The Department of Physics and Astronomy at UNL houses many state-of-the-art research and teaching facilities. Among these include the Extreme Light Laboratory, which houses Diocles, one of the most powerful lasers in the world, the on-campus Student Observatory and Behlen Observatory in Mead, NE, where students can study astrophysical phenomena such as quasars and pulsating stars.
Graduate and Undergraduate students are involved in research and projects like the study of nanoscale magnetic materials important in future technological development. They also perform experiments to "stop" light and do research on matter waves and unusual behavior of chiral molecules. Some students even study the fundamental constituents of matter that make up our universe at some of the world's highest-energy particle accelerator laboratories.
In the Department of Physics and Astronomy, there are countless exciting possibilities to explore.
Big 10 Benefits
Not everyone is convinced the Big 10 transition has academic relevance. Below are some highlights to change their minds!NEWS:
- Haidong Lu recieved an Outstanding Graduate Research Assistant Award. Lu is a doctoral student working as a research assistant with professor Alexei Grouverman. He is from Haining, Zhejiang, China.
- Professors Evgeny Tysmbal and Alexei Gruverman, and Dr. J. D. Burton, report energy efficient ferroelectric oxide tunnel junctions in Nature Materials.
- Anthony Starace discussed high-order harmonic generation at AAAS
- Juan Colón received the Lowe R. and Mavis M. Folsom Distinguished Dissertation Award
- The American Physical Society has highlighted the career of financial analyst (and University of Nebraska Department of Physics PhD) John Krane.
WoPHYS 2012 - "The Nanoworld is Not Enough" - was held from Oct. 18-20 at UNL.
- Evgeny Tsymbal co-edited a book "Multifunctional Oxide Heterostructures" which is published by Oxford University Press. The book is written by world-recognized scientists working in the field of complex oxides.
- Graduate student, Donna A. Kunkel, received the Best Graduate Student Presentation award (1st place, which also included a Kindle!) at the International Conference on Materials, Energy and Environment (ICMEE), held in May in Toledo, OH. http://www.toledoconference.com/
- Obituary: Professor Robert Fuller (06/07/35-04/09/12) served 35 years at UNL developing a nationally recognized program in Research in Physics Education. He served as the national president of AAPT (1979-1981) receiveing an AAPT Distinguished Service Citation in 1986 and the Robert A. Millikan Medal for Outstanding Contributions to the Teaching of Physics in 1992. He was recognized at UNL by an 1993 ORCA and admitted into the UNL Academy of Distinguished Teachers in 1995. The obituary posted by AAPT can be found here.
- Professor Alexei Gruverman and graduate student Haidong Lu have demonstrated the polarization of nanoscale areas of ferroelectrics by the applied force of a scanning microscopy probe, and reported their findings in Science. See http://www.sciencemag.org/content/336/6077/41.summary
The news has also been featured in Today@UNL
http://newsroom.unl.edu/announce/todayatunl/1193/7150
and in the Lincoln Journal Star
http://journalstar.com/news/local/education/unl-team-discovers-new-data-storage-method/article_926459f4-8be9-5f8c-92da-9c57bfd1c23b.html
You can also listen to Gruverman's interview on the April 6th Science podcast at
http://podcasts.aaas.org/science_podcast/SciencePodcast_120406.mp3
- At the AAPT Awards Committee meeting on February 6, Kevin Lee was selected as the recipient of the 2012 David Halliday and Robert Resnick Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Physics Teaching! You can read about it here.
- Within the hype building up to Superbowl Sunday last week, Dr. Tim Gay was a consultant on NPR's "All Things Considered" with Mike Pesca! The transcript and an audio link to the story can be found here.
- Professors Christian Binek and Peter Dowben along with graduate student Xi He
were interviewed by NET Nebraska radio on possible applications of voltage-controlled exchange-bias! Click here to read the article and/or listen to the podcast.
- The new issue of Spectrum, our department's newsletter, has arrived! You can view it online here in High Resolution or Low Resolution *.pfd file format. Hardcopies will be mailed to alumni and department members in early January.
- more news
