To request a media interview, please reach out to School of Physics experts using our faculty directory, or contact Jess Hunt-Ralston, College of Sciences communications director. A list of faculty experts and research areas across the College of Sciences at Georgia Tech is also available to journalists upon request.
The Aug.17, 2017, detection of gravitational waves and light from the merger of two neutron stars set off a race against time around the globe. Astronomers scrambled to confirm data that could be seen by telescopes and measured by gamma-ray, x-ray and radio wave detection equipment before they all faded away. Laura Cadonati, associate professor in the School of Physics and LIGO Scientific Collaboration deputy spokesperson, explains how these gravitational waves lasted longer than those from four previous incidents caused by black hole collisions. Cadonati is a member of the Center for Relativistic Astrophysics.
advice for students 2017-10-16T00:00:00-04:00
"This year's prize is about a discovery that shook the world." That's how an official with the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences described the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics, which was awarded to the three founders of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) for the detection of gravitational waves. Georgia Tech has a front-row seat for that achievement, thanks to its membership in the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, a global team of scientists that helps to confirm gravitational-wave data. Laura Cadonati, professor in the School of Physics and LIGO deputy spokesperson, is quoted in this article, as she is in a separate story for the Verge. Another LIGO member and School of Physics researcher, Karan Jani, reacts to the Nobel Prize in this Forbes article.
work family interactions 2017-10-03T00:00:00-04:00There are black holes, and then there are supermassive black holes that could have played a role in the formation of the universe. How they got so big remains a mystery, but new theories and research may be closing in on answers. A study from earlier this year supports one of these theories: that radiation from nearby galaxies created the galactic monsters. The study was co-authored by John Wise, Dunn Family Associate Professor in the School of Physics. Wise's work is dthe subject of this Scientific American report.
work family interactions 2017-09-29T00:00:00-04:00School of Physics Assistant Professor Simon Sponberg has the coveted cover story in the September issue of Physics Today. Sponberg, principal investigator in the Agile Systems Lab, gives a state-of-the-science report on animal locomotion; how different physiological systems within a moth, for example, interact within the insect to enable movement, and how that moth interacts with its environment. Data arising from new studies of such neuromechanics have applications for robotics. Sponberg is also an assistant professor in the School of Biological Sciences and an adjunct assistant professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering.
campus drone 2017-09-01T00:00:00-04:00"A pretty cool paper." That's how one of the hosts of the This Week in Microbiology podcast (ep. 159) describes the recent study by School of Biological Sciences professor Joshua Weitz and postdoctoral scientist Chung Yin (Joey) Leung. The Tech researchers discovered that immune cells in an animal host act synergistically with bacteria-killing viruses – phages – to wipe out fatal respiratory infections in lab mice. TWiM is the official podcast of the American Society for Microbiology. Both Weitz and Leung are also affiliated with the School of Physics, and Weitz is the founding director of the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Quantitative Biosciences.
TRACER 2017-08-31T00:00:00-04:00The special memories of Eclipse 2017 @ Georgia Tech linger. This video from Tech Square ATL on the Aug. 21 celestial event was produced by Sandbox ATL in partnership with the University Financing Foundation, the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), and the Scheller College of Business. It highlights the reactions from those who started that day at the cluster of tech startups on the other side of the Downtown Connector on 5th Street before they made their way to the Kessler Campanile. College of Sciences Dean Paul Goldbart is interviewed. Also, WREK 91.1, Tech's student-run radio station, aired a special "97 Percent Eclipse of the Heart" version of its Lost in the Stacks program. You'll hear Georgia Tech Observatory Director James Sowell interviewed between eclipse-themed songs by Television, Pink Floyd, the Police, and Love and Rockets. Sowell is also a senior academic professional in the School of Physics.
salary study 2017-08-30T00:00:00-04:00As if the swamped residents of the Texas Gulf Coast don't have enough reasons to curse Hurricane Harvey, here's one more: clumps of stinging fire ants bobbing in the floodwaters. The New York Times story and this one in the Washington Post cite a 2011 study by School of Biological Sciences Associate Professor David Hu that explained the fire ant's raft-building superpower. Hu is also an associate professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and an adjunct associate professor in the School of Physics.
Extension of Self 2017-08-30T00:00:00-04:00Those scenes of floating fire ant "rafts" plaguing flooding victims of Hurricane Harvey in Houston? David Hu, associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences and the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, first examined that nightmare scenario in 2011. That was when Hu and his research team published a study on how ants lock legs to form the rafts. You also may recall his research from earlier this summer on how the ants don't just spread out when threatened; they can also "perpetually rebuild" towers made of their own bodies. Hu is also an adjunct associate professor in the School of Physics.
stitch-chips 2017-08-29T00:00:00-04:00School of Physics Assistant Professor Elisabetta Matsumoto's research in hyperbolic virtual reality recently captured the attention of The New York Times. This video shows off Matsumoto and her research team's work from earlier this year as it highlights the difference between Euclidean space, where the normal rules of geometry apply, and hyperbolic space, where those rules are warped and curved like the "cell" boundaries in this video. The hope is that these depictions of non-Euclidean geometry will assist in mathematics and geometry research. Matsumoto is also a researcher for the Soft Matter Incubator at the Center for the Science and Technology of Applied Materials and Interfaces (STAMI).
Extension of Self 2017-08-27T00:00:00-04:00
The Atlanta Business Journal lists another example of businesses wanting to get closer to Georgia Tech's research. Graphenano, a Spanish company hoping to make a lot of graphene – a thin yet ultra-strong carbon-based substance that could lead to better batteries and composite materials – may move its North American headquarters to Atlanta. Georgia Tech is a leader in graphene research, and the story cites a May study on a potentially more efficient way to make graphene from School of Physics Professor Uzi Landman and Bokwon Yoon, a research scientist with the school. Both are with the Center for Computational Materials Science; Landman is its director.
introduction 2017-08-25T00:00:00-04:00Atlanta NPR affiliate WABE 90.1 devoted its entire Closer Look broadcast to Monday's solar eclipse. The radio station's coverage included an interview with James Sowell, School of Physics senior academic professional. director of the Georgia Tech Observatory, and Tech's resident astronomer.
complinat purchases 2017-08-21T00:00:00-04:00
By now, you should be aware that of the coast-to-coast total solar eclipse happening next Monday, and Atlanta will experience 97 percent totality. If you aren't aware, then you're obviously Captain America and you've just been thawed out of that ice you were trapped in for the past 70 years. Georgia Tech is certainly aware, and this story by reporter Carl Willis of WSB-TV does a good job of covering what we have planned. Included in the interviews are College of Sciences Dean and Sutherland Chair Paul Goldbart, and Tech astronomer James Sowell, School of Physics senior academic professional and director of the Georgia Tech Observatory.
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Events
School of Physics CM/AMO/Quantum Seminar - Dr. Chuankun Zhang
A solid-state nuclear clock using a VUV frequency comb
A solid-state nuclear clock using a VUV frequency comb
The size and complexity scaling of quantum systems from individual trapped ions to tens of thousands of atoms in optical lattices has driven major advances in precision measurement and quantum technology.
Experts in the News
Other planets, dwarf planets and moons in our solar system have seasonal cycles — and they can look wildly different from the ones we experience on Earth, experts told Live Science.
To understand how other planets have seasons, we can look at what drives seasonal changes on our planet. "The Earth has its four seasons because of the spin axis tilt," Gongjie Li, associate professor in the School of Physics, told Live Science. This means that our planet rotates at a slight angle of around 23.5 degrees.
"On Earth, we're very lucky, this spin axis is quite stable," Li said. Due to this, we've had relatively stable seasonal cycles that have persisted for millennia, although the broader climate sometimes shifts as the entire orbit of Earth drifts further or closer from the sun.
Such stability has likely helped life as we know it develop here, Li said. Scientists like her are now studying planetary conditions and seasonal changes on exoplanets to see whether life could exist in faroff worlds. For now, it seems as though the mild seasonal changes and stable spin tilts on Earth are unique.
Live Science 2025-05-05T00:00:00-04:00Biofilms have emergent properties: traits that appear only when a system of individual items interacts. It was this emergence that attracted School of Physics Associate Professor Peter Yunker to the microbial structures. Trained in soft matter physics — the study of materials that can be structurally altered — he is interested in understanding how the interactions between individual bacteria result in the higher-order structure of a biofilm
Recently, in his lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Yunker and his team created detailed topographical maps of the three-dimensional surface of a growing biofilm. These measurements allowed them to study how a biofilm’s shape emerges from millions of infinitesimal interactions among component bacteria and their environment. In 2024 in Nature Physics, they described the biophysical laws that control the complex aggregation of bacterial cells.
The work is important, Yunker said, not only because it can help explain the staggering diversity of one of the planet’s most common life forms, but also because it may evoke life’s first, hesitant steps toward multicellularity.
Quanta Magazine 2025-04-21T00:00:00-04:00Postdoctoral researcher Aniruddha Bhattacharya and School of Physics Professor Chandra Raman have introduced a novel way to generate entanglement between photons – an essential step in building scalable quantum computers that use photons as quantum bits (qubits). Their research, published in Physical Review Letters, leverages a mathematical concept called non-Abelian quantum holonomy to entangle photons in a deterministic way without relying on strong nonlinear interactions or irrevocably probabilistic quantum measurements.
Physics World 2025-04-09T00:00:00-04:00Peter Yunker, associate professor in the School of Physics, reflects on the results of new experiments which show that cells pack in increasingly well-ordered patterns as the relative sizes of their nuclei grow.
“This research is a beautiful example of how the physics of packing is so important in biological systems,” states Yunker. He says the researchers introduce the idea that cell packing can be controlled by the relative size of the nucleus, which “is an accessible control parameter that may play important roles during development and could be used in bioengineering.”
Physics Magazine 2025-03-21T00:00:00-04:00School 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 2025-02-12T00:00:00-05:00Georgia 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
