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Colloquium

Junior and senior physics majors attend our biweekly colloquium series, held on Tuesday afternoons at 4:30 pm in Galileo-Edwards. The talks are open to all students and to the public, and are frequently attended by scientists from the other Claremont Colleges, Cal Poly Pomona, and others. The series features speakers from a broad range of institutions and fields of physics.

2009 – 2010
10 November 2009 David Garofalo, JPL, Does the Universe Know About Black Hole Spin?
27 October 2009 Everett Lipman, UC Santa Barbara, Tracking the Motion of a Biomolecular Machine with a Nanoscale Optical Encoder
6 October 2009 Janet Scheel, Occidental College, Go With the Flow: Numerical Simulations of Turbulence in Fluids
22 September 2009 Ann Esin, Harvey Mudd College, The Early Lives of Sun-Like Stars
8 September 2009 Several HMC Physics Majors, Harvey Mudd College, Summer 2009 Off-Campus Research
2008 – 2009
14 April 2009 Mike Campbell, Logos Technologies, A Sustainable Nuclear Energy Future
31 March 2009 Anyes Taffard, UC Irvine, LHC — Journey to the Heart of Matter
10 March 2009 Peter Taborek '74, UC Irvine, Singularities in Fluid Flows from Superfluids to Bubbles to Chicken Soup
24 February 2009 Oskar Painter, Caltech, Nano-opto Mechanics: Utilizing Light Forces Within Guided-Wave Nanostructures
10 February 2009 Roland Kawakami, UC Riverside, The Anatomy of a Spintronic Device
27 January 2009 Jenny Hoffman, Harvard University, Exploring a New Family of High-Tc Superconductors: The Iron-Arsenides
2 December 2008 Warren Rogers '81, Westmont College, The Study of Exotic Nuclei and its Application to Astrophysical Systems
11 November 2008 Ned Wright, UCLA, Observing the Origin of the Universe
28 October 2008 Alex Small, Cal Poly Pomona, Faster, Smaller, Smarter: Using Light to See Things Smaller than the Wavelength of Light!
7 October 2008 Jerry Pine, Caltech, Studying the Development of Cultured Neural Networks
23 September 2008 Nicola Spaldin, UC Santa Barbara, How Do We Use Computational Methods to Design New Materials?
9 September 2008 Several HMC Senior Physics Majors, Harvey Mudd College, Summer 2008 Off-Campus Research
2007 – 2008
22 April 2008 Several HMC Professors, Harvey Mudd College, Recent Developments in Physics
25 March 2008 Steuard Jensen '98, Joint Sciences Program, Extra Dimensions in String Theory
19 February 2008 Jun Ye, JILA, Quantum Metrology with Precision Light and Ultracold Atoms
12 February 2008 James Higbie, UC Berkeley, Ultra-Sensitive Atomic Magnetometry: From Fieldable Sensors to High-Resolution Magnetic Microscopy
5 February 2008 Adam Edwards, Pomona College, Particle Physics -- Physics at the Petabyte Scale
29 January 2008 Huen Jin Lee, Caltech, Using Mechanics to Describe Cell Membrane Structures
4 December 2007 Gordon G. Fullerton, NASA, The Early Days of the Space Shuttle Program
27 November 2007 Omer Blaes, UC Santa Barbara, How To Light Up a Black Hole: The Physics of Black Hole Accretion Flows
13 November 2007 Ernie Glover, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Ultrafast X-ray Spectroscopy: Probing Dynamics at Fundamental Length and Time Scales
30 October 2007 Sean Carroll, Caltech, Why Is the Past Different From the Future?
16 October 2007 Bob McKeown, Caltech, Neutrino Masses and Oscillations: Triumphs and Challenges
2 October 2007 Peter So '86, MIT, Frontiers in Optical Biomolecular Imaging
18 September 2007 Dwight L. Whitaker, Pomona College, Captivating and Chilling: An All-Optical Method for Making Bose-Einstein Condensates
11 September 2007 Six HMC Students, Harvey Mudd College, Off-Campus Research in the Summer of 2007
2006 – 2007
24 April 2007 Eric E. Fullerton, UC San Diego, Characterizing Magnetic Materials on the Nano-Scale Using Synchrotron X-Rays
17 April 2007 Ashley Stroupe, JPL, Robotic Planetary Science: the Mars Exploration Rovers and Beyond
3 April 2007 Roger Falcone, UC Berkeley, Watching Atoms Move With Ultrafast X-Rays
20 March 2007 David Hafemeister, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Physics of Sustainability
6 March 2007 Robert H. Kraus, Jr., Los Alamos National Laboratory, Imaging Human Brain Function, or, Can We "Read Your Thoughts?"
20 February 2007 Several HMC Professors, Harvey Mudd College, Recent Developments in Physics
6 February 2007 Elizabeth D. Freeland, Chicago Art Institute, Pushing the Limits of the Standard Model With Lattice QCD
23 January 2007 Tom Banks, UC Santa Cruz, String Theory and Holography: An Approach to the Quantum Theory of Gravity
5 December 2006 Bridget Smith-Konter, UCSD, Stress Evolution of the San Andreas Fault System
21 November 2006 Ken Cooper, JPL, Artificial Atoms on a Chip: The Road to Quantum Computation?
7 November 2006 David McComas, SwRI and UTSA, The Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX): Discovering The Interaction Between Our Solar System and the Galaxy
24 October 2006 Karen Shell, Oregon State University, Diagnosing Climate Feedbacks in Atmospheric General Circulation Models
3 October 2006 Adam Bernstein, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Applied Antineutrino Physics: Reactor Monitoring with Cubic Meter Scale Antineutrino Detectors
19 September 2006 Bill Jones, Caltech, Imaging the Primordial Plasma: Recent Observations of the Temperature and Polarization Anisotropies of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)
12 September 2006 Various students, Harvey Mudd College, Student Presentations of Off-Campus Research during the Summer of 2006
5 September 2006 Chandrashekhar Joshi, UCLA, Laser- and Beam-Driven Plasma Accelerators
2005 – 2006
18 April 2006 Arvind Rajaraman, U.C. Irvine, Dark Matter
4 April 2006 Physics Faculty, Harvey Mudd College, Recent Physics News, as Reported by Faculty Members of the Department of Physics
21 March 2006 Re'em Sari, Caltech, The Formation of the Solar System
7 March 2006 John Clarke, U. C. Berkeley, The Ubiquitous SQUID: From Cosmology to Medicine
21 February 2006 Michael Wood-Vasey '98, Harvard University, The Accelerating Universe and You: The Past, Present, and Future of Exploring the Universe With Supernovae
31 January 2006 Theresa Lynn, Caltech, Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays: The Mystery of Nature's Most Powerful Particle Accelerators
24 January 2006 Martin Madsen, University of Michigan, Experimental Quantum Mechanics: Exploring the Quantum World One Atom at a Time
17 January 2006 Erik Helgren, U. C. Berkeley, Optical Properties of Disordered Systems: Terahertz Spectroscopy of Doped Silicon
28 November 2005 Douglas Osheroff, Stanford, The Discovery of Superfluid He3 as Seen Through the Eyes of a Graduate Student
15 November 2005 David Awschalom, UC Santa Barbara, Spintronics, Semiconductors, Molecules, and Quantum Information Processing
8 November 2005 Nathan Lewis, Caltech, Scientific Challenges in Sustainable Energy Technology
25 October 2005 Mark Beck, Whitman College, Interference, Complementarity, Entanglement and All That Jazz
11 October 2005 Gabriela Canalizo, U. C. Riverside, Galaxy Collisions and the Birth of Quasars
27 September 2005 Thomas D. Donnelly, Harvey Mudd College, Production and Application of an Aerosol of Micron-Scale Particles
13 September 2005 Kerry Vahala, Caltech, Q > Million Optical Microresonators on Silicon Chips
6 September 2005 HMC juniors and seniors, Harvey Mudd College, What I Did on My Summer Vacation: Off-Campus Summer Research Experiences
2004 – 2005
26 April 2005 Mark Vagins, U.C. Irvine, Close Encounters of the Absurd Kind - A Scientist Looks at UFO's
19 April 2005 Jerry Gollub, Haverford College and U. Pennsylvania, Chaotic Dynamics of Mixing in Fluids
12 April 2005 Wilson Ho, U.C. Irvine, Visualization of Quantum Phenomena
29 March 2005 Stanley Klein, U. C. Berkeley, New Methods for Imaging Brain Activity in Space and Time
8 March 2005 Theresa Lynn, Caltech, Dances With Atoms and Photons: Steps Toward Quantum Information Technology
22 February 2005 David Hafemeister, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, National Academy Study on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
8 February 2005 Scott Fraser '76, Caltech, Was Leonardo Right? New Insights into the Mechanics of Cardiovascular Development
25 January 2005 Kate Hutton, Seismological Laboratory, Caltech, The Largest Quake in 40 Years
7 December 2004 Jonathan L. Feng, UC Irvine, Black Holes and Extra Dimensions
23 November 2004 Kenneth N. Barish, UC Riverside, Heating up the Vacuum: a New Spin on QCD at RHIC
2 November 2004 Eric Fullerton '84, San Jose Research Center
Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, Bits of the Future: Magnetic Recording Beyond the Superparamagnetic Limit
12 October 2004 Carlton M. Caves, University of New Mexico, Quantum Computation: Why, What, and How
21 September 2004 Gregory Lyzenga, Harvey Mudd College, Earthquake Prediction: Physics or Phantasy?
7 September 2004 12 Senior and Junior Physics Majors, Harvey Mudd College, What I Did on My Summer Vacation: Off-campus summer research experiences
2003 – 2004
20 April 2004 Shamit Kachru, Stanford University, Cosmology on the String Theory Landscape
23 March 2004 Patricia Burchat, Stanford University, Physics at the B Factories: Progress and Prospects
2 March 2004 Everett Lipman, UC Santa Barbara, How an Experimental Physicist Can Observe Individual Biological Molecules
17 February 2004 James Larkin, UCLA, Observing Galaxy Evolution at the Keck Telescope
3 February 2004 Peter Collings, Swarthmore College, Ferroelectricity in Liquid Crystals and the Next Generation of Liquid Crystal Displays
20 January 2004 Peter Saulson, Syracuse University, Searching for Gravitational Waves: Fulfilling Einstein's Vision
2 December 2003 Clare Yu, UC Irvine, Vortex Lattice Melting in the High Temperature Superconductors
11 November 2003 Steve Barwick, UC Irvine, The Search for Astrophysical Neutrinos at the Energy Frontier
28 October 2003 E. Dan Dahlberg, University of Minnesota, Magnetism at the Nanoscale
7 October 2003 Mark Trodden, Syracuse University, Castling Light on the Dark Side of the Universe
23 September 2003 Stephen Quake, Caltech, Biological Large Scale Integration
9 September 2003 Jonathan Dowling, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Schrödinger's Rainbow: The Renaissance in Quantum Opitcal Interferometry
2002 – 2003
22 April 2003 Alan Middleton, Syracuse University, How Physicists Have Learned from Computer Scientists to be Cheap and Lazy
1 April 2003 M. Vagins, UC Irvine, The Zen and the Art of Solar Neutrinos
11 March 2003 Eli Yablonovitch, UCLA, Electron Spin Resonance Transistors, for Quantum Communication and Computing
4 March 2003 Several HMC professors, Harvey Mudd College, Recent Physics News
28 January 2003 Gary Felder, Canadian Institute for Theoretical Physics, The Very Early Universe
21 January 2003 Vatche Sahakian, Cornell University, String Theory in a Nutshell
3 December 2002 G. Hanson, UC Riverside, Neutrino Factories and Muon Colliders
12 November 2002 U. Mohideen, UC Riverside, An Experimental Exploration of the Quantum Vacuum Through the Casimir Force
29 October 2002 D. Santiago, Stanford University, Schrödinger Cats and Other Quantum Mechanical Crimes: Coherence and the Appearance of Classicality
8 October 2002 Marc Kamionkowski, Caltech, Dark Matter and Elementary Particles
24 September 2002 Peter Saeta, Harvey Mudd College, A Brief Look at French Magnetism
10 September 2002 Tom Donnelly, Harvey Mudd College, A Surprisingly Strong X-Ray Signal: Eight Years later
2001 – 2002
16 April 2002 Richard Muller, UC Berkeley, Military Secrets of the Oceans, Atmosphere and UFOs
2 April 2002 Peter Tenenbaum, SLAC, Colliders 101
12 March 2002 Jim Eisenstein, Caltech, Electrons in Flatland: The Whole is Greater Than The Sum of Its Parts
5 March 2002 Mikhail Rabinovich, UC San Diego, Neurodynamics
5 February 2002 Christopher L. Martin, Harvard/Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Radio Milky Way: Broadcasting 24 Hours a Day To a Receiver Near You
29 January 2002 Ann Esin, Harvey Mudd College, Chasing After Gamma-Ray Bursts
27 November 2001 Seth Putterman, UCLA, Sonoluminescence: The Star in the Jar
20 November 2001 Bruce I. Cohen, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Computer Modeling of a Fusion Plasma
6 November 2001 Alex Hall, UCLA, Understanding Earth's Climate
9 October 2001 Norman S. Sakamoto, Northrop Gruman Corp., Global Hawk: A Transformation in Airborne Reconnaissance
25 September 2001 Richard Haglund, Vanderbilt University, Physics Converging: Biological, Materials and Optical Physics at The Nanometer Scale
11 September 2001 Todd Ditmire, Univ. of Texas at Austin, The Physics of Ultrafast, Ultratense Light Interactions With Matter
2000 – 2001
10 April 2001 Jack W. Judy, UCLA, Magnetic MEMS
27 March 2001 John B. Rundle, Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, Understanding the Physics of Earthquakes with HPC Numerical Simulations: Implications for Earthquake
6 March 2001 Stephen H. Schneider, Stanford, Climate Modeling: Can the Forecasts be Verified?
20 February 2001 T. C. Lubensky, University of Pennsylvania, Topological Defects, Interactions, and Chaining in Nematic Emulsions
23 January 2001 Ann Esin, Caltech, In Search of Black Holes in Our Galaxy
12 December 2000 Robert Knop '90, , Measuring the Accelerating Universe with Supernovae
5 December 2000 Huan Lin, Steward Observatory, Exploring the Universe with Galaxy Redshift Surveys
28 November 2000 Daniel A. Dale, Caltech, Infrared Diagnostics of Galaxies
14 November 2000 Andrea Lommen, UC Berkeley, Pulsars: Interstellar Laboratories for Uncontrollable Physics
31 October 2000 Charles A. Sackett '91, NIST, Quantum Entanglement in Ion Traps
10 October 2000 Eric G. Adelberger, University of Washington, New tests of Einstein's Equivalence Principle and Newton's Inverse-Square Law
26 September 2000 Brenda Dingus '82, University of Wisconsin, Gamma-Ray Bursts: Black Hole Birth Announcements
12 September 2000 Hideo Mabuchi, Caltech, Information and the Quantum: Classical Interface
1999 – 2000
18 April 2000 Jeff Squier, UC San Diego, Development of a Real-Time, Third Harmonic Microscope with Touch Interaction
4 April 2000 Frank A. Moscatelli, Swarthmore, NIST F-2: The Cesium Fountain Atomic Clock
29 February 2000 Barry C. Barish, Caltech, The Detection of Gravitational Waves
15 February 2000 S. R. Kulkarni, Caltech, The Brilliant Gamma-ray Bursts: Dying Cries for the Deep Universe
1 February 2000 Ken Janda, UC Irvine, Liquid Helium Nano-droplets, a Superfluid Solvent?
18 January 2000 Dale M. Meade, Princeton, Confining a Fusion Fire: A Grand Challenge for Science and Technology
30 November 1999 Matt Carey '85, IBM Almaden Research Center, What's in Your Hard Drive: Thin Films for Magnetic Recording
16 November 1999 John C. Mankins '78, NASA, Challenges and Opportunities for Affordable Human Exploration of the Solar System
9 November 1999 Denise M. Krol, UC Davis and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Optical Materials for Waveguide and Fiber Devices
26 October 1999 Roger Carlson '89, TRW, The Chandra X-Ray Space Telescope, or, Why I Should Have Paid Attention in Theo-Mech
5 October 1999 Mary Barsony, , The Formation of Stars and Planetary Systems in Our Era
21 September 1999 Stephen K. Park, UC Riverside, Use of Naturally Occurring Low Frequency Electromagnetic Waves for Determination of Feologic Structure
1998 – 1999
4 May 1999 Paul Kwiat, , Something Quantum This Way Comes
20 April 1999 Harry Tom, UC Riverside, What Can Happen in a Few Femtoseconds?
6 April 1999 Henry C. Kapteyn '83, University of Michigan, Ultrashort Light Pulses
23 March 1999 Michael Cross, Caltech, Controlling Chaos: Towards Quieting the Beating Heart
2 March 1999 Robert P. Wolf, Harvey Mudd College, Boojums and Hyperbolic Hedgehogs: Strange Beauty of Nematic Liquid Cystals Emulsions
9 February 1999 David J. Stevenson, Caltech, The Formation of the Earth and the Role of Impacts on the Origin of Life
2 February 1999 James R. Groome, Harvey Mudd College, Deactivation Kinetics of Sodium Channels in Skeltal Muscle: Independent or Cooperative Gating?
24 November 1998 Robert Knop '90, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Measuring the Expansion of the Universe with Supernovae
19 November 1998 Thomas R. Cech, University of Colorado at Boulder, Life at the end of the Chromosome: Where Chemistry and Biology Meet Bioinformatics
27 October 1998 Lee Casperson, Portland State University, Instabilities and Chaos in Lasers and Other Physics Systems
13 October 1998 Adam S. Landsberg, WM Keck Science Center, Disorder and Synchronization in Josephson Junction Arrays
29 September 1998 Chih-Yung Chen, Harvey Mudd College, Persistent Photoconductivity in Si delta-doped GaAs
15 September 1998 Joseph Platt, Harvey Mudd College, Ancient Days With Elementary Particles
1997 – 1998
21 April 1998 Scot Gould, JSD, Silk Stalkings: The Mechanics of Spider Silk During Prey Capture
24 March 1998 Marco Leona, LA County Museum of Art, More Than Meets The Eye: Scientific Examination of Works of Art
3 March 1998 Mark Johnson '89, TRW, Superconductor Electronics: Pendulums, SQUIDS, and Single-Flux Quanta
17 February 1998 Roger Falcone, UC Berkeley, Ultrafast Time-Scale Interactions of Intense Laser Light With Matter
3 February 1998 Ronald Hellings, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Space Gravitational-Wave Astronomy
2 December 1997 Sarah D. Johnson, University of La Verne, Measuring the Lifetime of Beauty
11 November 1997 John Schwarz, Caltech, The Second Superstring Revolution
28 October 1997 David Meier, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Magnetized Acretion Disks Around Stars and Black Holes: Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Outer Space
14 October 1997 James C. (Seamus) Davis, UC Berkeley, Macroscopic Quantum Physics of a Superfluid Helium-3 Weak Link, or, Whistle While You Work
30 September 1997 David Evans, Caltech, True Polar Wander and the Geodynamics of Supercontinents
16 September 1997 Donald C. Backer, UC Berkeley, The Neutron Star--White Dwarf Binary Population in the Galactic Disk
1996 – 1997
15 April 1997 Greg Lyzenga, Harvey Mudd College, Earthquake Mechanics in Southern California
11 March 1997 Sunil Somalwar, Rutgers University, Where is All The Antimatter?
18 February 1997 John McNeil, SAIC, Creating Data-Driven Systems for Laboratory Automation