Past Events

Around 2008 our peer reviewers held these beliefs to be true: "No one will use computational research-based app to analyze or guide experiments. No one will use such apps in education. Such apps are not publications!" Today we measure how...

Electromagnetic fields represent a fundamental aspect of nature and serve as the primary carrier of energy. New abilities to control electromagnetic fields, as enabled for example by the developments of metamaterials and nanophotonic structures, can therefore have profound implications for...

The nature and origin of dark matter are among the most compelling mysteries of contemporary science. There is strong evidence for dark matter from its role in shaping the galaxies and galaxy clusters that we observe in the universe. For...

The magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ), a device comprised of two ferromagnetic electrodes with a thin (~1nm) insulating tunnel barrier in between, was first proposed in a Ph.D. thesis by Michel Jullière in 1975 and reached widespread commercialization nearly 30 years...

Earthquakes occur by overcoming fault friction, and therefore quantifying the resistance of faults is central to earthquake physics. Both static and dynamic friction values are required, and the latter is especially difficult to determine on natural faults. Perhaps the only...

Between 1967 and 1976, experiments at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (and elsewhere) demonstrated the existence of fundamental particles known as quarks inside protons, neutrons, and other hadrons. I describe the key SLAC experiments and the related theoretical advances that...

The launch and deployment of the James Webb Space Telescope went flawlessly. The telescope and instruments began cooling as soon as the sun shield was deployed, and once the temperature of the short wavelength detectors in NIRCam dropped below 120...

Electron transfer and charge transport are most elementary processes in liquid and solid condensed matter. Both femtosecond spectroscopy and structure-resolving x-ray methods give insight in electron dynamics at atomic length and time scales. This talk focuses on many-body dynamics of...

Strong winds in Southern Ocean storms drive air-sea carbon and heat fluxes and these fluxes are integral to the global climate system. Evidence from a range of sources indicates that the wind speeds that drive these fluxes are increasing. We...