesh Chandrasekharan
Albert M. Chang
Dipangkar Dutta
Glenn Edwards
Gleb Finkelstein
Haiyan Gao
Daniel J. Gauthier
Alfred T. Goshaw
Henry Greenside
Moo-Young Han
Calvin R. Howell
G. Allan Johnson
Ashutosh V. Kotwal
Mark C. Kruse
Anna L. Lin
Thomas C. Mehen
David R. Morrison
Berndt Mueller
Seog H. Oh
Richard G. Palmer
Arlie O. Petters
Thomas J. Phillips
M. Ronen Plesser
Ehsan Samei
Kate Scholberg
EMERITUS
PROFESSORS
Edward G. Bilpuch
Lawrence E. Evans
Henry A. Fairbank
Horst Meyer
N. Russell Roberson
Hugh G. Robinson
William D. Walker
Richard L. Walter
I regret to inform you that we have had a departure from
our faculty this year: Prof. Konstantin Matveev has moved to
Argonne National Labs. I wish him the very best in his future
endeavors.
I am pleased to report that Tom Mehen, Assistant Professor
in our Lattice and Effective Field Theory group, has won an
Outstanding Junior Investigator (OJI) award from the DOE.
Thus all three of the junior members of our QCD theory
effort have won these prestigious awards in recent years (Profs.
Bass and Chandrasekharan won in 2003). I believe this record
is unique among such groups, indicating that Duke is at the
top of the game in this area. Congratulations!
ADJUNCT
PROFESSORS
Finally, I would like to point out that one of our undergraduate physics majors from 1984, Dr. Ron Walsworth of the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, has won the prestigious Frances M. Pipkin award this year. The goal of the award
is "to honor exceptional research accomplishments by a young
scientist in the interdisciplinary area of precision measurement
and fundamental constants and to encourage the wide dissemination of the results of that research." Ron graduated from Duke
in 1984 and got his PhD from Harvard under Isaac Silvera in
1991. Further information about his research and this award is
available at the website www.aps.org/praw/pipkin/05winner.cfm.
The Department would like to congratulate Ron for receiving
this honor.
Andrea L. Bertozzi
Mikael Ciftan
Henry Everitt
Robert D. Guenther
John Kolena
Dewey T. Lawson
Vladimir Litvinenko
Igor V. Pinayev
George L. Rogosa
David M. Skatrud
Vaclav Vylet
Bruce J. West
Leadership Changes
The Department now has a new Chair: my term ended June
30 and Prof. Dan Gauthier has taken over. I would like to thank
him for taking on this position and call on the whole community to support him in whatever way possible. I look forward to the
new heights to which I believe he will lead our Department.
LECTURERS
Mary A. Creason
William McNairy
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News from the Associate Chair, Professor Ronen Plesser
This year saw several changes in the Physics department's teaching effort as we
continue a review of our program and attempts to improve it:
❉
The revised introductory sequence for engineering students, Physics 61, 62, and 63 was taught for the first
time to all Pratt students. The sequence, developed in close consultation with Pratt faculty, emphasizes
problem-solving skills including the use of MATLAB software, and follows a somewhat modified syllabus.
❉
A new upper level course in Astrophysics, Physics 255, was taught for the first time this year by Prof. Mark
Kruse. Directed at advanced undergraduates as well as graduate students (fulfilling distribution requirements) the course covers topics from stellar and galactic evolution to Big Bang cosmology and inflation.
❉
A new introduction to nuclear and particle physics, Physics 205, combining two previously separate graduate
distribution courses, was taught for the first time by Prof. Haiyan Gao.
❉
An advanced graduate course on Standard Model Physics was taught as Physics 346 (Topics in Theoretical
Physics) by Prof. Al Goshaw.
❉
A departmental Climate Survey is conducted at the end of every course, together with the University's
Class Evaluation. These anonymous surveys assist us in assessing student attitudes and perceptions about
the department.
❉
Systematic and organized evaluation of Teaching Assistants has been instituted to monitor performance and
provide TA's with detailed feedback. Our Outstanding Teaching Assistant for 2004-05 was Mr. Arya Roy.
Further changes are planned for the coming year, including:
❉
Outstanding graduate students now have the opportunity to compete for departmental Teaching
Fellowships. These allow the students to join the teaching faculty for a semester, gaining valuable teaching
experience in a closely mentored environment. The first two Teaching Fellows for 2005-06 are T. Brian
Bunton, who will teach recitation sections of Physics 53 this fall, and Ribhu Kaul, who will teach a course
on computational techniques in theoretical physics as a topics course, Physics 246, in the spring. We
anticipate a course in computational physics becoming a part of our standard syllabus in the future.
❉
Responding to a need created by the divergence of the two introductory physics sequences, we will introduce
an “off-semester” section of Physics 53/54 this spring.
❉
The Advanced Laboratory course, Physics 217S, will be undergoing major changes and enhancements
under the guidance of Prof. Seog Oh, in conjunction with a renovation of the space the lab occupies. New
experiments will be introduced and equipment upgraded.
❉
Funds have been allocated to support formal instruction in machine shop techniques for graduate students
in experimental groups. This will allow them to safely and effectively use the excellent shop facilities available in the department. We hope to begin offering a shop class this year.
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Graduate News
Events of the Last Year
by Director of Graduate Studies Professor Roxanne Springer
T
he incoming class of Fall 2004 underwent a new
orientation format in August. Of particular note was the
graduate student panel discussion organized by John
Wambaugh. Thanks go to the Graduate Student Organization
(GSO) for excellent participation.
On 29 April 2005 the department hosted a visit of 46
undergraduate science majors from Morehouse and Spelman
Colleges. They visited Duke graduate programs in many of
the Sciences, including Physics. Physics people crucial to the
success of this visit included Donna Ruger, Shailesh
Chandrasekharan, Ronen Plesser, and Nathan Kundtz. Both
visitors and hosts found the visit very helpful and the Deans
have authorized making this an annual event.
Because last year's inaugural mentorship program was so
successful we are continuing it this year. Each incoming
graduate student is assigned a faculty mentor and two
graduate student mentors. The department helps to fund
interaction events. The rising second years who do not have
research advisors retain the faculty mentors they had their
first year. We thank Hana Dobrovolny for running the
student mentorship portion of the program. Thank you to
each of the mentors for helping to integrate our new
students into the department.
The class of 2004 undertook the first year of qualifiers
under our new qualifier policy. Six students have passed all
sections and are therefore already "qualified" to prepare for
their prelim exams. Congratulations to them!
We welcomed 15 students into our graduate program this
August 2005, including a James B. Duke fellow, and exchange
students from France and Germany. Many will be here this
summer to begin research early. The department looks forward to working with them.
We held our second annual Open House last February
2005 to recruit the incoming Fall 2005 graduate class. The
department once again enthusiastically and effectively gave
of its time to inform the 26 students who attended about
the research we do and what life is like for a graduate
student in our department. Ten of these students will be
joining us in the Fall. Special thanks to Donna Ruger and
the GSO for their hard work.
Preliminary exams were passed this academic year by:
Carolyn Berger, Matthew Blackston, D.J. Cecile, Soojeong
Choi, Bason Clancy, Andrew Dawes, Jianrong Deng, John
Foreman, Jonah Gollub, Dean Hidas, Chee Liang Hoe, Jie
Hu, Joseph Kinast, Matthew Kiser, Le Luo, Bradley Marts,
Xin Qian, Brian Tighe, Qiang Ye, and Peidong Yu.
Congratulations to them on becoming candidates for the doctoral degree. Ph.D. degrees were granted this academic year to:
Physics Study Nights continue to be held on Thursday
evenings. Faculty give of their time and students appreciate
the late-night access to food and physics.
• Kevin Chalut for "SVD-Based Tomography and Its
Application to Electron Beam Data in Duke OK-4,"
thesis advisor Professor Vladimir Litvinenko.
• Heather Gerberich for "Search for Excited or Exotic
Elecron Production Using the Dielectron + Photon
Signature at CDF in Run II," thesis advisor Professor
Ashutosh Kotwal.
• Ilan Harrington for "Stabilizing High-Dimensional
Dynamical Systems Using Time-Delayed Feedback,"
thesis advisor Professor Josh Socolar.
The Graduate Curriculum Committee (GCC) was busy
again this year. The faculty membership remains the same:
Shailesh Chandrasekharan, Mark Kruse, and Richard Palmer
(chair). There has been a change in the student membership.
We thank Carolyn Berger and Ilarion Melnikov for the excellent input they provided last year and welcome new members
Jie Hue and John Wambaugh. The GCC continues to recommend improvements to the graduate program and to clarify
existing policies.
continued on page 6
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Undergraduate News
The Undergraduate Corner
By Director of Undergraduate Studies, Professor Calvin Howell
The Class of 2005
T
his year 12 students graduated with bachelor
degrees in physics. Of these, nine graduates
were first majors. They are shown in the photograph with the current Director of Undergraduate
Studies, Calvin Howell. The graduating second
majors, not shown in the photo, are: Noel
Bakhtian, Charles Gomez, and Philip Kurian.
This class strongly upheld the tradition of
academic excellence by our majors. Four students
graduated with university honors and three graduated with physics department distinction. Our
graduates continue to be accepted into the top
graduate programs in the nation. Students from
this class will attend graduate programs at the
California Institute of Technology, Columbia
University, Stanford University, Yale University,
and the University of Colorado at Boulder.
The 2005 graduates with first majors in physics were from right to left: Joshua Nimocks,
Michael Suher, Alexandra Whisnant, David Foster, Daphne Chang, Charlton Lewis,
Stephen Rawson, Amanda Peters, Ethan Neil, Prof. Calvin Howell (DUS).
with department distinction. They were: Daphne Chang,
“Strangeness Production at RHIC from Cascading Partons”,
supervised by Steffen Bass; David Foster, “A Structural
Model of Genetic Regulatory Networks”, supervised by Joshua
Socolar; and Ethan Neil, “Monte Carlo Simulation of an
Atomic Interferometer”, supervised by Thomas Phillips.
The breadth of the career interests of this class is extraordinary. About 50% of the class will go to graduate school
either this year or next year in physics or related fields. An
important goal of the undergraduate physics program is to
produce scientists who are capable of and interested in teaching
physics to a broad audience. This year two of our graduates
have accepted teaching positions in primary schools. Philip
Kurin is in the Teach for America program and is assigned to
a public school in Charlotte, North Carolina. Stephen Rawson
will teach physical science in middle school in Louisville,
Kentucky while pursuing a graduate degree in teaching.
Others will take positions in business and government. In
addition, one of our graduates, Charlton Lewis, will start
active duty in the US Air Force during the summer on track
to becoming an Air Force aviator
SPS and Sigma-Pi-Sigma News
At the conclusion of the annual department poster session
for graduate and undergraduate research, which was held on
April 20, ten students were inducted into the Duke chapter of
Sigma-Pi-Sigma, the national physics honor society. Dr.
William McNairy, the faculty advisor for the Duke chapter,
presided over the induction ceremony. The new members are:
Nigel Barrella (class of 2007), John Barton (class of 2006),
Alvaro Chavarria (class of 2007), Daniel Fritchman (class
of 2006), William Hwang (class of 2006), Ingrid Kaldre
(class of 2006), Charlton Lewis (class of 2005),
Abijit Mehta (class of 2006), Tyler Patla (class of 2007),
Benjamin Reed (class of 2007), and Paul Sellers (class
of 2006).
continued on page 6
Providing students with opportunities to participate in
frontier research is an important factor in our success in
attracting some of the brightest students at Duke as physics
majors. Three of our majors in the graduating class of 2005
completed honors thesis projects in physics and graduated
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Graduate & Undergraduate News (cont’d)
Events from Last Year – continued from pg. 4
their activities were designed to encourage undergraduate students to become engaged in research. Through SPS events our
undergraduate students had opportunities to get a glimpse at the
research being done by our faculty. During this year several students presented posters and talks at national and international
physics conferences. In addition, Abhijit Mehta represented
the Duke Chapter at the National Sigma-Pi-Sigma Congress
which was held in October 2004 in Albuquerque, NM. We congratulate the SPS for a very successful year, and we thank the SPS
officers for their service and all who worked with the SPS this
year. New officers for SPS were elected in the spring 2005. The
new officers who will serve during the 2005-06 academic year
are: Peter Blair (president), Alvaro Chavarria (vice president), Abhijit Mehta (treasurer), Jon Adkins, and Allen Lee
(social chairs) and Nigel Barrella (community service chair).
• Michael Kirby for "Measurement of W + photon
production in proton-antiproton collisions at root(s) =
1.96 TeV," thesis advisor Professor Al Goshow.
• Ilarion Melnikov for "Application of Topological
Field Theory to String Propagation on Non-Trivial
Backgrounds," thesis advisor Professor Ronen Plesser.
• Sung Ha Park for "Self-Assembled DNA Nanostructures and DNA-Templated Silver Nanowire," thesis
advisor Professor Gleb Finkelstein.
• Serguei Vorojtsov for "Quantum Dots: Coulomb
Blockade, Mesoscopic Fluctuations, and Qubit
Decoherence," thesis advisor Professor
Harold Baranger.
We wish them the best and hope that they will remain active
as alumni to Duke.
Student Scholarships
A number of our graduate students have won awards or
postdoctoral positions: Matthew Blackston won a DAAD
grant (German exchange fellowship), both Amanda
Sabourov and James Esterline were selected by Oak Ridge
Associated Universities to attend the Nobel ceremony. Xin
Qian received a Southeastern Universities Research Association
fellowship, Ribhu Kaul won a Duke International Research
Travel Award, Rob Saunders was named a Young Trustee,
Chee Liang Hoe received an award from the Radiological
Society of North America, both Brent Perdue and
Matthew Kiser were awarded the 2004/2005 Henry
Newson Fellowhip, and our London Fellows for 2005 are
Oleg Tretiakov and Joe Kinast. The following students have
accepted postdoctoral positions: Heather Gerberich at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne, Sung Ha Park at
the California Institute of Technology, Oleg Tretiakov at
Johns Hopkins University, and Ilarion Melnikov at the
University of Chicago. These awards and positions are a
testament to the strength of our fine graduate students. Duke
Physics is proud of them.
In this section we recognize physics majors who were awarded
national scholarships and awards during the 2004-05 school years.
Two physics majors, Peter Blair (class of 2006) and
William (Billy) Hwang (class of 2006) were awarded the
Goldwater Scholarship this year. The Barry M. Goldwater
Scholarship is a prestigious merit-based award for undergraduates who plan careers in mathematics, the natural sciences, and
engineering. Peter is a physics and math double major. Billy has
three majors: biomedical engineering, electrical and computer
engineering, and physics. They were among 320 sophomores
and juniors selected on the basis of academic merit from a
national field of 1,091 nominees.
Noel Bakhtian was awarded a Churchill Scholarship to
study fluid dynamics at Cambridge University for one year.
Afterwards she plans to attend graduate school at Stanford
University in Aeronautics and Astronautics. Noel graduated this
May (2005) with double majors in mechanical engineering and
physics.
Peter Blair was selected by the Government of the
Bahamas as the nation's top scholar for the year 2005. He was
presented the Minister's Award (Education) at the National
Youth Recognition Ceremony in May 2005. This award is
bestowed on one individual annually throughout the
Commonwealth of the Bahamas and is a great honor for a
young scholar from this country.
Undergraduate News – continued from pg. 5
The officers of the Society of Physics Students (SPS) for this
academic year (2004-05) were: Peter Blair (president),
Charlton Lewis (vice president), Abhijit Mehta (treasurer)
and Daphne Chang (secretary). Under their direction, the
SPS had one of its most active years in recent times. Many of
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Graduate Student Organization Activities
Summary of Graduate Student Organization Activities
by Physics Graduate Student and GSO President John Wambaugh
Student Research Continues to Excel
T
he weekly graduate student seminars featured a broad range
of topics, from double-beta decay and numerical techniques for quantum field theory to radioisotope observations
of plants and the spread
of disease through social
networks. Beyond seminars, a great deal of
work was published
and presented at conferences around the world.
Fourth-year student
Joe Kinast had a productive year working in
Fourth-year student Joe Kinast
John Thomas's Atomic,
Molecular and Optical
physics laboratory. His research includes the first thermodynamic experiments on optically-trapped interacting Fermi
gases. Along with post-doc Andrey Turlapov and Professor
Thomas, Joe published four papers, including a PRL and an
article in the February 25 issue of Science. Joe's experiments
provided strong evidence for the existence
of superfluidity in a gas similar to those at
universe's greatest extremes – including the Big
Bang. Joe, along with sixth-year student Oleg
Tretiakov, also won the Fritz London Graduate
Fellowship this year.
Susan Clark, third-year Andy Dawes and post-doc Lucas Illing.
Photo by Dan Gauther.
of image analysis, Trush was able to determine the exact forces
of the contacts between numerous small particles. This
technique may provide new insights into a variety of nonequilibirum statistical systems.
Third-year student Andy Dawes, along
with post-doc Lucas Illing, undergraduate
Susan Clark and Professor Dan Gauthier,
published an article on "all-optical switching"
in the April 29 issue of Science. The novel
technique uses as few as 2700 photons to
control a vastly stronger laser beam. Alloptical switches may one day replace electrical
devices such as transistors and may also
provide the backbone for quantum computing.
Fifth-year student Trush Majmudar and
Professor Bob Behringer published a paper
in the June 23 issue of Nature about careful
observations of stress-induced anisotropy in
granular materials. By developing a new method
Fifth-year student Trush Majmudar
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Graduate Student Organization Activities
Third-year student Qiang (Alan) Ye in Tibet.
Physics Graduate Students Travel Far and Wide
Both business and pleasure sent physics students all over
the globe this year. Some of the highlights include third-year
student Qiang Ye's visit to Tibet and Matthew Blackston's
trip to Italy for a conference. During the summer third-year
student Brian Tighe vacationed in Austria, while first-year
Leah Broussard worked at Los Alamos and in Holland.
Fourth-year student Amanda Sabourov and secondyear James Esterline both spent a week in Lindau,
Germany with numerous Nobel Laureates from physics,
chemistry and biology. Over one dinner Amanda discussed
not only dark matter, dark energy and the impact of
winning the Nobel prize with 2004 winner Frank Wilczek,
but also Legos and Einstein jokes.
Matthew, Courtney and Daniel Blackston in Italy.
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Graduate Student Organization Activities
Fifth-year student Robert Saunders.
Graduate Students Continue to
Serve Duke-wide Roles
Fourth-year Amanda Sabourov (far left) with 2004 Physics Nobel Prize winner Frank Wilczek
(center) and other students at the 55th Lindau Meeting of Nobel Laureates and Students.
Peer Mentoring Program Begins
Fifth-year student Hana Dobrovolny and Director of Graduate Studies
Roxanne Springer began a mentoring program for incoming students last
fall. Before each new graduate student even arrived they were contacted by
their two graduate student mentors to offer advice and support for starting
at Duke. Once here, students met with their mentors variously during
lunches and trips for ice cream. Though the programs impact is hard to
quantify, it seems to have been very helpful.
Fifth-year student Rob Saunders was
selected as a Duke University Young Trustee this
year. This incredibly prestigious position follows Rob's rare consecutive terms as president of
Duke's Graduate and Professional Student
Council. Meanwhile first-year Nate Kundtz,
the physics department's representative to
GPSC, was elected to the Board of Trustee's
Academic Affairs committee. Both Nate and
Rob will be able to bring their physics
perspective into interactions with faculty,
administrators and trustees in the coming year.
First-year student Nathan Kundtz (right)
with Dr. Angelo Bove.
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Professor George Rogosa
Professor George Rogosa:
The Person Introductory Physics
Students Turn to In Time of Need
by Professor Henry Greenside
O
ver the last two decades, one of the friendliest and most
helpful faces in the Physics Department for the many
students who take introductory physics each year is that of
Adjunct Physics Professor George Rogosa. Year after year,
George has received the highest praise from students for his
patience, empathy, and insight in helping them through the
difficulties of learning physics. He has been a tremendous
asset to the Physics Department by improving the quality of
our undergraduate education.
George has had a life-long interest in physics and mathematics and it was an interesting path by which he ended
up coming to Duke in 1980. Growing up in Lynn,
Massachusetts, he had no physics in high school but was fortunate to have several strong math teachers who whetted his
interest in mathematics. George attended Johns Hopkins
University in Baltimore as an undergraduate and especially
liked the physics and math courses that he took there. He was
pleased to find that some of his math professors such as Oscar
Zariski and Aurel Wintner were internationally recognized
leaders in mathematics research and were also very good at
teaching.
George began physics graduate school in the 1940s also at
Johns Hopkins. This was during World War II and, like many
other graduate students working in physics, he obtained a
deferment and so did not see action during the war. George
worked in the X-ray spectroscopy lab of Professor Bearden
(who had been a student of Nobel Prize winner Arthur
Compton) and George did his PhD thesis on the X-ray
spectrum of tantalum.
Toward the end of his PhD, a friend invited George to join
a new X-ray lab at Florida State University. George did so in
the late 1940s and spent six years there, first as an assistant
professor and later as an associate professor. This was George's
first experience with teaching and he enjoyed it greatly.
10
Adjunct Professor George Rogosa, a best friend and top teacher
for Duke undergraduates taking an introductory Physics course.
In the middle 1950s, George began a new phase of his
professional life when he left Florida State University to join
the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), the organization that
became today's Department of Energy. At the AEC, George
started at the bottom but worked his way up until he was
the program officer for many government and university
programs related to nuclear, atomic, and high-energy physics.
He visited many national labs and met many prominent
scientists through these visits, including Nobel laureates such
as Ernest Lawrence, Luiz Alvarez, and Hans Bethe. It was
through the AEC that George first came into contact with
Duke University where he got to know physicists such as
Henry Newson, Harold Lewis, and Edward Bilpuch.
Around 1979, George's wife was having health problems
and George and his wife wanted to move to a place near an
excellent medical facility. He also had an unusual one-time
opportunity to retire with full benefits from AEC. His friends
at Duke encouraged him to come and so he began a new
career, teaching introductory physics courses at Duke starting
in 1979 and continuing to this year of 2005.
Although Duke, especially our undergraduate students, has
been greatly appreciative of George's contributions, George
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Page 11
Outstanding Service
Award given to
Adjunct Professor
George Rogosa in 1998
in recognition of his
many years of help
with the introductory
physics courses.
says that Duke in turn has been very good to him. He is
grateful for his friends at TUNL for making a teaching
position available after his AEC retirement and he is extremely
grateful to the Duke Medical Center for helping his wife
through some difficult times.
For his many years of excellence in teaching, the Physics
Department honored George with an Outstanding Service
Award, and his plaque hangs in the wall of the Physics Faculty
lounge for faculty and students to see and appreciate. The
Physics Department and the University remains fortunate
in having such a patient, insightful, and caring professor
who has had such a positive impact on so many Duke
undergraduates.
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Undergraduate & Graduate News
A Physics Outreach Program to Durham Public Schools
by Associate Professor M. Ronen Plesser
I
have always wanted to combine research in
physics with an opportunity to share its joys with
children. When, after a longish turn on the academic
two-year carousel, we finally settled with our five
children in Durham in 1998, I had my chance.
Over the past few years I have greatly enjoyed finding ways to collaborate with teachers in the local
schools. Like many of my colleagues, I have visited
classrooms, bringing demonstration materials from
the excellent collection maintained by Dr. McNairy
and presenting topics from the nature of electricity
to string theory and cosmology to students of all
ages. Such visits offer students not only the opportunity to learn some topics not covered by their
standard curriculum, or to go to greater depth in
others, but also the chance to experience science as
an exciting and fun adventure undertaken by people
they can meet firsthand. They are an important
part of what we as a science department can bring
to the local schools; they are also a lot of fun.
Duke volunteer Katie Dunn and Ms. Spearman's class discuss the phases of the Moon.
Over the course of a few years, I found that one topic in
particular excited the imagination and curiosity of young
children at Forest View Elementary the school attended by
my children. The subject was astronomy. Regular invitations
led me to begin to develop a set of presentations on subjects
like the phases of the Moon, the seasons, why the sky is blue
and the Sun looks yellow, etc. I invited students and parents
for evening skywatching on the school grounds, during which
I pointed out constellations and stars, and spoke of the myths
as well as some of the scientific discoveries associated to them.
I invited students and parents to the observatory on the roof
of the Physics building, where we would peer through
telescopes at planets and bright stars.
In the 2001-02 academic year, over 200 students visited
the roof observatory, but our observations were limited by the
dated telescopes as well as campus light pollution. With the
12
support and encouragement of John Harer, then Vice Provost
for Academic Affairs and an amateur astronomer, the department was able to establish a teaching observatory in the Duke
forest in 2002, with modern telescopes in the relative dark of
the woods. Outreach activities were from the beginning an
important part of the observatory's mission.
At about the same time, I found I was being invited to
present in classrooms more times than I could fit into my
schedule. John Heffernan, an energetic and dedicated third
grade teacher at Forest View, taught me about the North
Carolina Standard Course of Studies, a statewide curriculum
standard, and pointed out that the third grade syllabus
included a unit on cycles in the Earth/Sun/Moon system,
their cause and their effects on life on Earth. I was teaching
the department's introductory Astronomy class, Physics 55, at
the time, developing ways to integrate the new observatory
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Outreach Program in Durham Schools
Installing the posts for the 10-inch reflecting
telescopes that are being used in the
astronomy observatory. The location is a
field in Duke Forest that is an easy three
mile drive from the Physics Building.
into the course, and I offered my
students the opportunity to join me
at Forest View, teaching third grade
students some of the things we were
discussing in class. With five volunteers working in three classrooms,
and with me hurriedly writing lesson
plans based on my presentations, we
taught the entire unit to three classes
in the fall. In the spring, with an
expanded group, we added lessons on the properties of light
for these three classes, and taught the astronomy units to the
other third grade classes, previously hesitant teachers now
welcoming us enthusiastically.
That summer, with the help of a NASA Space Grant, John
Heffernan and I rewrote the curriculum materials in a more
organized form, available at www.cgtp.duke.edu/~plesser/
outreach/ and the following year Duke volunteers taught the
entire sequence to all third grades at Forest View as well as
Hillandale Elementary. The program
has continued to grow, and this past
year comprised 16 volunteers, including one postdoc, one graduate student,
some Physics majors, and other undergraduates, teaching the entire unit to 13
third grades at four local elementary
schools. The students meet with their
classes for an hour once a week, and all
meet with me once a week to discuss the
upcoming lessons, teaching ideas, and
science background.
In August, the Durham Public
School system will introduce a standard
curriculum unit (kit) for teaching this
material. About half of the inquirybased activities in the kit are based on
the lesson plans developed at Duke. As
the kits are rolled out to the
first cohort of teachers this
fall, the plan is to provide a
Duke volunteer to support
each teacher using the kit for
the first time. Over the next
few years this will introduce
the kit to all third grades in the
district. This summer, John
was awarded a prestigious
Kenan Fellowship to continue
to work with me to develop
this curriculum and to make it
available statewide. Over the
next two years we will work to
produce a web-based version designed to make it accessible to
teachers throughout NC.
Teaching children science is an amazingly rewarding
experience, for me as well as for the student volunteers. One
student, now a Physics major, wrote me: “I want to thank you
for .... helping me get involved in the ‘extracurricular side of
physics’ here at Duke. Seeing the kids at Forest View get so
excited about science has really made me consider a career in
physics.” I couldn't have said it better.
Students at Hillandale Elementary in Durham compare the lighting on their styrofoam balls to the real Moon.
13
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Faculty Research
Experimental Condensed Matter / Nanoscience
by Assistant Professor Gleb Finkelstein
G
leb Finkelstein joined
the Duke Physics Department in 2000 as an Assistant
Professor. He works in the field
of Experimental Condensed
Matter / Nanoscience and studies
electronic properties of nanostructures at low temperatures.
The work in Finkelstein's laboratory focuses on carbon nanotubes
and DNA-based Self-Assembled
nanostructures.
otube one-by-one, the conductance of the sample oscillates
(IMAGE 3, color-coded conductance map of a nanotube
transistor as a function of the substrate voltage and the
source-drain bias).
Assistant Professor Gleb Finkelstein
and his lab studies carbon and
DNA-based nanostructure.
Alex Makarovski, a graduate
student working with Finkelstein,
grows the carbon nanotubes in Jie Liu’s laboratory in the
Chemistry Department. Afterwards, he fabricates nanoscale
leads to the nanotubes using the Scanning Electron
Microscope and the Electron - Beam Lithography setup
(IMAGE 1) located in the basement of the Physics building.
The individually contacted carbon nanotubes form
nanoscale transistors (IMAGE 2). Their electronic properties
are measured at low temperatures and high magnetic fields.
The experimentalists are interested in Coulomb blockade
physics: when the classical energy required to add just one
electron to the nanotubes becomes larger that the temperature,
the electrical conductivity through the nanotube is suppressed.
As electrons are
1
added to the nan-
2
To study the local properties of the nanotubes samples,
Finkelstein, graduate student Matthew Prior and postdoctoral associate Alexey Zhukov have set up a low temperature
Atomic Force Microscope. A sharp tip is raster scanned in
close proximity to the sample and measures the topographic
profile of the nanotube transistor. At the same time, bias
applied to the tip locally influences the nanotube conductivity
(Scanning Gate Microscopy). Correlating the topographic
information with the scanning gate results allows one to study
the local electronic properties of the nanotube (IMAGE 4).
Working in collaboration with Thom LaBean’s (Chemistry
and Computer Science), Finkelstein and his group study the
properties of the self-assembled nanostructures based on
DNA. Two types of structures are investigated. First, DNA
lattices with a pitch of just 20 nm (IMAGE 5) could be used
to anchor various nanoscale building blocks at the predetermined locations on the surface with a nanometer precision.
Second, the experimentalist metallize the DNA molecules in
chemical solutions to form wires down to 15-20 nanometers
in diameter. These wires may serve as interconnects in future
nanoelectronic devices. Sung Ha Park, who was working on
this project as a physics graduate student has just accepted a
postdoctoral position at the Caltech Center for the Physics of
Information.
4
3
14
5
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Faculty Research
Ongoing Research in High Energy Physics
by Assistant Professor Mark Kruse
M
ark Kruse joined the Physics Department in September
2000, and is working in the area of experimental highenergy particle physics. This area attempts to answer such
fundamental questions as what the Universe is made of, and
why, and how. Over the last few decades the "standard
model" of particle physics that has emerged is that all matter
is composed of fundamental particles called quarks and
leptons, and that all interactions of matter are governed by
four forces: the strong nuclear force, which, for example binds
nuclei, the weak nuclear force which governs the decay of
some particles, the more familiar electromagnetic force, and
gravity (by far the weakest force - about 40 orders of magnitude weaker than the strong nuclear force).
numbers when the universe
was much less than a second
old. Why there are these two
extra generations, and what
purpose they served in the
early universe, is one of the
paramount questions particle
physicists are trying to answer.
The high-energy particle
physics group at Duke is
currently analysing data produced at the Tevatron accelerator at the Fermi National Assistant Professor Mark Kruse, is
Accelerator Laboratory active in high energy physics
(Fermilab), about 30 miles research and is teaching a new
west of Chicago, Illinois. The course in astrophysics.
Tevatron accelerates protons and antiprotons to unprecedented energies (99.99995% of the speed of light) and collides them head-on in the center of huge particle detectors
which piece together each collision by identifying the multitude of particles, and their properties, that are produced.
Duke is a member of the CDF collaboration of about 500
physicists (from about 60 institutions around the world)
that built and use one of the two main detectors at the
Tevatron. The 100-ton CDF detector precisely measures
many particles properties (for electrons, muons, baryons,
mesons, photons, etc.) and extremely sophisticated electronics is needed to read out and filter the results of each of
2.5 million collisions that occur every second.
The fundamental forces are understood through the
exchange of particles called "bosons". For instance, the
electromagnetic force is mediated by the exchange of
photons, the strong nuclear force by "gluons", the weak
nuclear force by "W and Z bosons", and gravity supposedly
by Gravitons (although they have not yet been observed).
The up and down quarks, and the electron, comprise
(together with the electron neutrino), the "first generation" of
fundamental constituents. We, and everything we can observe,
are made of only these first generation particles (protons, for
example, are made of 2 up quarks and 1 down quark).
Unfortunately (or rather fortunately for physicists), things
aren't quite that simple, and we are still left with many unanswered questions. Besides "normal" matter, hundreds of
other particles exist, the composition of which includes an
additional two generations of fundamental constituents.
These particles are most prolifically created in high-energy
particle accelerators, and decay almost immediately into more
stable matter. We now believe that the "charm" and "strange"
quarks, together with the muon and muon neutrino form the
second generation, with the third generation comprising the
"top" and "bottom" quarks and the tau lepton and tau
neutrino. Before their discovery, particles made from these
additional generations of quarks only existed in significant
The last fundamental particle to be discovered at
Fermilab was the "top" quark, in 1995. This particle has an
enormous mass (which is why it was so hard to produce and
find), about that of an entire gold atom. The properties of
the top quark are only now beginning to emerge with any
precision at Fermilab, which is the only place in the world
for its study (until the Large Hardon Collider (LHC) in
Europe turns on in 2008).
continued on page 18
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Faculty Research
The Computational Challenge Of Quantum
Many Body Physics
By Associate Professor Shailesh Chandrasekharan
W
hat properties can a physical system, containing a large
number of strongly interacting quantum degrees of
freedom, show? This question has haunted many physicists
since the discovery of quantum mechanics and continues to
challenge us even today. We can find examples of research
within our own department where this question is being
asked in one form or another. Professor John Thomas recently
created a system of strongly interacting fermionic atoms in his
laboratory which showed surprising properties. A theoretical
understanding of this system is still in its infancy. Professor
Harold Baranger is excited about the properties of quantum
dots (objects created by confining many tens of electrons
inside a potential well a few nanometers wide). Understanding
the physics of such objects may help us design the next
generation of electronics. Professor Berndt Muller likes to
understand the properties of a new phase of nuclear matter
that may have existed in the early universe when temperatures
and densities were very high. In fact it is believed that nuclear
matter can exist in a variety of exotic phases, some of which
may be found deep inside neutron stars.
In many cases knowing the microscopic laws alone does
not enlighten us about the possible macroscopic physics. It is
often the case that novel unexpected phenomena can arise at
the macroscopic level. In fact we know the physical laws that
govern all the phenomena described above at a microscopic
level, but much work needs to be done before the physics of
the macroscopic system can be understood. Unfortunately it
is difficult to put the microscopic laws to work and find out
the macroscopic physics, especially when there are strong
quantum correlations in a many body system; simple analytic
approaches are useless. The difficulty is similar to computing
the properties of air inside a room using the equations of
motion of individual air molecules, except that the equations
must take into account quantum mechanics. Not surprisingly
the most popular method is to convert the original problem
16
into a classical statistical mechanics
problem and then
apply a probabilistic method to compute q u a n t i t i e s .
Un f o r t u n a t e l y,
conventional
methods used in
classical statistical Recently tenured Associate Professor Shailesh
Chandrasekharan has invented new theoretical
mechanics based ways to solve problems involving many interacting
on local Monte fermion systems, with applications to high energy
Carlo techniques physics and condensed matter physics.
have been found to
be inefficient for these strongly correlated quantum many-body
problems. Further in many interesting cases the Boltzmann
weight of the statistical mechanics problem can be negative,
as a consequence of quantum physics. In that case it is unclear
how to use Monte Carlo methods. This leads to the infamous "sign problem" which is one of the outstanding
problems in quantum many body calculations.
About twenty years ago Robert Swendsen and JianSheng Wang (PRL 58 (1987) pp86) recognized that when
the simple classical Ising model is rewritten using novel
cluster variables it is possible to solve the model on a computer very efficiently. The cluster variables encoded the
underlying correlations in the model and thus helped in
developing an efficient numerical method. These variables
were natural for a computer although not for the human
mind. This method was later extended to quantum
mechanical models. Today a variety of interesting models
can be solved with unprecedented precision on a computer
using such non-local variables. My own contribution to the
field came in 1999 when I had just joined Duke. Along with
my collaborator, Uwe-Jens Wiese (currently a professor at
continued on page 18
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Page 17
Faculty Research
Discovery of Hollow Electron Beams in the Duke Storage Ring
By Assistant Professor Ying Wu
Associate Director for Accelerators and Light Sources at the Duke Free Electron Laser Laboratory.
T
he Duke Free-Electron Laser Laboratory (DFELL) is
a premier research center for the development of
novel accelerator based light sources including freeelectron lasers (FELs). The main light sources at the
DFELL include the OK-4 FEL and an FEL driven highintensity gamma-ray source (HIGS) which produces high
energy photons via a process called Compton scattering,
and the infrared Mark-III FEL. The OK-4 FEL is powered
by the 0.27 to 1.2
GeV Duke storage
ring which was first
brought to operation in 1994. Before
introducing the
exciting hollow electron beam phenomenon discovered at
the DFELL, I would
like to give a brief
update on the UV
and gamma-ray light
source development
program which was
featured in the 2004
Assistant Professor Ying Wu does experimental newsletter.
and theoretical work at the Free Electron Laser
Laboratory, and has made recent discoveries
concerning the properties of electron beams that
have received national attention.
In order to significantly improve
their performance
and capabilities, the DFELL light sources are currently
undergoing several major upgrades with several million
dollars of federal funding. Two main upgrade projects are
the development of a new 1.2 GeV booster synchrotron
injector and the upgrade of the existing linearly polarized
OK-4 FEL to the new circularly polarized OK-5 FEL.
These upgrade projects are led by the accelerator physics
group and carried out by the engineering and technical
staff at the DFELL. In the last twelve-month period, significant progress has been made: the booster synchrotron
CCD images for a cycle of hollow electron beam evolution in the Duke storage
ring: a phase of slow electron migration from the ring beam to core beam
(t = 0 to 434 s) followed by a phase of rapid core beam burst and settling.
mechanical installation is near completion; two of the four
OK-5 wiggler magnets have been installed on the storage
ring and the commissioning of this OK-5 configuration has
begun. In the coming year, the new booster synchrotron
will be commissioned and the OK-5 FEL will be brought to
operation. With these hardware upgrades, we expect to
increase both the FEL power and gamma-ray flux by one to
two orders of magnitude and produce both linear and circular polarized photons in the UV and gamma-ray spectrum
regions. The new capabilities and improved performance of
DFELL light sources will open doors for future discoveries
in physics, chemistry, and biological and medical sciences.
Besides developing new light sources, the accelerator
physics group is very active in the study of the nonlinear
effects and instabilities of the charged particle beams in
accelerators. These studies are aimed at confining an
continued on page 19
17
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Faculty Research (continued)
High Energy Physics – continued from pg. 15
Computational Challenge – cont’d from pg. 16
Mark Kruse was part of the team of physicists that discovered
the top quark and he convened the top quark physics group at
CDF from 2000 to 2002. He continues to be interested in
this bizarre particle, in particular the mystery surrounding
how mass is generated in the Universe (something we really
don't understand at all) which might be intimately connected
to the top quark. This fundamental question might also be
answered through the discovery of a particle called the "Higgs
Boson". The search for this particle is one of the driving goals
of the Tevatron program. Currently Mark Kruse is supervising
two Duke graduate students at Fermilab that are attempting
to answer the question of mass generation in the Universe by
studying the top quark, and by directly searching for Higgs
bosons. He is developing a novel technique with one of his
graduate students to maximize the sensitivity for new particle
searches. This technique has generated a lot of interest and we
expect results later this year. If the Higgs boson is not found
at Fermilab (or whatever other new physics that might exist),
then it likely will be found at the LHC, where the Duke highenergy particle physics group is also participating.
Bern University) I discovered how to rewrite certain fermionic models in the cluster language. Most realistic theories
have fermions in them. Fermions are notoriously difficult to
handle with Monte Carlo techniques due to the Pauli exclusion principle since it can lead to sign problems. Researchers
working on the cluster approach had abandoned fermionic
theories due to such problems. My collaborator and I were
able to show that in certain fermionic theories one can find
natural loop variables that play a dual role: they encode the
correlations of the theory and at the same time help us solve
the infamous sign problem. This work brought into focus
the fact that the revolution in efficient algorithms can also
be applicable to fermionic theories at least in certain cases.
Our work was published in Physical Review Letters (PRL 83
(1999) pp 3116).
Mark Kruse's interest in particle physics and the early
universe has also manifested itself in his development of a new
course at Duke: a graduate level course in Astrophysics, which
was taught for the first time in Spring 2005. The collisions
that are being created at Fermilab are in some sense recreating
the conditions of the Universe in the first tenth of a nano
second (0.0000000001 seconds) of its existence, so there is a
deep connection between high-energy particle physics and
astrophysics, with many of the fundamental questions of the
Universe being explored by high-energy collider experiments
such as those at Fermilab.
The Duke HEP group is currently actively involved in an
exciting phase of enormous discovery potential that could
change the way we think about the Universe. The next few
years promises to be a challenging and invigorating time.
18
Since then I have continued to find fermionic models
that can be solved very efficiently when they are rewritten in
an unconventional set of variables; many novel solutions to
sign problems emerge. In a collaboration with Professor
Baranger I am using one such approach to study the physics
of electrons in quantum dots by mapping it into an impurity
problem. Our method appears to be very efficient compared
to earlier methods. Along with Fu-Jiun Jiang, my graduate
student, I am also using this approach to study nuclear matter in a limit where the interaction strength between quarks
and gluons is made artificially large. Although this strong
coupling limit is unphysical, our model has many ingredients of the realistic theory. We have recently uncovered a
weak first order transition in such a system which we think
is due to subtle fluctuations in the many body theory. An
important challenge for the future is to extend these techniques to more realistic theories of fermions that arise in
nano-scale systems, in strongly correlated materials, inside
nuclei and in the physics beyond the standard model. I am
optimistic that we will continue to make progress.
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Faculty Research (continued)
Discovery of hollow electron beams
continued from pg. 17
increasingly large amount of charge, such as
electrons, in an increasingly small 6D phase space
region. As part of these studies, recently physicists at
the DFELL reported the first creation and measurement of hollow electron beams in a storage ring (see the
Physical Review Letter cover story, April 8, 2005,
http://scitation.aip.org/dbt/dbt.jsp?KEY=PRLTAO&
Volume=94&Issue=13).
The hollow beam, consisting of a solid core beam
inside and a large ring beam outside, is a new semistationary state of electron beam distribution in a
storage ring. The hollow beam is a great model
system to study beam instabilities. Instead of losing
beam due to instabilities as happens typically, we
can now capture the escaping charged particles in
the outlaying ring and study the beam breakup in
detail. In a sense, a new way to control the instability is realized in the process. The hollow beam
phenomenon will enable Duke scientists to study
the complex interactions between an electron beam
and its environment (the wakefield) and between
the electron beam and the magnetic optics which
trap the beam. These studies can provide new
insight towards improving the ability to trap more
charged particles, which is essential for the development of future accelerator based light sources and
high energyphysics colliders. The hollow beam may
also be used as a source to deliver synchrotron radiation in elliptical or annular spatial patterns.
Installation of an optical klystron by a team of scientists, engineers, and
technicians at the Duke FEL Laboratory.
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4132.Newsletter
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