Events at Physics |
Events on Friday, May 2nd, 2025
- Academic Calendar
- Last Spring Semester class day
- Abstract: *Note: actual end time may vary.*
- Climate & Diversity
- Diversity Forum Fridays! Addressing the Mental Health Needs of Underrepresented Collegiate Students
- Time: 9:00 am - 10:30 am
- Place: Chamberlin 5310 & Zoom
- Speaker: Rachel Zizmann, UW-Madison Physics
- Abstract: On college campuses, BIPOC, first-generation and low-income students are disproportionately underrepresented in seeking mental health services, highlighting systemic disparities in access to support. In this session, the panelists plan to discuss the role of the Community Support Specialists (CSS), who work exclusively with DDEEA students. This position was created by the Counseling Psychology Training Clinic (CPTC) in partnership with UW-Madison’s Mental Health Services (MHS) to increase counseling access among underrepresented students at UW-Madison using a social justice framework. The speakers will present an overview of the program’s history, including data and testimonials from past DDEEA students. During the session, panelists will share their experiences in the CSS roles, including their positionalities as BIPOC graduate students responsible for supporting the mental health needs of other underrepresented students. They will address questions about various interventions for supporting students, such as individual therapy, the role of outreach, and creative methods for disseminating interventions.
- Theory Seminar (High Energy/Cosmology)
- Electroweak Symmetry Restoration at High Energies
- Time: 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm
- Place: Chamberlin 5280
- Speaker: Tao Han, University of Pittsburgh
- Abstract: With the milestone discovery of the Higgs boson at the LHC, detailed study of its properties becomes a high priority for collider physics. After a brief overview of the properties of the longitudinal gauge bosons and the Higgs boson, we revisit the Goldstone boson equivalence theorem and define the “electroweak symmetry restoration” (EWSR) quantitatively. We present some examples to examine the EWSR via the processes with "radiation amplitude zeros” by separating out the gauge sector and the scalar sector. Finally, we comment on what we learn from testing the EWSR and make some remarks on the SM at high energies in light of the UV completion.
- Host: Lisa L Everett
- Thesis Defense
- Superconducting diode effect
- Time: 2:15 pm - 3:45 pm
- Place: 2104 CH
- Speaker: Jaglul Hasan, Physics PhD student
- Abstract: In this thesis, we explore the generalities of the supercurrent diode effect. As an illustrative example, we examine a model of a two-dimensional superconductor with Rashba-type spin-orbit coupling under an in-plane magnetic field and in the clean limit, which realizes a helical phase. First, we utilize Ginzburg-Landau phenomenology to derive a general formula for the diode efficiency. This is achieved by incorporating higher gradient terms in the Lifshitz invariants, which are responsible for the nonreciprocal superflow. Subsequently, we validate these results through microscopic diagrammatic computation and further estimate correction terms arising from interband pairing correlations. We provide a detailed comparison to prior investigations of this problem conducted within the framework of the quasiclassical approximation based on the Eilenberger equation.
Even though superconducting diode effect (SDE) has garnered significant attention due to its potential applications in superconducting electronics, the role of disorder scattering in SDE has rarely been considered, despite its potential qualitative impact, as we demonstrate. We investigate SDE in a disordered Rashba superconductor under an in-plane magnetic field, employing a self-consistent Born approximation to derive the corresponding Ginzburg-Landau theory. Our analysis reveals two surprising effects. First, in the strong Rashba SOC regime, disorder becomes the driving mechanism of SDE, which vanishes in its absence. In this case, we show that disorder-induced mixing of singlet and triplet superconducting orders underlies the effect. Second, in the weak Rashba spin-orbit coupling (SOC) regime, disorder can reverse the direction of the diode effect, indicated by a sign change in the superconducting diode efficiency coefficient. - Host: Alex Levchenko
- Physics Department Colloquium
- TBD
- Time: 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
- Place: Chamberlin 2241
- Speaker: Erika Marin-Spiotta, University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Host: Kevin Black
- Awards
- Physics Student & Alumni Awards Banquet
- Time: 5:30 pm - 8:30 pm
- Place: Discovery Building
- Speaker: Kevin Black
- Host: Department