Events at Physics |
Events on Thursday, March 5th, 2026
- Graduate Program Event
- How to Prelim Workshop
- Time: 9:00 am - 9:30 am
- Place: 2314 Chamberlin
- Speaker: Sharon Kahn, Graduate Program Manager
- Abstract: This 30-minute workshop is intended especially for PhD students who are planning to prelim in the next 6-9 months. We'll walk through the logistics and paperwork required for a successful shift to dissertator status.
(2 identical sessions - no need to attend both) - R. G. Herb Condensed Matter Seminar
- Dynamical breaking of inversion symmetry, strong second harmonic generation, and ferroelectricity with nonlinear phonons
- Time: 10:00 am - 11:00 am
- Place: 5310 Chamberlin Hall
- Speaker: Egor Kiselev , MPIPKS
- Abstract: I will show how crystalline inversion symmetry can be dynamically broken by optical phonons with generic, hardening Kerr-like non-linearities. The symmetry-broken state is reached through a dynamical phase transition that can be accessed by driving close to half the phonon resonance. After going through an instability, the system settles to a steady state with inversion-symmetry breaking phonon trajectories and strong second harmonic generation. The time averaged positions of the atoms are displaced relative to equilibrium, resulting in a rectification of the driving signal. This leads to a dynamical dipolar, ferroelectric response that shows features like hysteresis and memory effects, known from equilibrium ferroelectrics.
- Host: Elio König
- Graduate Program Event
- How to Prelim Workshop
- Time: 11:00 am - 11:30 am
- Place: 2314 Chamberlin
- Speaker: Sharon Kahn, Graduate Program Manager
- Abstract: This 30-minute workshop is intended especially for PhD students who are planning to prelim in the next 6-9 months. We'll walk through the logistics and paperwork required for a successful shift to dissertator status.
(2 identical sessions - no need to attend both) - Graduate Program Event
- How to Finish your PhD Workshop
- Time: 11:30 am - 12:00 pm
- Place: 2314 Chamberlin
- Speaker: Sharon Kahn, Graduate Program Manager
- Abstract: This 30-minute workshop is intended especially for PhD students who are planning to finish the PhD in the next 6-9 months. We'll walk through the logistics and paperwork required for a successful completion of the PhD progam.
- Astronomy Colloquium
- Making a Map of Shadows and Stars: Astrophysical Probes of Dark Sectors
- Time: 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
- Place: 4421 Sterling Hall
- Speaker: Dr. Caleb Gemmell, UW-Madison
- Abstract: While cold dark matter has proven a successful theory at explaining observations of our Universe on scales larger than galaxies, the behaviour of dark matter below these scales is largely unconstrained. Dark sectors, motivated by considerations from particle physics, provide interesting alternatives to cold dark matter that agree with current observations but can have wildly different behaviour on smaller scales. In these theories dark matter can have multiple components and non-trivial interactions between the 'dark' particles. In this colloquium I will discuss how astrophysical probes can identify and constrain these dark sectors, such as atomic dark matter, and could be the leading avenue in finding new physics beyond the Standard Model.
- Host: Nicholas Stone