Interactions The Newsletter of the UB Department of Physics Volume 8, Fall 2015 It has been an eventful year since Quantum Control in Oct. 2014. This I last wrote to you. Once again, our summer, Professors Krotscheck undergraduates are our brightest stars. and Gasparini organized the 2015 It is safe to say that our program can International Symposium on Quantum only be as good as our students, and our Fluids and Solids and Professors students certainly showed us how far we Krotscheck and Han organized the 18th have gone. Leading the way, Dante Iozzo International Conference on Recent (physics major), Nigel Michki (physics Progress in Many-Body Theories. major), and Andrew Harris (math Major) Professors Krotscheck and Gasparini are the Outstanding Winners of the world- of our students. The new curriculum is also organized the workshop on Phase wide Mathematical Contest in Modeling scheduled to be rolled out during the Transitions in Low Dimensions in (MCM), one of ten winners among 7636 next academic year. The Department November 2014. Professors Simone teams from all over the globe. They has been doing its part to make this a Marzani, Doreen Wackeroth and presented their work “Turning the tables: reality. Ciaran Williams organized the QCD modeling the fight against Ebola” in In January, our own Professor John Ho Factorization Workshop in October Washington DC in August. This year’s returned to the Department after years of 2015. Professors Dejan Stojkovic and academics based Sekula Scholarship being the Dean of Graduate School. One Will Kinney organized the Rust Belt had to raise the bar to a minimum GPA of the first things he did was to donate Cosmology and High Energy Physics of 3.9, so that we can limit the number $154,000 to the Department, to start the Meeting in November 2015. The of recipients to seven, which is unheard endowment for The John Ho and Martha successful Loopfest series of workshops of in the history of the scholarship. To Leung Scholarship. The first round is returning to UB in 2016. Professors adequately recognize their excellence of awards went to three outstanding Roppaccio and Marzani successfully put as a group, the Department also graduate students. forth a bid for BOOST 2017, which will awarded additional scholarships to more be held at Niagara Falls to be organized With fast-changing job markets, there undergraduates. One of the Sekula mainly by our own high energy physics has been a shift in enrollment toward Scholarship recipients, Geoffrey Faitin, group. BOOST is a series of successful Science, Technology, Engineering received a nearly perfect score for the joint theory/experiment workshops and Math (STEM), with corresponding Graduate Record Examinations, again, which bring together the world leading financial challenges for the College of a first here by a large margin and very experts from theory and the Tevatron/ Arts and Sciences (CAS). To provide rare worldwide. Dante Iozzo received LHC experiments to discuss the latest the right programs for our students, an honorable mention for the 2015 progress and develop new approaches CAS, with help from the Provost Office, Goldwater Scholarship. Graham P. to discover new physics. This is a list that went through a productive process of Lyon was the Recipient of a Woodrow will be hard to top. identifying new and improved programs Wilson National Teaching Fellowship. to meet the fast-changing student and This year’s speaker for our Rustgi Graduate student Mengyang Xu was market needs. Some of the programs Lecture was the renowned Prof. Philip awarded the SPIE Optics and Photonics will be ready for students as early as the Kim from Harvard, whose work on two- Education Scholarship, and graduate next academic year. dimensional materials has opened many students Ashley Parker and Bahareh new opportunities . Roohzbahani received “Guests and This year can be considered as one for Visitors” grants from the Fermilab LHC recognition. Recently, UB has hosted Stay in touch and share things at work Physics Center for summer 2015. or has been chosen to host numerous and in life with us! international and regional physics The University is in the process of Best regards, meetings. This is a great recognition of revamping the General Education the Department. Professor Hu organized Requirement curriculum, an enormous the 4th International Workshop on Hong Luo, Chair undertaking, intended to bring our Entanglement, Decoherence and Professor of Physics curriculum up to date, meeting the needs Fall 2015 Feature Article UB Physics Undergraduates leave He is a co-author on a recently submitted is not surprising that he recently received their Mark in Research, National paper on the growth of large area MoS2 a nearly perfect score for the Graduate Competitions, and Outreach monolayers. Record Examinations (GRE). He is now By Dr. Doreen Wackeroth applying to graduate school. UB Senior Geoffrey Fatin has been working An integral and important part of majoring with Dr. Zutic and Visiting Professor Dr. Apart from gaining research experience in physics at a research university, such Matos Abiague for the past two years at UB, our students actively seek out as UB, is the participation in cutting-edge on elusive Majorana fermions (MFs), research opportunities outside UB research. Our undergraduate students take particles that are their own antiparticle. during the summer break, for instance full advantage of the opportunities offered While the original considerations of MFs through NSF’s Research Experiences for in both theoretical and experimental were in the context of particle physics, in Undergraduates (REU) programs or at research in the Department. They conduct recent years there was a huge interest in the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory independent studies and undergraduate exploring if it would be possible to emulate offered by our experimental high-energy research with physics faculty and very a similar behavior in solid-state systems physics group (see article on page xy). often present their work at poster sessions using electronic states in materials with Luke Lyle (who did independent research organized by the Center for Undergraduate projects in Dr. Ganapathy’s and Dr. Cerne’s Research & Creative Activities (CURCA), labs) did a REU at Clemson University. at the UB Celebration of Excellence, and Luke will present his REU work at the even at national conferences. Some of the American Physical Society Southeastern research projects result in publications in Section Meeting in Mobile, Alabama. research journals, which is testimony to the He studied ion transport in insulating high quality of the research conducted by macrocapillaries looking for a way to our students. Here we highlight just a few flexibly transport ions via a self-organizing of the recent achievements of our students beam propagation effect that occurs due in undergraduate research. to charge patch formation inside insulating The three-member team consisting of UB macrocapillaries. UB Senior Michael Benson has been a undergraduate students Dante Iozzo, Nigel Michki, and Andrew Harris (from left to right) research student with Dr. Sen’s group was one of ten Outstanding Winners out of 7636 Sarah Freed (who did an independent for the past three years, working on teams in the 2015 COMAP Mathematical Contest research project in our experimental high- in Modeling. multimillion atom simulations involving energy physics group) did a REU at the collisions of faceted nanoparticles. This superconducting order. MFs are neither University of Arkansas. Sarah presented work has been in collaboration with fermions nor bosons, but instead obey her work on time evolution of discord in a Yoichi Takato, a former graduate student non-Abelian statistics with nontrivial system of two quantum dots at a poster in Dr. Sen’s group, and has resulted in a topological properties useful for fault- session at Frontiers in Optics, a conference forthcoming paper in Physical Review E tolerant quantum computing. Geoffrey organized by the APS and The Optical entitled “Collision dynamics of soft and is the first author of a paper entitled Society in October 2015 in San Jose. sticky nanoparticles”, with Michael being “Wireless Majorana Fermions: From Eric Bigenwald, who had worked in Dr. a co-author. Michael has presented at Magnetic Tunability to Braiding,” recently Ganapathy’s group in fall 2014 and spring several poster sessions organized by submitted to Physical Review Letters 2015, spent the 10 weeks this summer at CURCA. He is now preparing to study (http://arxiv.org/pdf/1510.08182v1.pdf). Cornell, doing research in the Materials patent law. Geoffrey was also able to use knowledge Science and Engineering Department as acquired in research on theoretical particle part of their REU program. Brett Blizzard, a mathematical physics physics with Dr. Wackeroth, to show major, started working in Dr. Zeng’s intriguing opportunities for the exchange Eric studied iridium oxide thin films in laboratory in spring 2015 and has won (braiding) of MFs, the key to revealing their Dr. Darrell Schlom’s lab. At the end of a SUNY 4E (Energy, Environment, non-Abelian properties and implementing the program, he wrote and presented a Economics, Education) Network of fault-tolerant computing. Goeffrey has research paper and a research talk about Excellence summer scholar fellowship. excelled in research and academics, so it his work. 2 Fall 2015 Feature Article of medical resource implementation. They developed a highly adjustable computer simulation that illustrated not only the interactions between cities and regions, but also the interactions on the individual level (For more information see the UB News release: www.buffalo.edu/ news/releases/2015/04/072.html. In 2014 Nigel was selected a Barry Goldwater Scholar and in 2015 Dante received an Honorable Mention. Goldwater Scholars and Honorable Mentions are selected on the basis of academic merit in STEM fields and are nominated by faculty at colleges Dante Iozzo (right background) and Luke Lyle (right foreground) present physics demonstrations to and universities nationwide.