In this talk I will describe the recent detection of gravitational waves by the LIGO/Virgo collaboration. The main event heard, GW150914, is consistent with the emission of gravitational waves from the late inspiral, merger and ringdown of two heavy stellar mass black holes. Many aspects of this event are fortuitous and remarkable, and I will…
Non-zero neutrino mass brings with it new complexity in the neutrino sector, and major questions surrounding neutrino masses and mixing remain unanswered. Among the unknowns are the ordering of the neutrino masses, key details of flavor mixing, and whether neutrinos respect CP symmetry. NOvA, a long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment…
A very close supernova explosion could have caused a mass extinction of life in Earth. In 1996, Brian Fields, the late Dave Schramm, and the speaker proposed looking for unstable isotopes such as Iron 60 that could have been deposited by a recent nearby supernova explosion. A group from the Technical University of Munich has discovered Iron 60…
Microscopy has played important roles in revealing new insight in diverse fields of research ranging from physics to biology. It likewise is an important component of controlling nano-scale structures in the semiconductor industry. I will trace my own path of adapting various forms of scanned probe microscopy to image vortices, electrons, and…
Friction is the basic, ubiquitous mechanical interaction between two surfaces that results in resistance to motion and energy dissipation. To test long-standing atomistic models of friction processes at the nanoscale, we have implemented a synthetic nanofriction interface using laser cooled ions subject to the periodic potential of an optical…
In specially designed solid microcavities, the photon properties can be altered to have effective mass and repulsive interactions; these new states are called "polaritons". The polaritons act like atoms, and because they are bosons, they can undergo Bose-Einstein condensation. The experiments on polariton condensation have shown truly…
Starting with the discovery of graphene, the Dirac equation has appeared in many different contexts in condensed matter physics. In this talk I will describe two recent developments: the effects of chiral anomalies in Weyl and Dirac materials, and the Dirac nature of the composite fermion in the many-body physics of the half-filled Landau…
Cosmic-ray antiprotons have been a valuable tool for dark matter searches since the 1970s. Recent years have seen increased theoretical and experimental effort towards the first-ever detection of cosmic-ray antideuterons, in particular as an indirect signature of dark matter annihilation or decay in the Galactic halo. In contrast to other…
A longstanding goal of violin research has been to establish objectively measurable parameters for violin quality. These would presumably substantiate one of the violin-world’s most passionately held beliefs: Violins made by Stradivari and his contemporaries in 18th Century Italy sound better than any made elsewhere or since. However, a team…
The colloquium talk that was scheduled for Thursday, Feb. 18 has been cancelled.
The importance of determining and interpreting the structures of atoms, crystals, and proteins was established long ago. I will discuss current efforts to extend this paradigm to the brain, focusing on new discoveries concerning the structure of the retina gained through 3D electron microscopy, computer vision, and crowdsourcing. I will also…
The eleven year solar activity cycle is a remarkable example of regular behavior emerging from an extremely turbulent system. The jets on Jupiter sit unmoving on a sea of turbulent eddies. Astrophysical phenomena often display organization on spatial and temporal scales much larger than the turbulent processes that drive them. An outstanding…
Living matter obeys the laws of physics, and the principles and methods of theoretical physics ought to find useful application in many areas of biology. This truism is becoming ever more relevant with the rapid growth of the ability of biological experiments to produce comprehensive quantitative data. After a broad survey of the theoretical…
I will describe our recent cosmological results from observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background, including a status report on the recent flight of the Spider experiment, a balloon borne CMB polarimeter. I will also discuss a convergence of observational needs and technological capabilities that provide intriguing opportunities for…
We are fortunate to live at a time when questions about the origin and future of the universe are becoming accessible to scientific inquiry, primarily through observational advances but also through the development of new theoretical ideas. One popular picture is that the very early universe underwent an extraordinary burst of exponential…
Cosmological observations and the dynamics of the Milky Way provide strong evidence for an invisible and dominant mass component that so far reveals its presence only by its gravitational interaction. If the dark matter is made of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), it can be directly detected via elastic scattering from nuclei in…
I will discuss the discovery of two pentaquark states both decaying into a J/ψ meson and a proton. The decay mode defines the quark content as c cbar, u, u, d, and thus are called charmonium pentaquarks. These exotic structures are found in Λb→J/ψ K- p decays using a full amplitude analysis using 7 and 8 TeV pp collisions from 3/fb of data…
Quantum field theory provides a universal language for very different areas of physics. I will try to demonstrate this by briefly discussing some fundamental problems, both solved and unsolved. The problems will include (if time permits) critical phenomena and conformal bootstrap, quark confinement and gauge/string duality, cosmological…
Recent work has shown that manipulating a quantum system using a periodic drive provides a new means for externally controlling it. Such a periodic drive can give rise to topological states in trivial quantum wells, bulk semiconductors, and even in graphene; and it can also turn a quantum wire into a system which could have Majorana states -…
The bulk of cosmic rays originate in the Milky Way, most likely in supernova explosions. I will discuss the physics aspects of the interaction between charged particles and the environment that are at the very basis of both particle acceleration and propagation throughout the Galaxy and beyond. While we learned a lot from recent cosmic ray and…
By Year
By Category
- Astroparticle Seminar
- Atomic Physics Seminar
- Biophysics Seminar
- Condensed Matter Seminar
- Dark Cosmo Seminar
- Distinguished Lecture Series
- Donald R. Hamilton Colloquium
- Donald R. Hamilton Lecture
- Equity Diversity and Inclusion Initiative
- FPO
- Gravity Group Seminar
- Gravity Initiative Seminar
- High Energy Experiment Seminar
- High Energy Theory Seminar
- Mathematical Physics Seminar
- Particle Physics Seminar
- PCTS Seminar
- Phenomenology Seminar
- Princeton Quantum Colloquium
- Quantum Initiative
- Special Event
- Special Seminar
- Statistical Mechanics Seminar