The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics has awarded the 2018 Prize in Particles and Fields to our QMAP colleague Jaroslav Trnka “For the discovery and exploration of new physical and mathematical principles underlying the dynamics of particle scattering amplitudes in a wide range of theories.”
John Terning (a former UC Berkeley post-doc) has written a new book with Bill Poirier (a former UC Berkeley student), and Yasunori Nomura (a current UC Berkeley professor). The book entitled Quantum Physics, Mini Black Holes, and the Multiverse: Debunking Common Misconceptions in Theoretical Physics Quantum Physics, Mini Black Holes, and the Multiverse: Debunking Common Misconceptions in Theoretical Physics
The Physics department has hired four new faculty and Math has hired one new faculty, all in the areas of quantum field theory, gravity, and strings. Veronika Hubeny and Mukund Rangamani arrived in the Physics department this September, Jaroslav Trnka will arrive in December, and Sergei Dubovsky and will begin July 2016. Tudor Dimofte will join the Math department in 2016. All the positions are part of campus Hiring Investment Program. The new hires and the current high-energy and cosmology faculty will be working together to start a new center called “The Center for Quantum Mathematics and Physics,” or QMAP for short. To kick things off, all five new faculty members were in Davis to give talks on their research on October 29-30, and met with Dean Navrotsky and Provost Hexter at an informal reception.
QMAP reception 2015-10-29
UC Davis Provost Ralph Hexter has announced that the Faculty Hiring Investment Program (HIP) has accepted a joint proposal from the Physics and Math departments, called “Fundamental Physics and Mathematics of the Universe”, which will entail hiring four professors in theoretical physics and mathematics. The positions will be in both the physics and math departments. Click here for more information.
A new film about the discovery of the Higgs Boson, followed by an audience Q&A.
From the Particle Fever website:
Imagine being able to watch as Edison turned on the first light bulb, or as Franklin received his first jolt of electricity.
For the first time, a film gives audiences a front row seat to a significant and inspiring scientific breakthrough as it happens. Particle Fever follows six brilliant scientists during the launch of the Large Hadron Collider, marking the start-up of the biggest and most expensive experiment in the history of the planet, pushing the edge of human innovation.
As they seek to unravel the mysteries of the universe, 10,000 scientists from over 100 countries joined forces in pursuit of a single goal: to recreate conditions that existed just moments after the Big Bang and find the Higgs boson, potentially explaining the origin of all matter. But our heroes confront an even bigger challenge: have we reached our limit in understanding why we exist?
Directed by Mark Levinson, a physicist turned filmmaker, and masterfully edited by Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now, The English Patient), Particle Fever is a celebration of discovery, revealing the very human stories behind this epic machine.
Albert De Roeck will give a public lecture entitled
“The Large Hadron Collider: The Big Bang Machine” on Thur. Mar. 27 at 8 pm in the UC Davis Welcome Center Presentation Room. Tickets will be $7 (free for students).
Albert De Roeck
Prof. Dr. Albert De Roeck is a senior research scientist and staff member of the largest particle physics laboratory in the world, CERN, located near Geneva, Switzerland. De Roeck is also a professor at the University of Antwerp (Belgium) and a visiting professor at the Institute of Particle Physics and Phenomenology in Durham (UK) , University of California Davis, and the British University in Cairo (Egypt).
This year’s Nobel Prize for physics went to François Englert and Peter W. Higgs “for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.” It was a long time coming, but now with the Higgs boson in hand the work begins to find out exactly what type of Higgs boson it is and if any of its properties suggest the existence of other new particles or even new principles of Nature.
Francois Englert
Peter Higgs
The talk will be held on Thursday Sept. 5, 2013 at 7:30 pm in the UC Davis Medical Education Building at 4610 X Street in Sacramento.
Professor `t Hooft desribes the talk as follows:
Our theoretical understanding of the sub-atomic world would not be complete without the Higgs particle. Sometimes called “The God Particle”, this very special particle generates the differences between the fundamental particles and it gives them mass, but until recently it went undetected. Of course, in science we use different words. In this lecture it is explained what this mysterious object really is and why it is needed in our theories, even if it has little to do with God. Using the most powerful particle accelerator in the world, the Large Hadron Collider, physicists for the first time have the tools to produce and observe this particle in detail. Is it as it was predicted? Are there whole families of Higgs particles? The LHC has not yet reached its full power. Will it provide us with more clues or mysteries about the sub-atomic world?
One of the most obvious facts about the universe is that the past is different from the future. We can remember yesterday, but not tomorrow; we can turn an egg into an omelet, but can’t turn an omelet into an egg. That’s the arrow of time, which is consistent throughout the observable universe. The arrow can be explained by assuming that the very early universe was extremely orderly, and disorder has been increasing ever since. But why did the universe start out so orderly? I will talk about the nature of time, the origin of entropy, and how what happened before the Big Bang may be responsible for the arrow of time we observe today. Advance tickets available.
Join us for a day of public lectures on topics at the frontiers of physics by distinguished researchers at the forefront of physics research. Professors Frank Wilczek, Maxwell Chertok, Michael Turner, and Leonard Susskind will give series of public lecture at the UC Davis Conference Center on Apr. 6, 2013 beginning at 10 am.
