Fall 2011 Quantum Seminars

Announcement:

We invite you to join us for informal lectures, presented by one of our physics faculty or an outside guest scientist, engaged in research in frontiers of quantum physics. These stimulating discussion style lectures will be followed by happy hour where we will continue our conversation on various current topics in quantum physics. We encourage our graduate and advanced undergraduates, particularly those interested in Quantum Physics, to participate and contribute to the excitement.

DECEMBER8

Seventh meeting

Posted on 12/06/2011

Science and Technology I, Room 306, 4:30pm

QOB informal talk
Dr. Krishnamurthy Vemuru, GMU
X-ray magnetic circular dichroism spectroscopy of ferromagnetic materials

NOVEMBER4

Sixth meeting

Posted on 11/02/2011

Science and Technology I, Room 306, 11am (+ lunch after noon)

QOB informal talk
Prof. Ana Maria Rey, JILA
Quantum Magnetism with Ultra Cold Polar Molecules

OCTOBER14

Fifth meeting

Posted on 10/12/2011

Science and Technology I, Room 306, 11am (+ lunch after noon)

QOB “journal club”
Indu will discuss non-equilibrium topological states based on her preliminary work using kicked 2D lattices in magnetic fields. Related papers are:

 

OCTOBER5

Fourth meeting

Posted on 10/03/2011

Science and Technology I, Room 306, 4pm

QOB informal talk
Prof. Shmuel Fishman, Technion University, Israel
Hyper-transport in potentials that are random in space and time

SEPTEMBER16

Third meeting

Posted on 09/14/2011

Science and Technology I, Room 306, 11am (+ lunch after noon)

QOB “journal club”
Fractional topological insulators according to Predrag:

 

SEPTEMBER9

Second meeting

Posted on 09/07/2011

Science and Technology I, Room 306, 11am (+ lunch after noon)

QOB informal talk
Dr. Noah Bray-Ali, JQI-NIST

Bulk Probes of Topological Insulators and Superconductors
Topological insulators and superconductors are incompressible quantum many-body systems with compressible edge excitations. Remarkably, bulk probes, including ground-state properties, can detect and distinguish them from conventional insulators and superconductors. We explore this bulk-edge correspondence in detail for two of the five classes of topological insulators and superconductors in two spatial dimensions, motivated by recent experimental progress on ultracold atoms in a synthetic gauge field and on the odd-parity superconductor strontium ruthenate.

AUGUST26

First meeting

Posted on 08/25/2011

Science and Technology I, Room 306, 11am (+ lunch after noon)

QOB informal talk
Xiaopeng Li, University of Pittsburgh

p-orbital band bosons and complex superfluidity
The “no-node” theorem highly restricts the ground state wavefunctions of bosons. This theorem implies the time-reversal symmetry cannot be spontaneously broken in the ground state of bosons. However, it does not restrict the meta-stable phases of p-orbital band bosons. Recent experiments have succeeded in preparing p band bosons in two dimensions with long life time. We have studied theoretically the meta-stable phases of p band bosons. Both of Mott insulating and superfluid phases with time-reversal symmetry broken, indeed beyond the “node-theorem”, are studied. The momentum distribution of p band Mott insulator, near the Mott- superfluid transition, shows sharp peaks at finite momenta. This indicates new possibilities of preparing coherent matter waves. The superfluid phase is a complex p_x + ip_y superfluid. We found this phase shows more exotic features at finite temperature.