Annual Review 2009/10
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UCL DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY Annual Review 2009–10 Contents Introduction 1 Student Highlights and News 2 Careers 6 Staff Highlights and News 8 Outreach Work 14 The International Year of Astronomy 16 High Energy Physics (HEP) 19 Atomic, Molecular, Optical and Position Physics (AMOPP) 22 Condensed Matter and Materials Physics (CMMP) 24 Astrophysics (Astro) 26 Biological Physics 28 Grants and Contracts 29 Publications 32 Staff 40 Cover image: ‘Castor in Bloom’ by Dr Stephen Fossey This image is a composite of digital photographs taken of the bright star Castor during testing of a new CCD camera on the Radcliffe telescope at UCL’s observatory in Mill Hill (ULO). The telescope has a 24-inch lens to focus the light, and like all such instruments brings light of different colours to a focus at slightly different distances from the lens. The best-focus position for each colour is determined by placing a mask with a circular pattern of holes over the lens, and images through red, green, and blue filters are taken at several focus positions; the mask produces separate images of the star in each out-of-focus colour, with the colour in best focus being more concentrated towards the central spot. Hence, each ‘petal’ of the `flower’ is Castor’s spectral image, dispersed by the telescope lens. PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY ANNUAL REVIEW 2009–10 1 Introduction At the same time the reviews highlighted Although my comments above suggest a number of areas in which we could that the Department continues to do better. In particular, the panel gave thrive, it is hard not to look at the future us helpful advice on how to improve without considerable concern. STFC, the organisation of Biological Physics which funds the vast majority of our in the Department, which is discussed high energy physics and astrophysics on page 28, while the need to further research, has just hit yet another major strengthen our postgraduate recruitment funding crisis. The results of which is touched on below. are already hitting us and will continue to do so over the next few years. The The steady increase in the number of government has also announced applicants for undergraduate studies significant cuts in university funding to has continued, although the college has spread over the next few years. How severely capped the number we can these will impact us in detail is still actually recruit. Our intake on both our unclear, but it is obvious that the future taught masters and certificate courses contains difficulties and a probable has increased rapidly, and the number contraction in what we can do. of research students we recruit has also grown. We continue to receive many more applications from well-qualified students wishing to study for research degrees than we can offer places to. We would dearly like to do something about The year of 2009 has seen the this issue, and both subject and faculty Department continue to prosper. reviews identified it as key objective For example our success in the 2008 for the Department. To this end, alumni Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) receiving this review will find a letter was rewarded with a significant increase about the Provost’s Impact Studentships in the financial support for our research. scheme enclosed. This was particularly creditable as the The Department has continued its Professor Jonathan Tennyson FRS new method used for distributing the success in attracting outstanding young Head of Department funding for top-quality research in the scientists on long-term fellowships, see UK led to many major departments page 8, and our research successes losing money to small, active have also continued to be reflected departments in the same research area. by the award of significant prizes, see The post-RAE era is a good time to page 10. On a personal level I was reflect and during 2009 there was a deeply honoured to be elected a Fellow review of Physics at UCL, followed by a of the Royal Society and to have the review of the overall Maths and Physical privilege of signing in the same book Sciences (MAPS) faculty. Both these as Newton, Dirac and many other reviews were chaired by Prof. Malcolm ground-breaking scientists. For me it has Longair FRS from Cambridge and been an interesting year in many ways, contained significant international input. particularly memorable was my visit The reviews were extremely positive; to the Siberian Branch of the Russian one of the reviewers for the Department Academy of Sciences in Tomsk at the commented that “In numerous areas, the start of March. When I arrived it was research is undoubtedly world-leading… -17°C but it soon warmed up to -5°C, We congratulate the Department on [its] so my hosts took me for a picnic in the performance.” forest, see photo. 2 PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY ANNUAL REVIEW 2009–10 Student Highlights and News Student Entry and Pass Figures for 2009 Intake Awards Distinction 5 31 131 3: 3 2B: 5 BSc/ MSci PhD 1: 9 1: 17 18 MSc 2A: 19 2B: 11 2A: 10 Pass 7 Bachelor of Science (BSc) Master in Science (MSci) Master of Science (MSc) 2009 PRIZE WINNERS The 2009 prize winners UNDERGRADUATE PRIZES Oliver Lodge Prize Wood Prize Corrigan Prize (Best performance 1st year physics) (Best performance 2nd year physics) (Best performance in experimental Arnold Mathijssen Wei Zhou work, 2nd year) Charmaine Wijeyasinghe Halley Prize Huggins Prize (Best performance 1st year astronomy) (Best performance 2nd year astronomy) Additional Sessional Prize Shaghayegh Parsa Kirthika Mohan for Merit (2nd Year) Tamsin Nooney C.A.R. Tayler Prize David Ponter Prize (Best 2nd Year Essay) (Most improved performance in Best Performance 3rd Year Physics Kenneth Tang Department, 2nd year – joint winners) Soliman Edris Shun Ng and Dino Osmanovic PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY ANNUAL REVIEW 2009–10 3 Best Performance 3rd Year Astronomy Sidney Tanoto Additional Sessional Prize for RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT Merit (3rd Year) Robert Michaelides Exofit: Orbital parameters of extrasolar planets Burhop Prize from radial velocities (Best performance 4th year physics) S. T. Balan, O. Lahav Noel Hustler Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 394, 1936 (2009) Herschel Prize (Best performance 4th year astronomy) One of the most exciting developments in astronomy is Kalle Karhunen the discovery (starting in 1995) of extra-solar planets, i.e. planets around host stars, outside our solar system. Over Brian Duff Memorial Prize 400 exo-planets have now been discovered. The most (Best 4th year project in the Department) successful method for detecting extra-solar planets is the Ingo Waldmann radial velocity method which detects small, periodic Doppler William Bragg Prize shifts in the apparent motion of the star caused by the orbiting planet. (Best overall undergraduate) Holly Alexander Prof. Ofer Lahav, with his then MSc student Sree Balan, developed a method called ExoFit for estimating orbital Tessella Prize for Software parameters from radial velocity data. In short. Exofit is a (Best use of software in final year computer program that takes data obtained from observing physics/astronomy projects) a star’s ‘wobble’ and tells you information regarding the Gihan Weerasinghe planet. It can also assess if there are more than one planet around the star. POSTGRADUATE PRIZES As a follow-up, A group of seven 3rd year undergraduates, led by Greg Lever, applied ExoFiT to many radial velocity Harrie Massey Prize observations in a systematic and uniform way. In doing so (Best overall MSc student) they discovered with ExoFit, a second planet in one of the Lucinda Clerkin systems (HD11506). However it transpired that another team discovered it independently a few months earlier. Carey Foster Prize Balan, Lever, and Lahav are now applying ExoFit to all (Postgraduate research, physics AMOPP) available radial velocity data, with the goal of generating Lorenzo Lodi a uniformly-derived catalogue of parameters for all known exo-planets. HEP Group (Postgraduate research, physics HEP) Simon Bevan Marshall Stoneham Prize (Outstanding postgraduate research, physics CMMP) Andrew Walters Condensed Matter and Materials Physics (Outstanding postgraduate research, physics CMMP) Jennifer Brookes Jon Darius Prize (Outstanding postgraduate research, astronomy) Manda Banerji DEPARTMENTAL TEACHING PRIZE – Joint Winners Dr Stephen Fossey Dr Martin Smalley Example of a fit by ExoFit from Balan & Lahav (2009) 4 PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY ANNUAL REVIEW 2009–10 PHD’S AWARDED Shiva L King Fabrizio Sidoli Measurement of the double beta decay The massive star population of Sabina J A Abate half-life of 100 mo to the 0 + 1 excited Wolf-Rayet galaxies Measuring cosmology from dark universe state, and 48ca to the ground state in (Supervisor Dr L Smith) (Supervisor Dr S Bridle) the NEMO 3 experiment (Supervisor Dr R Saakyan) Bruno Silva Marin B. Andrews Rotation-vibration states of triatomic The influence of a migrating planet Iraklis Konstantopoulos molecules at dissociation on the topology and chemistry of a Studies of the formation and evolution (Supervisor Prof. J Tennyson) protoplanetary disc of extragalactic star clusters (Supervisor Dr S Viti) (Supervisor Prof. L Smith) Jiayu Tang Investigating future probes of Martina Avellino Jennifer S Lardge cosmic acceleration Entanglement and quantum information Investigation of the interaction of water (Supervisor Dr J Weller) transfer in arrays of interacting quantum with the calcite (1014) surface using ab- systems initio simulation Hoi Yu Tang (Supervisor Prof. A J Fisher) (Supervisor Dr D Duffy) On the stability of liquid-like Argon nanoclusters Simon Bevan Manh Duc Le (Supervisor Prof. I Ford) An investigation into the feasibility of a Magnetism and quadrupolar order in sea water or ice based acoustic UHE f-electron systems Troy Vine neutrino telescope (Supervisor Prof. K A McEwen) A direct measurement of the (Supervisor Dr D Waters) decay width Ho–Chi Lin (Supervisor Prof.