School of Physics

 

 

 

Latest News

The College of Sciences launched its Young Alumni Board, a volunteer-based leadership group that is tasked with deepening the relationship between recent Yellow Jacket graduates and the College. The inaugural Board consists of 13 members who obtained an undergraduate degree from the College within the last 20 years or a master’s or Ph.D. degree from the College within the last 10 years. 

The School of Physics will launch the new B.S. in Astrophysics program in summer 2025. This new major is the latest addition to the College of Sciences’ academic offerings and responds to increased student demand for courses and research opportunities in astrophysics. A minor in astrophysics will also be offered starting next summer.

On Monday, November 18, Geri Richmond visited Georgia Tech with Chief of Staff in the Office of the Under Secretary for Science and Innovation Ariel Marshall (Ph.D. CHEM '14) to meet with students and faculty — and discuss future opportunities for collaboration.  

The Student and Alumni Leadership Dinner provided a platform for students and alumni to network and share career insights. The event also honored BrandSafway with the inaugural Internship Employer of the Year award, highlighting the company's commitment to offering valuable learning experiences to interns.

Events

Mar 03

School of Physics Faculty Search Colloquium Series- Dr. Aishik Ghosh

Aishik Ghosh(UCI)Probing High-Dimensional Spaces: From Theory Design to Parameter Inference in Particle and Astrophysics

Mar 04

College of Sciences Career Day with Deloitte (2 events, 2 locations)

This event is designed to connect College of Sciences students with representatives from Deloitte.

Mar 05

School of Physics CM/AMO/Quantum Seminar - Dr. Yuhan Liu

Parent Lindbladians for Matrix Product Density Operators

Mar 06

School of Physics CRA Seminar - Dr. Ethan Partington

CRA Seminar | Dr. Ethan Partington | IA-FORTH, Greece | Host: Prof. Laura Cadonati

Mar 06

Observatory Public Night

On the grounds between the Howey and Mason Buildings, several telescopes are typically set up for viewing, and visitors are invited to bring their own telescope, as well.

Mar 07

Special CRA Seminar - Dr. Jonathan C. Tan

Special CRA Seminar | Prof. Jonathan C. Tan | Chalmers / U. Virginia | Host: Prof. John Wise

Mar 07

Fossil Friday

Come join the Spatial Ecology and Paleontology Lab for Fossil Fridays! Become a fossil hunter and help discover how vertebrate communities have changed through time.

 

Experts in the News

School of Physics Professor Ignacio Taboada provided brief commentary on KM3NeT, a new underwater neutrino experiment that has detected what appears to be the highest-energy cosmic neutrino observed to date.

“This is clearly an interesting event. It is also very unusual,” said Taboada, spokesperson for the IceCube experiment in Antarctica. IceCube, which has a similar detector-array design as KM3NeT but is encased in ice rather than water, has detected neutrinos with energies as high as 10 PeV, but nothing in 100 PeV range. “IceCube has worked for 14 years, so it’s weird that we don’t see the same thing,” Taboada said. Taboada is not involved in the KM3Net experiment. 

The KM3NeT team is aware of this weirdness. They compared the KM3-230213A event to upper limits on the neutrino flux given by IceCube and the Pierre Auger cosmic-ray experiment in Argentina. Taking those limits as given, they found that there was a 1% chance of detecting a 220-PeV neutrino during KM3NeT’s preliminary (287-day) measurement campaign. 

This also appeared in Scientific American and Smithsonian Magazine.

Physics Magazine 2025-02-12T00:00:00-05:00

Georgia Tech researchers from the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, and the School of Physics including Regents' Professor Thomas Orlando, Assistant Professor Karl Lang, and post-doctoral researcher Micah Schaible are among the authors of a paper recently published in Scientific Reports.

Researchers from the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech demonstrated that space weathering alterations of the surface of lunar samples at the nanoscale may provide a mechanism to distinguish lunar samples of variable surface exposure age.

Nature Scientific Reports 2025-01-02T00:00:00-05:00

Despite the fact that Antarctica is extraordinarily difficult to get to, astronomers love it and have chosen it as the location for the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. What could possibly make such a remote location so desirable for space science that it’s worth all that trouble? 

In this article, scientists including Georgia Tech's Brandon Pries from the School of Physics explain why the South Pole is such a hotspot for astronomers. The answer? At the South Pole, you can best view neutrons and neutrinos in space. 

Pries compares the benefits of the South Pole to the North Pole. “The North Pole is more difficult because ice coverage there fluctuates,” explains Pries. “There is a foundation of bedrock underneath Antarctica that serves as a solid base for the IceCube instruments.” This bedrock is also why Antarctica is home to the South Pole Telescope, a radio observatory that helped take the first ever photo of a black hole.

Popular Science 2024-09-05T00:00:00-04:00

Georgia Tech researchers from the School of Physics including fifth-year PhD student Mengqi Huang and Assistant Professor Chunhui Rita Du are among the authors of a paper recently published in Nature Physics. Researchers from six universities and Oak Ridge National Laboratory showed that strong quantum fluctuations can stabilize an unconventional magnetic phase after destroying a more conventional one.

Nature Physics 2024-08-26T00:00:00-04:00

Scientists have produced an image of the Milky Way not based on electromagnetic radiation - light - but on ghostly subatomic particles called neutrinos. They detected high-energy neutrinos in pristine ice deep below Antarctica's surface, then traced their source back to locations in the Milky Way - the first time these particles have been observed arising from our galaxy.

The neutrinos were detected over a span of a decade at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at a U.S. scientific research station at the South Pole, using more than 5,000 sensors covering an area the size of a small mountain.

School of Physics Professor Ignacio Taboada is the spokesperson for the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and provides a brief commentary on this new research:

"This observation is ground-breaking. It established the galaxy as a neutrino source. Every future work will refer to this observation," says Taboada.

Reuters 2024-07-29T00:00:00-04:00

Groundbreaking research is shedding new light on how biofilms grow — using physics and mathematical models. Biofilms grow everywhere — from plaque on teeth, to medical devices, to the open ocean. But until now, it’s been difficult to study just what controls their growth. In a new study published in Nature Physics, researchers from the Yunker Lab in the School of Physics, including Lead Researcher Aawaz Pokhrel and Associate Professor Peter Yunker, leveraged physics to show that a biofilm’s geometry is the single most important factor in determining growth rate — more important than even the rate at which cells can reproduce. Since some research shows that 80% of infections in human bodies are caused by the bacteria in biofilms, understanding how colonies grow has important human health implications, potentially to help reduce their impact in medical settings or industrial processes. (This also appeared in Phys.org and Dental Review News.)

Nature Physics 2024-07-09T00:00:00-04:00