Events Archive

Hamilton Colloquium Series, Charles M Marcus, NBI, "The Search for Fractional Statistics"
Thu, Nov 12, 2020, 12:00 pm12:00 pm

Panel discussion with Duncan Haldane (Princeton), Michael Manfra (Purdue) and Gwendal Feve (ENS)

The possibility of particles with fractional statistics intermediate between those of fermions and bosons in two dimensional systems was raised as early as 1976 in theoretical work by…

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A free lecture open to the public.
Hamilton Colloquium Series, Monika Schleier-Smith, Stanford University, "Choreographing Quantum Spin Dynamics with Light"
Thu, Nov 5, 2020, 12:00 pm12:00 pm

The power of quantum information lies in its capacity to be non-local, encoded in correlations among two, three, or many entangled particles.  Yet our ability to produce, understand, and exploit such correlations is hampered by the fact that the interactions between particles and ordinarily local.   I will report on…

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A free lecture open to the public.
Hamilton Colloquium Series, Andrei Beloborodov, Columbia University, "Explosive Neutron Stars"
Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 12:00 pm12:00 pm

Neutron stars are by far the strongest known magnets in the universe. Some of them (called magnetars) generate explosions by suddenly dissipating magnetic energy with a rate up to $10^{47}$ erg/s. These magnetic explosions emit giant gamma-ray flares observed in our and neighboring galaxies. Similar explosions in…

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A free lecture open to the public.
Hamilton Colloquium Series, Jenny Greene, Princeton University, "Exploring Supermassive Black Holes"
Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 12:15 pm12:15 pm

Panel Discussion with Suvi Gezari, Brian Metzger and Marta Volonteri

This panel discussion accompanies the conference “Exploring Supermassive Black Holes”. We (Suvi Gezari, Jenny Greene, Brian Metzger, Marta Volonteri) will discuss the critical stages in the life…

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A free lecture open to the public.
Hamilton Colloquium Series, Leonid Mirny, MIT, "Physics of Your Chromosomes" via Zoom
Thu, Oct 1, 2020, 12:00 pm12:00 pm

DNA of the human genome is 2 meters long and is folded into chromosomes that fit in a 10-micron cellular nucleus. I will discuss physical principles that govern folding of long DNA molecules, including phase separation, topological effects in polymer systems, and non-equilibrium phenomena. Recent studies have shown…

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A free lecture open to the public.
Hamilton Colloquium Series, Luis Fernando Alday, Oxford University, "Quantum Scattering Amplitudes in AdS/CFT"
Thu, Feb 20, 2020, 4:00 pm4:00 pm

The AdS/CFT correspondence maps correlators of local operators in a conformal field theory to scattering amplitudes in a gravitational/string theory on curved space-time. The study of such amplitudes is incredibly hard and has mostly been done in a certain classical limit. We show how modern analytic bootstrap techniques allow us to go much…

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A free lecture open to the public.
Hamilton Colloquium Series, Ricard Alert, Princeton University, "The Physics of Collective Cell Migration"
Thu, Feb 13, 2020, 4:00 pm4:00 pm

Cells in our body move in groups during development, wound healing, and tumor spreading. Bacterial cells also coordinate their motion to aggregate into biofilms, to feed cooperatively, and to form fruiting bodies. All these collective movements rely on physical mechanisms involving cell-generated propulsion forces and both mechanical and…

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A free lecture open to the public.
Hamilton Colloquium Series, Thierry Mora,Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris, "Diversity and Memory in Self-Organised Immune Repertoires"
Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 4:00 pm4:00 pm

The immune system is composed of a large number of heterogenous interacting components that collectively recognize and clear pathogens. To cover the high-dimensional molecular space of all possible threats, including those that have never been seen before, the adaptive immune system is endowed with a wide variety of receptor proteins, which are…

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A free lecture open to the public.
Hamilton Colloquium Series, Steve Cowley, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, "Driving Down the Cost of Fusion Power Through Technical Innovation"
Thu, Dec 5, 2019, 4:00 pm4:00 pm

The National Academy has recently called for the US to adopt a strategy to produce fusion electricity from a compact pilot plant by mid-century. This approach requires innovations in technology (e.g. magnet systems and power handling systems) and innovations in physics. I will introduce the key issues that challenge the current program and…

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A free lecture open to the public.
Hamilton Colloquium Series, Michal Lipson, Columbia University, "The Revolution of Silicon Photonics" Jadwin A-10
Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 4:00 pm4:00 pm

We are now experiencing a revolution in optical technologies, where one can print and control massive optical circuits, on a microelectronic chip. This revolution is enabling a whole range of applications that are in need for scalable optical technologies and it is opening the door to areas that only a decade ago were…

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A free lecture open to the public.
Hamilton Colloquium Series, Michelle Simmons, University of New South Wales, Australia, "Atomic Qubits in Silicon"
Thu, Nov 14, 2019, 4:00 pm4:00 pm

Building a quantum computer in the highly manufacturable material silicon offers many advantages. Phosphorus atom qubits in silicon in particular have demonstrated extremely long (up to 35 s) coherence times with >99.9% fidelity. Their small size, combined with the magnetically quiet environment of isotopically pure silicon, make them…

A free lecture open to the public.
Hamilton Colloquium Series, Sheperd S. Doeleman, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, "The Event Horizon Telescope: Imaging a Black Hole"
Thu, Nov 7, 2019, 4:00 pm4:00 pm

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is a Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) array operating at the shortest possible wavelengths, which can resolve the event horizons of the nearest supermassive black holes. Observing at mm radio wavelengths enables detection of photons that originate from deep within the gravitational potential well of the…

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A free lecture open to the public.
Hamilton Colloquium Series, Allan H. MacDonald, University of Texas at Austin, "Magic Angle Twisted Bilayer Graphene" Jadwin A10
Thu, Oct 3, 2019, 4:00 pm4:00 pm

Moiré patterns are ubiquitous in layered van der Waals materials and can now be fabricated with considerable control by combining mechanical exfoliation of van der Waals layers with tear and stack device fabrication techniques.  I will explain why the electronic and optical properties of two-dimensional semiconductors and semimetals are…

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A free lecture open to the public.
Hamilton Colloquium Series, Adam Burrows, Princeton University, "Supernova Explosion Simulations in Three Dimensions" Jadwin A10
Thu, Sep 26, 2019, 4:00 pm4:00 pm

Using our state-of-the-art code Fornax we have simulated the collapse and explosion of the cores of many massive-star models in three spatial dimensions. This is the most comprehensive set of realistic 3D core-collapse supernova simulations yet performed and has provided very important insights into the mechanism and character of this 50-year…

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A free lecture open to the public.
Hamilton Colloquium Series, Gerard 't Hooft, Utrecht University, "The Quantum Black Hole: How Exotic Physics May Enter"
Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 4:00 pm4:00 pm

Quantising a black hole can be done starting with conventional physics. We just assume matter to keep the form of point particles until they come close to the horizon. The gravitational back reaction of these particles generates a novel relation between particles going in and particles going out, enabling us to transform in-going particles into…

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A free lecture open to the public.
Hamilton Colloquium Series, Silviu Pufu, Princeton University "Conformal Field Theory: From Boiling Water to Quantum Gravity"
Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 4:00 pm4:00 pm

Conformal Field Theory (CFT) is a framework used to describe physical systems with no intrinsic length or energy scales.  CFTs have wide applicability across theoretical physics, ranging from critical points in the phase diagrams of water or magnetic materials to the low-energy dynamics of extended objects in string theory.  In this talk, I…

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A free lecture open to the public.
Hamilton Colloquium Series, Lawrence Sulak, Boston University, “Discovering the Electro-Weak Force, Seeing a Supernova Explode, Peering Inside the Sun, & Watching Neutrinos Oscillate”
Thu, May 2, 2019, 4:00 pm4:00 pm

Cosmological hypotheses and oracular dreams of grandly unifying all the forces of nature foretold: neutrinos might weigh a tiny bit, those elusive particles might blow up stars, and the protons (and your ashes) would transform into light in 1029 years.  Indeed, that man can live to 100, without the radioactivity in his bones killing him,…

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A free lecture open to the public.
Hamilton Colloquium Series, Pupa Gilbert, University of Wisconsin-Madison,"How Organisms Build Crystals"
Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 4:00 pm4:00 pm

Crystalline biominerals cost energy but provide the diverse organism making them with scaffolding, shielding, locomotion, mastication, gravity and magnetic field sensing, etc. How these crystals are formed reveals how living organisms harness the laws of physics and chemistry for their evolutionary advantage, but also because it can teach us…

A free lecture open to the public.
Hamilton Colloquium Series, Hirosi Ooguri, Caltech, "Constraints on Quantum Gravity"
Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 4:00 pm4:00 pm

Superstring theory is our best candidate for the ultimate unification of general relativity and quantum mechanics. Although predictions of the theory are typically at extremely high energy and out of reach of current experiments and observations, several non-trivial constraints on its low energy effective theory have been found. Because of the…

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A free lecture open to the public.
Hamilton Colloquium Series: Marta Volonteri, IAP, "Massive Black Hole Binaries in the Cosmos" Jadwin A10
Thu, Apr 4, 2019, 4:00 pm5:00 pm

Massive black holes weighing from a few tens of thousands to tens of billions of solar masses inhabit the centers of today’s galaxies, including our own Milky Way. Massive black holes also shone as quasars in the past, with the earliest detected a mere billion years after the Big Bang. Along cosmic time, encounters between galaxies hosting…

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A free lecture open to the public.