UNC-CH Physics and Astronomy Colloquium Carl Bender, Washington University in St Louis “PT Symmetry” By using complex-variable methods one can extend conventional Hermitian quantum theories into the complex domain. The result is a huge and exciting new class of parity-time-symmetric … Read more

UNC-CH Physics and Astronomy Colloquium Piers Coleman, Rutgers University “Dark Matter Challenges of the Solid State” At the turn of the 20th century, physicists faced an uncanny range of unsolved problems: simple questions, such as why hot objects change color, … Read more

UNC-CH Physics and Astronomy Colloquium Gerald Cecil, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill “When the Monster Awoke: Dating the Most Recent Major Flare of Our Galaxy's Supermassive Black Hole” The historical power output of mass accreted onto the 4 … Read more

UNC-CH Physics and Astronomy Colloquium Dmitri Khveshchenko, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill “The Holographic Mystique” In the recent years, there has been a remarkable proliferation of the holographic techniques originating from 'bona fide' string theory into a number … Read more

UNC-CH Physics and Astronomy Colloquium Amy Oldenburg, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill “How the Physics of Nanoparticle Motion in Biological Tissue Can Tell Us Useful Things: A Tale of Ultrasound and Optical Contrast Methods” There are many parallels … Read more

UNC-CH Physics and Astronomy Colloquium Alexandra Gade, Michigan State University “The science of FRIB: From the nuclear many-body challenge to applications of rare isotopes” There are approximately 300 stable and 3,000 known unstable (rare) isotopes. Estimates are that over 7,000 … Read more

UNC-CH Physics and Astronomy Colloquium Dawn Meredith, University of New Hampshire “Mechanistic Reasoning about Liquids” Mechanistic reasoning is one of the hallmarks of scientific thinking, but there are gaps in our students’ abilities (and even our abilities!) to reason mechanistically … Read more

UNC-CH Physics and Astronomy Colloquium Thad Walker, University of Wisconsin–Madison “Turning Photons into Polarized Nuclei” Spin-exchange optical pumping (SEOP) uses collisions between optically active and optically inactive species to convert the angular momentum of light into spin angular momentum. I … Read more

UNC-CH Physics and Astronomy Colloquium Evgenya Shkolnik, Arizona State University “Blast from the Past: Impact of Ultraviolet Emission and Flaring on Exoplanetary Systems and their Habitability” Roughly seventy-five billion low-mass stars (a.k.a. M dwarfs) in our galaxy host at least … Read more

UNC-CH Physics and Astronomy Colloquium Akaa Daniel Ayangeakaa, United States Naval Academy “Shape coexistence and triaxiality in atomic nuclei” The study of shapes and shape-related phenomena in atomic nuclei have been major themes of research in nuclear physics for more … Read more