QUANTA Newsletter of the Department of Physics and Astronomy www.physics.iastate.edu Vol. 2, No. 1 - Fall 2006 In This Issue • Greetings from Ames Page 1 Notes from the department chair. • Searching for the Stars Page 2 Astronomy has always been Steve Kawaler’s passion. • High-Energy Physics at the Extreme Page 3 The Large Hadron Collider will be the most powerful accelerator on the planet, and Iowa State physicists are helping to build and use it. • Stellar Gerontology Page 4 Pioneering a long-term study of a very-long-term phenomenon. • Soukoulis Wins European Union’s Highest Science Prize Page 5 Physics and astronomy faculty member leads team that shared 200,000-euro Descartes Prize. • Faculty Additions Page 6 New faculty members bring grants and expanded affiliations in condensed matter and nuclear physics. • Throwing Baseball a Curve Page 8 Physics plays an important role in America’s pastime. • Of Note... Page 9 Zaffarano Physics Addition dedicated; Physics and Astronomy Council meets; and other research news. GREETINGS FROM AMES e welcomed incoming classes of 17 new graduate students this fall and 22 last fall. They have turned out to be a lively group. On W their own they have organized intramural sports teams and arranged for “movie nights” on Fridays. We have remodeled the offices occupied by our first- and second-year graduate students in the so-called “Court Area,” and 32 of our graduate students are occupying this space. Our undergraduate and graduate students are engaged in other activities outside the classroom. All our graduate students participate in a graduate- student-run seminar where they present their research to their peers. While the seminar was established with departmental support, faculty members are not invited to attend these seminars. Our undergraduates are equally active. For example, members of our Physics and Astronomy Club attended a regional meeting of the Society of Physics Students that was held in Decorah, Iowa, last fall. Our faculty members continue to distinguish themselves. Costas Soukoulis, who last year was named a distinguished professor, won the Eli Rosenberg prestigious Descartes Prize for Excellence in Scientific Collaborative Research. This is the European Union’s highest honor in the field of science. A concrete marker tablet was placed Joe Shinar, John Hill, and Jianwie Qiu were named APS fellows. Steve Kawaler outside the entrance, supported by was named a fellow of the AAAS. Paul Canfield was named a distinguished contributions to the department. professor. Soeren Prell won a College of Liberal Arts and Sciences award for As always, we thank you for your early excellence in research, and Paul Canfield and John Lajoie won the support and welcome your input and comparable mid-year career excellence awards. Marshall Luban won an LAS comments. I would love to have the award for outstanding teaching. opportunity to visit with you in In the last issue, we announced the naming of the Physics Addition after Ames and share with you the Daniel Zaffarano. In his honor, a plaque donated by members of the Physics enthusiasm of our faculty, students and Astronomy Council was placed inside the west entrance of the building. and staff! Q 2 QUANTA SEARCHING FOR THE STARS Astronomy has always been Steve Kawaler’s passion. teve Kawaler’s Zaffarano author on most of the papers gleaned Physics Addition office is from data collected by WET. He is S filled with memories of his currently working on a NASA childhood, when he was inspired to Astrophysics Theory Program grant become an astronomer. The Golden on the next generation of computer Book of Astronomy is still strategically models of stars, in particular sub- placed where all who enter can’t miss dwarf B stars. it. Toy models from “that campy TV “This is an exciting and potentially show” Lost in Space are placed very important project,” he said. prominently on a table near his desk. “WET data has pointed out how bad “Stars have been my passion,” the the current models are.” professor of physics and astronomy The AAAS also honored Kawaler said. “I like astronomy so much for his classroom instruction. He has because although we don’t have all taught and developed curricula such the answers yet, it’s something that as “Astronomy Bizarre,” a course for Steve Kawaler we can see every day and each night. non-science students that explores We see the stars and the sun–objects the more bizarre objects and events to me yet. that we understand a great deal in the universe. Every other day I go in front of about, but in other ways are way “I got into astronomy because it 100 or so students and try to fire beyond what we can understand.” was fun,” Kawaler said. “I grew up them up about astronomy, although I That passion has led the American watching watching the moon know that they are potentially Association for the Advancement of launches and it was hugely exciting excited about many other things. Science (AAAS) to elect Kawaler a for me. I guess part of any field can That keeps me excited and fellow of the association. get routine, but that hasn’t happened passionate about the subject.” Q “I can’t say this was totally unexpected,” he said. “I was forewarned to make sure my GET INVOLVED! membership dues were current, since Get the latest news on our research, education programs, faculty you can’t be an AAAS fellow unless you’re paid up.” and alumni at www.physics.iastate.edu. AAAS cited Kawaler’s research, Get in touch. We welcome your suggestions and comments! Let us service and teaching. He has worked know what you think about this newsletter, about current initiatives in the for 20 years to understand and model department, and about ways that we could help you. Please contact Eli white dwarf stars. Since 1997, he has Rosenberg, department chair, [email protected], or Mark Fleming, directed the Whole Earth Telescope editor, [email protected], with your thoughts or questions. (WET), a worldwide network of Keep us posted on your career interests, family and contact observation stations that takes information by updating your profile at www.physics.iastate.edu. uninterrupted measurements of stars. Dig deeper. Are some of our initiatives of interest to you and your Kawaler handles the administrative organization? Please contact Eli Rosenberg to arrange a briefing with the duties of the NSF-funded appropriate people, either by telephone or in a personal visit to campus. organization, including archiving the data obtained by WET observations Contribute your time, talent, or resources. We could and coordinating at least one WET use your experience, perspectives, and hands-on help in some of our run each of the last 10 years. initiatives. We also welcome financial donations, either unrestricted or Kawaler has been active on the designated for any of a number of areas of need, including scholarships, scientific side as well. He is an awards and facility improvements (see page 7). QUANTA 3 HIGH-ENERGY PHYSICS AT THE EXTREME The Large Hadron Collider will be the most powerful particle accelerator on the planet, and Iowa State physicists are helping to build and use it. he European Laboratory for Particle Physics in Geneva, T Switzerland, is building the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a new particle accelerator that will collide beams of protons or lead nuclei at record energies, with fluxes expected to produce 800 million collisions per second. Those densities will recreate the conditions that existed just after the Big Bang. The LHC is being built in a 17- mile circular tunnel that crosses the French-Swiss border near Geneva. The machine is expected to get a pilot run next summer. “Iowa State is at the cutting edge of research in these facilities at the forefront of physics,” said Eli Rosenberg, professor and chair of the Department of Physics and As- tronomy and the leader of Iowa State’s high-energy physics research team. “We play an important role in these experiments.” Iowa State’s physics and as- tronomy department research team at Crews assembling the ATLAS detector at the LHC the LHC includes Rosenberg; H. Bert In addition, members of the department’s experimental nuclear physics Crawley, professor; James Cochran, group–John Hill, professor; Marzia Rosati, associate professor; and Alexandre associate professor; Soeren Prell, Lebedev, assistant scientist–are planning to use ATLAS to study the collisions associate professor; and W. Thomas of lead nuclei. Meyer, adjunct research professor. John Hauptman, professor of physics and astronomy, is also working on Fredrik Tegenfeldt, a postdoctoral the Compact Muon Solenoid, the LHC’s other large, multi-purpose detector. research associate, is stationed at the Iowa State’s work in experimental and theoretical high-energy physics is European Laboratory for Particle supported by a six-year grant of nearly $6.9 million from the U.S. Department Physics, and Nathan Triplett, a of Energy (DOE). The grant continues a tradition of high-energy physics physics and astronomy graduate work at Iowa State and the DOE Ames Laboratory that dates back to 1963. student, has taken up residence at One of the research goals at the LHC ATLAS detector is to find evidence CERN and will work on acquiring of the Higgs boson, a particle predicted by the Standard Model of particle his thesis data in the next two years. physics. The model theorizes that space is filled with a Higgs field, and that This team is working on detector particles acquire mass by interacting with the field. Although no experiment design and the study of proton- has yet detected the Higgs particle, researchers at the LHC hope that their proton collisions related to the LHC’s experiments will yield this discovery.