Department of Physics Alumni Newsletter Florida Physics News

Alumni Newsletter 1

Florida Physics News 2004

Florida Physics NewsDepartment of Physics Alumni Newsletter

2 University of Florida - Department of Physics

Florida Physics News 2004ChairAlan Dorsey

Associate ChairJohn Yelton

Editor/LayoutLeilanie Merrill

Contributors

Department & Faculty NewsProfessors A. Dorsey, G. Ihas, S. Trickey,CLAS News and Publications, PROTONNewsletter

Research NewsProfessors D. Acosta, P. Avery, L. Baudis,H. B. Chan, S. Hill, and A. Rinzler

Student NewsCatherine Yeh

The Physics DepartmentAlumni Newsletter

Florida Physics NewsFall 2004

http://www.phys.ufl.edu/alumni

We would like to hear from youplease visit the Alumni Registry:http://www.phys.ufl.edu/alumni

or send a note or photos to:

Florida Physics NewsP.O. Box 118440Gainesville, FL 32611-8440(352) 392-0521(352) [email protected]

(top) UF Bookstore and Welcome Center opened in2003. (left) The new addition to Ben Hill GriffinStadium, including new press boxes, and box seatingwas completed in 2003. (right) The new EmersonAlumni Hall across from Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.

Cover images from the followingresearch articles:“Marking Time at the LHC” p. 13“Investigating Physics with Micromachines” p. 11“Nanotube Films as Transparent Conducting Materials” p. 16

Alumni Newsletter 3


This second issue of Florida PhysicsNews follows on the heels of a gratifying re-sponse to last year’s inaugural issue. Insideyou’ll find information about the faculty,staff, students, and alumni, as well as high-light articles on research, teaching, and out-reach. I would like to take this opportunityto touch upon some of the news and issuesthat face our department, university, andprofession.

We have had a successful year of fac-ulty recruiting. As mentioned in last year’sletter, experimental particle astrophysics isone of our new research directions, and inthis area we have hired Assistant ProfessorsGuido Mueller, formerly a research scien-tist with the UF LIGO group working ongravitational wave searches, and LauraBaudis, who joined us from Stanford Uni-versity where she worked on an experimentsearching for dark matter. We have strength-ened our effort in nanoscience with the ad-dition of Assistant Professor Ho Bun Chan,formerly a member of the technical staff atLucent Technologies/Bell Labs, who usesmicromechanics/microelectromechanical

Letter from the Chair systems (MEMS) to study fundamentalphysics such as the Casimir forces. We alsowelcome Assistant Professor KatiaMatcheva, who will join us from CornellUniversity where she is involved in the theo-retical modeling of planetary atmospheresand in the interpretation of data from spacemissions, including the Cassini mission toSaturn. Professor Henri Van Rinsvelt retiredin June 2004 after 37 years of distinguishedservice and teaching at the university, andhe will be sorely missed. We do expect to seehim around the department regularly andwill continue to count on his advice and wis-dom. Finally, this has been a good year forfaculty awards and recognitions; they havebeen so numerous that I will refer you to thearticles inside for details. I am especiallyproud of the awards garnered by our youngfaculty, including an NSF CAREER Awardto Steve Hagen, a Department of EnergyOutstanding Junior Investigator Award toKonstantin Matchev, and an Alfred P. SloanResearch Fellowship to Yoon Lee.

There have been changes in the univer-sity and its administration. UF’s 11th Presi-dent, Dr. J. Bernard “Bernie” Machen,assumed office on January 5th, 2004. He has

been very visible on campus (including avisit to the physics department), and hasmade widely known his positions on increas-ing the diversity of the faculty and studentbody and rewarding faculty performance.The university’s budget outlook is better thisyear than it has been for the past three years,with the result that the faculty will receive along-overdue merit raise, and several cam-pus-wide initiatives, including ananoscience and technology building, aremoving forward.

These are interesting times for our pro-fession as well. Next year is special indeed—the year 2005 marks the 100th anniversary

NOBEL PRIZE IN MEDICINEOn October 6, 2003, the Nobel Prize

for Medicine was awarded to Dr. PaulLauterbur of the University of Illinois atUrbana and Sir Peter Mansfield of theUniversity of Nottingham in England,developers of magnetic resonance imag-ing (MRI).

MRI technology is based on the re-search of Nuclear Magnetic Resonancespectroscopy, in which molecules are en-trained in a strong magnetic field andzapped with radio waves. When thetechnology was beginning its use inMedicine, the nuclear (N) term wasdropped to avoid the public misunder-standing that the word nuclear maymean radioactive, when in fact it refersto the harmless behavior in the presenceof a magnetic field.

Physics Connection to the 2003 Nobel PrizesOne of the major contributors to

NMR research was Prof. Raymond An-drew, a Graduate Research Professor ofPhysics at the University of Florida from1983-1998, who also held joint appoint-ments in the Departments of Radiologyand Nuclear Engineering. Prof.Andrew’s first work on NMR cameshortly after its discovery at HarvardUniversity, where he was a Common-wealth Fellow from 1948-49. In 1974when he was a member of the PhysicsDepartment at the University ofNottingham, Prof. Andrew began to fo-cus his research in MRI technology af-ter hearing Dr. Lauterbur speak at aconference in Bombay, whereupon heand Dr. Waldo Hinshaw, an Americanpost-doc, started their research to im-prove on Dr. Lauterbur’s imaging tech-

nique. One of their colleagues at theUniversity of Nottingham was Sir PeterMansfield, and his research group wasstudying NMR for the purposes of can-cer detection.

Prof. Andrew was a professor at theUniversity of Wales and made one of hismost significant discoveries there in themid 1960s; the narrowing of NMR linesby magic angle spinning, which hasbeen the foundation of modern highresolution NMR studies for chemicalstructures. He continued his researchwhen he returned to the University ofNottingham, where he worked on usingrapid rotation of samples for high-reso-lution studies and made another majorcontribution to the field of magneticresonance with his pioneering studies on

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of Albert Einstein’s “miraculous year” dur-ing which he published seminal papers onlight quanta, Brownian motion and the spe-cial theory of relativity. To coincide with thisanniversary, and to raise public awarenessof the role of physics in society, the year 2005is being celebrated as the World Year of Phys-ics, and the UN General Assembly has de-clared 2005 to be the International Year ofPhysics. Our department will be planningsome events as part of this celebration, anddetails will be forthcoming. Other good newsis that nationwide the number of under-graduate physics majors is up, as is the num-ber of US citizens or permanent residentsentering graduate school in physics; both ofthese statistics are reflected in our own pro-grams. The bad news is that funding for thephysical sciences is in peril, due in large partto the ballooning federal budget deficit. In2002 Congress passed the NSF Authoriza-tion Act of 2002 (signed by President Bushin December 2002), which authorized thedoubling of the budget of the National Sci-ence Foundation over a five-year period. Un-fortunately, this authorization has yet totranslate into actual funding, with physicalscience funding slated to remain flat or de-crease over the next several years. If you areas concerned about this as I am, please getin touch with me and I can tell you how youcan help.

In these changing times we need ouralumni more than ever. How can you help?With your experiences and expertise you canhelp us recruit the best physics majors andgraduate students and you can offer careeradvice and assist in job placement for ourstudents. Your contributions to the physicsfund will improve the research and instruc-tional infrastructure of the department, andwill move us toward our goal of raising fundsfor graduate fellowships and for endowedprofessorships. Get in touch and get in-volved! Your involvement will be most ap-preciated by us and rewarding for you.

Alan DorseyProfessor and Chairman

The Commemorative Medal depictingCharles IV, Emperor of the Holy RomanEmpire, founder of the Charles University.

From Left: Professors Miroslav Finger of theCharles University, Guenakh Mitselmakher ofthe University of Florida (winner), FrankWilczek of MIT (winner), and Ivan Netuka, Deanof the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of theCharles University.

The Commemorative Medal givenby the Faculty of Mathematics and Phys-ics of the Charles University in Praguewas awarded to Professor GuenakhMitselmakher of the University ofFlorida along with Professor FrankWilczek of MIT and Professor FrancoBradamante of Trieste University.

Prof. Mitselmakher traveled toPrague to receive his medal on July 10,2003. The ceremony was during the“Physics at LHC” conference which theUniversity of Florida helped to organizealong with CERN and Charles Univer-sity. This award honors him for his workin experimental particle physics in par-ticular his contributions to the experi-ments at particle colliders as well as hisintegrating role in the international sci-entific research, including contributionsto the cooperation of the Charles Uni-versity with major research centers.

Charles University was founded inthe 14th Century by Charles IV, the Em-peror of the Holy Roman Empire. Thelist of physicists who worked in Pragueincludes Johannes Kepler, who discov-ered two first Laws of Planetary Motionin Prague and Albert Einstein, who con-ceived his Theory of General Relativitywhile being a Professor in Prague.

Professor Awarded PrestigiousCommemorative Medal

Ramond Receives New Honor and Celebrates aScientific Anniversary

Professor Pierre Ramond has been named the 2004 Oskar Klein Lecturer. Thisis a prestigious honor which includes past lectures by Nobel Laureates includingC. N. Yang, Steven Weinberg, Hans A. Bethe, T. D. Lee, and Gerard ‘t Hooft. OskarKlein, b. 1894 d. 1977, is known widely for his part in the Kaluza-Klein Theory (theexistence of extra dimensions) and the Klein-Gordon equation (the first relativis-tic wave equation). The Oskar Klein Lectures are sponsored by the Royal SwedishAcademy of Sciences through its Nobel Institute for Physics and by StockholmUniversity. Professor Pierre Ramond was invited to give his lecture at the 2004

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Alumni Newsletter 5


Dr. N. Yngve Ohrn, a professor ofchemistry and physics, received the2003-04 University of Florida Teacher/Scholar Award. The award is theuniversity’s highest honor for facultywho demonstrate excellence in teachingand scholarly activity, and exhibit vis-ibility within and beyond the university.The awardee serves as a very distin-guished example of the teacher/scholaras represented at the UF.

For 38 years, Ohrn has demon-strated his commitment to UF throughan exceptionally high level of scholar-ship, teaching and service. Ohrn is aworld-recognized scholar for his funda-mental and important contributions toquantum chemistry for which he has re-ceived many recognitions, including agold medal awarded by the King of Swe-den in 1980.

His research interests include theapplication of quantum mechanics andstatistical physics to atomic and molecu-lar processes, in particular the electronic

Ohrn Receives UF Teacher/Scholar Award Hebard Named UFRFResearch Professor

The Universityof Florida ResearchFoundation namedPhysics ProfessorArthur Hebard toits annual class ofUF Research Foun-dation Professors.The three-year pro-fessorships were created in recognitionof faculty who have established a dis-tinguished record of research and schol-arship that is expected to lead tocontinuing distinction in their field. Thisyear, six CLAS faculty have been namedUFRF professors, and each has beenawarded a $5,000 annual salary supple-ment and a one-time $3,000 researchgrant.

Hebard specializes in condensedmatter. His research focuses on the fab-rication and characterization of thin-filmstructures and the unusual physical phe-nomena that occur within restricted di-mensions. Much of his work is donethrough the facilities of the NationalHigh Magnetic Field Laboratory andconsists of four key areas—transport inthin films, magneto-transport in semi-metals, novel interfacial effects in thin-film capacitors and magneticsemiconductors. He has been issued sixUS patents for his work and has receivednumerous grants from the National Sci-ence Foundation. Hebard came to UF in1996, after spending most of his profes-sional career as a member of the techni-cal staff at AT&T Laboratories.

Professor Greg Stewart has been se-lected as the 2003-2004 Gibson Term Pro-fessorship in the College of Liberal Arts& Sciences. These professorships areawarded to faculty who have demon-strated excellence in scholarship andteaching. The professorships also comewith a one-time salary supplement andresearch allocation.

Professor Stewart specializes in ex-perimental condensed matter physics.He received his PhD in applied physicsfrom Stanford University in 1975 andhas taught at UF since 1985. In 1990-1998, he held a joint appointment as achaired professor at the University ofAugsburg in Germany.

His research group focuses on ad-vancing understanding of the unusual

structure and dy-namics of mo-lecular systems.He is a Fellow ofthe AmericanPhysical Societyand a foreignmember of theFinnish Academyof Sciences, theRoyal Danish Academy of Sciences andthe Swedish Royal Science Society.

During his tenure, Ohrn has super-vised more than 20 doctoral studentsand more than 30 postdoctoral scientists,and he has maintained consistent extra-mural funding for more than 30 years.Generations of students at all levels haveenjoyed Ohrn’s lectures and mentorship,and student evaluations consistentlynote that he is a gifted teacher. He alsohas served as a judge at middle schooland high school science competitions inAlachua County.

Gibson Professorship Awarded to Stewart

magnetic and su-perconductingproperties ofhighly correlatedf-electron metalliccompounds, andhe is internation-ally recognized asa leader in themeasurement ofnew materials inhigh magneticfields. Stewart is a fellow of the Ameri-can Physical Society and is currentlyteaching a new general educationcourse, “The Development of ModernIdeas in Physics”.

-CLAS News and Publications



Photo by Jane Dominguez,CLAS News and Publications



Ihas Receives ResearchOpportunity Award

Professor Stephen Hagen receiveda National Science Foundation “CA-REER” award. This will be the thirdCAREER Award in 2 years for the de-partment. Professors Stephen Hill andYoonseok Lee were recipients in 2003.

Professor Hagen will use his awardto further his study of protein moleculesand how they assemble themselves, or“fold”, to carry out their biochemicalfunction. Professor Hagen’s research isinterdisciplinary, and he collaborateswith researchers in the Department ofChemistry, the College of Medicine andMcKnight Brain Institute.

The CAREER program recognizes

As one of six winners of the ResearchOpportunity Award from the ResearchCorporation, Professor Gary Ihas re-ceived the maximum allowed grant of$50,000.

“This award is for scientists of dem-onstrated productivity seeking to ex-plore new experimental research.”Selection is based on the scientific sig-nificance and originality of the research,potential for enhancement of theapplicant’s career, evidence of supportfrom the department and institution, thecandidate’s past record and potential tomount and sustain a competitive re-search program, and evidence of theapplicant’s vigor and self-motivation.

For more information on the Re-search Corporation and the awardsavailable please visithttp://www.rescorp.org/.

Physics’ Third NSF CAREER Award Recipient

and supports the early career-develop-ment activities of those teacher-scholarswho are most likely to become the aca-demic leaders of the 21st century. CA-REER awardees are selected on the basisof creative, career-development plansthat effectively integrate research andeducation within the context of the mis-sion of their institution. NSF encouragessubmission of CAREER proposals fromnew faculty at all CAREER eligible in-stitutions. Such plans should build afirm foundation for a lifetime of inte-grated contributions to research andeducation. (http://www.nsf.gov/home/crssprgm/career/)

Konigsberg AwardedMedal

Dr. Jacobo Konigsberg has beenawarded the 2004 Medal of the Depart-ment of Particles and Fields of the Mexi-can Physical Society. The award is forMexican scientists that have distin-guished themselves internationally dueto their contributions to the field and/orfor contributing to the development ofParticle Physics in Mexico. Dr.Konigsberg is currently working on theCDF Experiment at FermiLab and hismain research focus has been on the dis-covery and further studies of the TopQuark. The medal was presented to Dr.Konigsberg in August 2004 at a cer-emony at the Xi Mexican School of Par-ticles and Fields, where he also gaveseveral lectures on Experimental TopQuark Physics.

Lee Receives FellowshipAward

Professor Yoonseok Lee has beenawarded with the 2004 Alfred P SloanResearch Fellowship. This fellowship isdesigned to “stimulate fundamental re-search by young scholars of outstand-ing promise.” He will receive $40,000over a two year period in support of hisresearch which currently includesacoustic and magnetic properties of liq-uid and solid 3He and low temperatureproperties of low dimensional conduc-tors.

Outstanding JuniorInvestigator Award toMatchev

Professor Konstantin Matchev hasbeen awarded a Department of EnergyOutstanding Junior Investigator (OJI)Award. These competitive and presti-gious awards are given to tenure trackfaculty and are meant to identify the bestyoung researchers in high energy phys-ics. This is the second OJI for the de-partment; the first was awarded to Dr.Darin Acosta in 2001.

American Physical Society - Division Elections

Professor Paul Avery has beenelected the new Vice Chair of the South-eastern Section of the American Physi-cal Society (SESAPS). Professor Averywill be Vice Chair in 2004/2005, Chair-Elect in 2005/2006 and Chair in 2006/2007.

Tanner - DCMP

Professor David Tanner has beenelected as the new Vice-Chair of the Di-vision of Condensed Matter Physics(DCMP) of the American Physical Soci-ety (APS). Professor Tanner will take of-fice at the 2004 March Meeting of theAPS. In 2005, he will be the Chair-Elect,and then the Chair of DCMP in 2006.

Avery - SESAPS


Alumni Newsletter 7


Nobel continued from page 3

temperatures. Initially, the unusual datawere thought to be a signature of themagnetic ordering in the solid phase of3He. At the suggestion of Dr. Leggett,additional NMR work was performed,and the observations were unambigu-ously linked to a superfluid state of liq-uid 3He. UF Professor Dwight Adamssubsequently discovered the magneticordering in the solid phase of 3He at alower temperature. In 1996, Drs.Osheroff, Richardson, and Lee sharedthe Nobel Prize for their discovery, andthese researchers have visited UF on sev-eral occasions. In 1998, the Universityof Florida honored Dr. Dave Lee withan honorary doctorate degree, while Dr.Doug Osheroff, now at Stanford Univer-sity, gave a speech at the dedication ofthe New Physics Building. Dr. BobRichardson’s most recent visit was ear-lier this semester as one of the finalistsinterviewed for the position of Presidentof UF.

Dr. Leggett’s association with UFdates back to the early 1970’s when he

MRI. Prof. Andrew was also highly in-volved with the establishment of theNational High Magnetic Field Labora-tory in Florida in 1990.

Sadly, Prof. Andrew died in 2001 atthe age of 79. A physics fund has beenestablished in his memory.

NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICSDr. Anthony J. Leggett of the Uni-

versity of Illinois at Urbana shared the2003 Nobel Prize in Physics with Drs.Alexei A. Abrikosov, Argonne NationalLaboratory, and Vitaly L. Ginzburg, P.N.Lebedev Physical Institute Moscow,Russia. They received this award fortheir contributions to the theory of su-perconductors and superfluids.

Dr. Leggett’s theoretical work wascrucial for the correct interpretation ofthe experimental data obtained, atCornell University, by Douglas D.Osheroff, Robert C. Richardson, andDavid M. Lee, who were studying thethermodynamic properties of solid andliquid 3He in coexistence at millikelvin

was working on the theoretical descrip-tion of superfluid 3He. His theoreticalwork has served as the basis of numer-ous experimental studies performed byUF Professors Dwight Adams, GaryIhas, Yoon Lee, Mark Meisel, NeilSullivan, and Yasu Takano. In May 1993,Dr. Leggett visited the Department ofPhysics and the Microkelvin ResearchLaboratory as a member of the externaladvisory committee for the Center forUltralow Temperature Research (and to-day this organization is known as theCenter for Condensed Matter Sciences).

Dr. Leggett served as Physics ChairAlan Dorsey’s thesis advisor at the Uni-versity of Illinois from 1983-1987. Healso spent about six weeks visiting UFthis past spring, from January 11-Feb-ruary 15, and gave 10 lectures on quan-tum fluids as a graduate level minicourse, as well as a physics departmentcolloquium, condensed matter physicsseminar, and IFT colloquium.

Professor Hendrik Monkhorst wasrecently issued two US Patents. Both aretitled, “Controlled Fusion in a Field Re-versed Configuration and Direct EnergyConversion”.

The direct energy conversion that isdescribed in the patents is a new methodby which to obtain electric power froma possible fusion reactor. Unlike the pre-vious technique where water is boiledto get steam to drive turbines which thendrive generators of electricity, this newpatent details the use of an Inverse Cy-clotron Converter (ICC), which can becharacterized as an inverse of a particleaccelerator.

The direct use for this fusion reac-tion is for the development of the Col-

Monkhorst Receives Two U.S. Patents

liding Beam Fusion Reactor (CBFR)which is currently underway in Califor-nia.

“The Colliding Beam Fusion Reac-tor holds the promise to produce fusionpower without nuclear waste, usingabundant hydrogen and boron as fuel.The reactors can be built and placed any-where and with various power outputs.It will make nuclear power safe, clean,and affordable,” Prof. Monkhorst says.

When asked about the possible ap-plications of this new power conversion,Prof. Monkhorst stated, “This powerconversion was invented quite specifi-cally for the aneutronic fusion reactor.However, it was pointed out to me thatit could find application in recycling un-

used particle beam energy - from par-ticles that did not undergo reactions.”

Working along with a startup com-pany called Tri Alpha Energy, Inc., anda plasma physics group at University ofCalifornia at Irvine, headed by Prof.Monkhorst’s co-inventor NormanRostoker, this project is essentially anelectrical engineering invention, whichrelies on existing technologies, in par-ticular, solid-state power electronics.

The patents are: Patent No 6,628,740(issued 9/30/03) and Patent No 6,611,106(issued 8/26/03).



Faculty in Retirement

Professor Van Rinsvelt joined the UF physics department in 1967 after a postdoctoral appoint-ment in the Nuclear Laboratory at FSU. After a few years’ research here at UF in his specialty ofnuclear spectroscopy he decided to enter the then-new field of Particle Induced X-ray Emissionanalysis. Henri successfully became a well-known expert in what is now called PIXE analysis, andapplied PIXE to a wide range of problems such as forensic analysis, air pollution, and mammaliandisorders. Henri has also been a stalwart departmental citizen, having served as Associate Chair ofthe department for 13 years. He has an ongoing interest in educational outreach activities, includinghis “Physics is Fun” shows, which he has put on at local schools and at the FL Museum of NaturalHistory. After his retirement in June 2004 he plans to continue his involvement with physics educa-tion and outreach.

New Faculty

Photo by: Jane Dominguezcourtesy CLAS News and Publications

Professor Peterson arrived inGainesville as a postdoc with Prof. AlexGreen in 1966 and went on to become afaculty member in 1967. He has researchinterests in atmospheric physics andtheoretical physics. He is recognized asan excellent instructor, and in 1996 washonored as an Anderson Scholar FacultyHonoree. He retired in June 2004 afterhaving been in the phased retirementprogram. He plans to split his time be-tween Gainesville and Georgia, and isworking on a physics textbook.

L. Elizabeth Seiberling

Henri Van Rinsvelt

Lennart R. PetersonProfessor Seiberling came to UF from a faculty posi-

tion at the University of Pennsylvania and quickly estab-lished a research program in accelerator-based surfacestructure analysis and electron-tunneling microscopy. Inaddition to running a federally-funded research programfor several years she was an outstanding citizen in the de-partment, serving on a host of committees as well as beingan excellent teacher. She also chaired the Building Com-mittee, whose work resulted in the New Physics Building.For three years she acted tirelessly as the interface betweenthe entire faculty and the architects and contractors; the impressive structure thatresulted is in great part due to her efforts. She is in the phased retirement programthrough 2006.

Laura Baudis

Professor LauraBaudis, a new AssistantProfessor with the Ex-perimental Astrophys-ics group joined thedepartment in January2004.

Professor Baudis received her PhDfrom The University of Heidelberg in 1999and her research interests include cosmol-ogy and particle astrophysics, in particu-lar the nature of the dark matter in theUniverse and the absolute scale of the neu-trino mass.

Ho-Bun Chan

Professor Ho-BunChan, a new AssistantProfessor with theCondensed Matter Ex-periment group work-ing in NanoscaleScience joined the de-

partment in January 2004.Professor Chan received his PhD

from The Massachusetts Institute of Tech-nology in 1999 and his research interestsinclude micromechanics/microelectro-me-chanical systems (MEMS), Casimir forces,and surface plasmon devices.

Katia Matcheva

Professor KatiaMatcheva, a new As-sistant Professor withthe Theoretical Astro-physics group, willjoin the department inJanuary 2005.

Professor Matcheva received herPh.D. from Johns Hopkins University in2000 and her research interests include thephysics and chemistry of the atmospheresof Solar system planets, radiative transfermodels of the atmosphere, dynamics ofthe upper atmosphere, and atmosphericgravity waves.

Alumni Newsletter 9


The 44th Sanibel Symposium continued two themes - sci-entific excellence and a location different from its name. The2004 meeting was held at World Golf Village, north of St.Augustine Florida. The move occurred because the formersite (Ponce de Leon Resort) was closed and torn down to makeway for residential development. The meeting format alsochanged, to 6 days with 17 Invited Talk sessions and 6 Postersessions. Invited Talk sessions included such topics as Mo-lecular Electronics, Nanoscale Phenomena at Surfaces, Den-sity Functional and Density Matrix Functional Theory,Multi-scale Chemistry, Quantum Dynamics in both finite andextended systems, Molecular Spectroscopy in InterstellarRegions, Thermodynamics of Small Systems, Quantum Me-chanical - Molecular Mechanical Methods and Applications,

44th Sanibel Symposiumcontributed by Professor Samuel Trickey

Department Conferences

Every three years the international com-munity of low temperature physicists gathersin conference to exchange information on theirlatest researches, and to plan for future direc-tions in research. From August 10 to 17, 2005, the 24th International Con-ference on Low Temperature Physics (LT24) will be held in Orlando,Florida, hosted by the University of Florida under the auspices of theInternational Union of Pure and Applied Physics. Professor Gary Ihas isChairman of the conference, and Professor Mark Meisel is Secretary.

The first conference in this series was held in Cambridge, Englandin 1946 and was chaired by Sir Lawrence Bragg. It had three hundredparticipants who presented 26 papers. The last conference, LT23, was inHiroshima, Japan, and was attended by 1466 participants from 34 coun-tries that presented 1412 talks and posters.

This is the most important conference in an area of science that hasbeen the spawning ground for much of our technological economy andsociety. Because of the venue, Walt Disney World Resorts, and the tim-ing, 12 years after the last US conference and during a rapidly growingperiod of low temperature research, this will probably be the largest LTconference ever. A major goal of this conference is to include scientistsfrom as many countries as possible and at all stages of scientific devel-opment, and to encourage young scientists in the United States. A largeoutreach program in the state of Florida is also planned. The most pres-tigious prize in the field of low temperature research, the London Prize,will be presented at the meeting. For more information visit:http://www.phys.ufl.edu/~lt24/.

24th International Conference onLow Temperature Physics (LT24)contributed by Professor Gary Ihas

The department underwent a self-initiatedexternal review on November 20&21, 2003. TheExternal Advisory Committee consisted of fiveeminent physicists: Thomas Applequist (chair ofthe committee, Professor of Physics and formerDean, Yale University), Judy Franz (ExecutiveOfficer, American Physical Society), WilliamFrazer (Emeritus Professor, UC Berkeley, andformer Vice President of the UC system),Raymond Goldstein (Professor, University of Ari-zona), and Eric Mazur (Professor of Physics,Harvard University). Over the two days the com-mittee had a frenetic schedule which includedtouring the building and facilities, listening to pre-sentations on research and instructional activi-ties in the department, meeting with groups ofstudents, staff, and faculty, and meeting with uni-versity administrators including CLAS Dean NeilSullivan, VP for Research Win Phillips, and Pro-vost David Colburn. The committee was chargedwith reviewing the department's activities andassessing our strengths and weaknesses, andproviding recommendations for improving ourprogram and identifying new opportunities. Thecommittee's report praised many of our pro-grams, and strongly endorsed our plan of grow-ing new research programs in experimentalbiological physics and particle astrophysics. Sev-eral concerns were raised, including the level offellowship support for our graduate students andthe lack of diversity within our faculty ranks; bothissues are being actively discussed in the de-partment. A formal response to the committee'sreport will be produced in the fall of 2004.

Department External Review

Metals in Biomolecules, Ion Channels, and Large SystemSimulations.

Two tutorial sessions to introduce graduate students tothe topics of the Invited Talk sessions were a popular newfeature. For the third year, the participant survey showed highsatisfaction with the scientific program and speaker selection(4.1 - 4.4 on a 1-5 scale with 5 best). First-time attendance byyounger scientists was up and return attendance continuedstrong. The Army Research Office, Office of Naval Research,and IBM Corporation provided external funding.

The Symposium is on the move again. The 45th will takeplace March 5 - 11 at the King and Prince Resort Hotel on St.Simons Island Georgia. Go to http:www.qtp.ufl.edu and clickon "Sanibel" in the menu on the left side.



A world-class leader in magneticfield research is the new director of theNational High Magnetic Field Labora-tory, which is operated by a consortiumamong the University of Florida, FloridaState University and Los Alamos Na-tional Laboratory in New Mexico. GregBoebinger, who has been the director ofthe pulsed magnet facility at Los Alamossince 1998, will head the lab whose cen-tral headquarters are in Tallahassee. Hesucceeds Jack Crow, the founding direc-tor of the NHMFL, whose vision has ledthe facility to break all records in thefield of magnet technology and nowsupplies advanced magnets for otherlabs around the world. Sadly, Jack Crowdied in September 2004 after an ex-tended illness, and his presence at theNHMFL will be sorely missed.

In addition to his administrativeduties, he also will hold faculty appoint-ments in physics at UF and FSU. A dis-tinguished experimental condensedmatter scientist, Boebinger completed

New Magnet Lab Director Named

his Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Instituteof Technology in 1986 after earning threebachelor’s degrees in electrical engineer-ing, philosophy and physics fromPurdue University and completing post-graduate work at Cambridge Universityin England. Before joining Los Alamos,Boebinger worked as a staff physicist atBell Laboratories in Murray Hill, NewJersey. Since 1995, one of Boebinger'smajor collaborators has been NeilSullivan, a professor of physics and deanof UF’s College of Liberal Arts and Sci-ences. Sullivan, along with Crow, is oneof the original architects of the proposalto bring the NHMFL to Florida and stillserves as the co-principal investigatorrepresenting UF.

In 1989, a consortium of scientistsat UF, FSU, and Los Alamos NationalLab out-competed a number of univer-sities vying to be the national lab's newheadquarters, then based at the Massa-chusetts Institute of Technology in Bos-ton. The new lab opened in 1994 and

After a long search with over 400candidates contacted, 11 applicantsinterviewed and then narrowed tothree, the University of Florida Boardof Trustees elected Dr. James Bernard“Bernie” Machen as the 11th Presi-dent of the University of Florida onOctober 8, 2003. Dr. Machen beganhis duties on January 5, 2004 and hisinauguration ceremony was heldSeptember 9-10, 2004.

Prior to arriving at UF, Dr.Machen served as President of theUniversity of Utah. His past experi-ences include provost and vice-presi-dent of academic affairs and dean of the School of Dentistry at the University ofMichigan.

To get to know the campus and the people, Dr. Machen made visits to some ofthe colleges and departments. Arranged by Professor Dorsey, a forum with Dr.Machen was held on May 20, 2004. The forum was open to all members of thedepartment. It was a relaxed, casual meeting where Dr. Machen began a discus-sion about his plans for the university in the coming years.

UF Welcomes New President

o p e r a t e sthrough a grantfrom the Na-tional ScienceFoundation.

Launchedat InnovationPark in Talla-hassee, theNHMFL's cen-tral headquar-ters houses the most powerful magnetsever built. Scientists in various fields usethe extraordinarily high fields as toolsfor probing the properties of materialsranging from superconducting com-pounds to living tissue. In Gainesville,the NHMFL operates two facilities, onethat studies the physics of materials atultra-low temperatures and high mag-netic fields, and a second that uses mag-netic resonance to study biologicalsystems.

Nobel Symposium entitled “NeutrinoPhysics”, sponsored by the NobelFoundation, held August 19-24, 2004.

Professor Ramond also attendedtwo conferences commemorating the25th anniversary of his work as one ofthe four collaborators who proposedthe “see-saw mechanism” in 1979. The“see-saw mechanism” is the predictionthat neutrinos have masses and thatthey are very small compared to thatof their charged partners. The anni-versary conferences held in France andJapan, were not only to commemoratethe importance of this finding, but alsoassess its place now among the currentresearch of neutrino masses.

Ramond continued from page 4


Photo: NHMFL

Alumni Newsletter 11


Micromachines, ormicroelectromechanical systems(MEMS), are small, movable structurescreated using integrated circuit technol-ogy. Processes that fabricate microelec-tronic chips, such as lithography, etchingand deposition, are used to create mov-able MEMS components in the um ornm scale on a semiconductor wafer. Thesmall size, quick response time, highsensitivity and low cost of MEMS havemade them a compelling choice for avariety of applications. For instance,micromachined sensors are nowadayswidely used in automobiles for detect-ing acceleration and deploying airbags.Apart from the obvious commercialvalue of MEMS, their high sensitivityand functionality offer unique capabili-ties for carrying out fundamental phys-ics experiments. Dr. Ho Bun Chan’sresearch group makes use of MEMS toinvestigate fundamental interactionsamong surfaces in close proximity in-cluding Casimir forces and non-contactfriction. Dr. Chan’s group also studiesthe interaction of MEMS with light: con-trolling light using MEMS as well as ac-tuating MEMS with light.

The Casimir force is the attractionbetween two neutral metallic surfacesarising from the changes in the zeropoint energy of the electromagneticfield. When the Casimir force is men-tioned in physics courses, it is usuallyregarded as an interesting but techno-logically irrelevant corollary of quantumfield theory. Dr. Chan and his collabora-tors demonstrated that motion of MEMSdevice can be created solely based on theCasimir force. So far, classical mechan-ics have done a good job in describingthe operation of commercial MEMS de-vices. Dr. Chan’s experiment establishesthe importance of quantum mechanical

Figure: Micron-sized movable artificial struc-tures can be used to control light. This polysiliconmicro-mirror is suspended by serpentine springs.The mirror is capable of motion perpendicular tothe substrate when a voltage is applied to theunderlying electrode. When actuated, each mir-ror in the array can be used to change the freespace path length of an incident light beam andimpart variable phase shifts in real time.

effects between MEMS componentswhen the trend of miniaturization ofMEMS continues. Currently, Dr. Chan’sgroup is investigating non-conservativeeffects between two bodies in relativemotion at the nanoscale. Such dissipa-tive effects will affect the damping andreduce the resonance linewidth of mi-cro-mechanical oscillators.

In microelectronic devices, billionsof transistors are packed into a singlechip. The fabrication of MEMS involvessimilar, highly parallel processes, mak-ing it possible to create arrays of largenumber of elements. MEMS optical de-vices that contain hundreds or even mil-lions of moving parts have becomeimportant components in telecommuni-cation networks, adaptive optics anddisplay devices such as projectors. Incollaboration with Dr. Reitze, Dr. Chan’sgroup has built a prototype MEMS mi-cro-mirror array to be used in shaping

Investigating Physics with Micromachinescontributed by Professor Ho Bun Chan

RESEARCH NEWS

ultrafast optical pulses (Figure). Thisgroup is also investigating the interac-tion between nanomechanical compo-nents and surface plasmons polaritons.

spectrum of disciplines. The centerpieceof this strategy is the creation of a UFCampus Research Grid linking severalpowerful computing clusters to form asingle, large computational resourcethat will be accessed by researchersacross the entire campus. At the heartof the Campus Research Grid is a newhigh-performance computing facility in-tended to provide a powerful baselineof computation and storage infrastruc-ture for the grid coupled with high-speed communications. This facilitywill loosely bind existing computing re-sources across campus and is being con-structed in three phases, starting in 2004,

Processing, analyzing, transportingand displaying terabytes of data presentincreasingly difficult challenges to fore-front research in many domains of sci-ence and engineering. These problemsare particularly acute in such computer-intensive Physics domains as High En-ergy Physics, nanostructures, stellardynamics and gravitational wave detec-tion, where University of Florida physi-cists have strong research programs.

To address these critical challenges,Physics faculty members, in partnershipwith colleagues across the University ofFlorida, have embarked on a campus-wide program (http://www.hcs.ufl.edu/hpc/) to develop high-end computing fordata-intensive research across a broad

Physics and the University of Florida Campus Gridcontributed by Professor Paul Avery


The width of the serpentine springs supporting each mirroris about 1/100 the diameter of a human hair.



with a focus on the physical sciences, en-gineering sciences, and health sciences,respectively.

The Department of Physics is play-ing a principal role in the creation of theCampus Research Grid. Phase I (see fig-ure) is located in the Physics computerroom and two recently hired comput-ing engineers will work closely with ErikDeumens of the Quantum TheoryProject and Jorge Rodriguez of High En-ergy Physics in integrating the hardwareand software systems of the facility withthe other major computing clusters oncampus. The Grid software will take ad-vantage of the University of Florida’sleadership of two national Grid efforts,GriPhyN (http://www.griphyn.org/) andthe International Virtual Data GridLaboratory (http://www.ivdgl.org/),both led by Paul Avery.

The Campus Research Grid has tre-mendous synergy with other major ac-tivities at the local, state and nationallevels that will augment the University’s

role in high end computing. Paul Averyand Sam Trickey were co-principal in-vestigators of a successful proposal tothe NSF Major Research Initiative (MRI)program, which will bring $857K of re-sources to build a state of the art net-working infrastructure linking the majorcomputing centers on campus, includ-ing Physics. This campus network willbe linked to the advance networking in-frastructures Florida Lambda Rail (FLR)and National Lambda Rail (NLR),thanks to $800K in equipment and per-sonnel provided by the successfulUltraLight proposal to the NSF Informa-tion Technology Research program(http://ultralight.caltech.edu/), on whichPaul Avery was the lead UF investiga-tor. Taken together, these projects willnot only extend UF national leadershipin Grid computing, but they will helpcatapult UF into the front ranks of inter-national ultra-high speed networking,providing our university for the firsttime with a state of the art networkinginfrastructure supporting advanced sci-entific applications.

Experimenters from the high-en-ergy physics group are marking timeuntil the start of the Large HadronCollider (LHC) in 2007 at the CERNlaboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. TheLHC will collide protons at an unprec-edented energy of 14 trillion electron-volts in order to unravel some basicmysteries of the universe, such as themechanism by which particles acquiremass and the mechanism that unifies theknown fundamental forces. Circum-stantial evidence has been gradually ac-cumulating that a high grand theorymust exist that is able to explain physi-cal phenomena with fewer ad-hoc pa-rameters than used in current theories,and the LHC is our best bet for directlyprobing this theory. The LHC also mayshed light on “dark matter”, so-far in-visible yet responsible for 90% of themass in the universe according to cos-mologists, and perhaps even reveal thatwe live in a universe with more than 3spatial dimensions.

The UF researchers participate in anLHC experiment called the CompactMuon Solenoid, a misnomer given thatthe experiment will stand 15 m tall andweight over 12,000 tons when com-pleted. It will also contain the largestsuperconducting magnet ever con-structed in order to measure particle mo-menta: a 4 Tesla solenoid 12 m long and6 meters in diameter. The CMS experi-ment will be installed 100 meters under-ground at one of the collision points ofthe LHC ring, which is 27 kilometers incircumference.

One of the ways UF researchers aremarking time is in developing a preciseand stable clock distribution system inorder to synchronize the experimentelectronics to the 40 MHz proton colli-sion frequency. The research group ofProfessor Darin Acosta marked a mile-

Marking Time to the LHCcontributed by Professor Darin Acosta

Grid continued from page 11



must be synchronized to the clock sothat information from one proton colli-sion is not mixed up with that from an-other. In the September tests, the UFgroup employed a very stable crystal os-cillator and phase-locked it to the accel-erator clock. This time the experimentsucceeded, and data was successfullydriven through the entire electronic sys-tem from the muon chambers to theTrack-Finder at the measured machinefrequency of 40.078893 MHz. The featwas repeated with even more detectorsand electronics in June 2004 as an evenlarger slice of the CMS experiment was

stone in September 2003 by successfullytesting a sophisticated electronic proces-sor they developed at UF in an experi-ment using a muon beam at CERN.Dubbed the “Track-Finder,” the proces-sor collects data transmitted on high-speed fiber-optic links to reconstruct inreal-time the trajectories of muons in theEndcap Muon system of the CMS. Inearlier tests, the experiment failed be-cause the clock distributed by the CERNparticle accelerator had too much jitterto drive optical links operating at 1.6GHz without error. The clock is theheartbeat of a collider experiment: data

One of the disks of the CMS Endcap Muon system. Thegaps seen in the picture will soon be filled with muondetectors to complete the installation.

Eagerly awaiting beam test results. From left to right:Associate Professor Darin Acosta, Graduate studentBobby Scurlock, Post Doc Holger Stoeck, and collaborat-ing engineers Victor Golovtsov and Lev Uvarov (seated).

tested. The success of the beam test ex-periments depended on the efforts of UFphysics graduate students BobbyScurlock, Alexei Drozdetski andKhristian Kotov, as well as physics un-dergraduates Lindsay Gray and Nicho-las Park. Post-doctoral research HolgerStoeck and engineer Alex Madorsky alsowere instrumental.

Another way to mark time until thestart of the LHC is to measure theprogress on the installation of the manydetectors that will compose the CMS ex-periment. Professors Mitselmakher andKorytov lead the Endcap Muon projectof CMS, which is a system consisting ofover 400 large wire chambers devotedto detecting muons emanating from theLHC collision point. Approximately 75of these chambers were tested in theHigh-Bay laboratory of the PhysicsBuilding, but all have now been shippedto CERN for installation. The CMS teamrecently celebrated the installation of 108chambers onto the 5-story tall iron disksat CERN, which represents 27% of thefinal system. In fact, several of thesechambers have seen the first muons atCMS after being powered up and detect-ing cosmic-ray muons originating fromthe upper atmosphere.

The construction of CMS and theLHC is a monumental task, but onewhich is well underway. The reward in3 years hopefully will be deep insightinto the nature of the universe.

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No one knows how to build a quan-tum computer. But futurists predict thatwhoever succeeds will be able to crackthe U.S. military’s hardiest codes in a fewminutes, solve currently insurmount-able problems in physics, meteorologyand astronomy and possibly shrinkcomputers to microscopic size. So, in areprise of the effort to pioneer high tem-perature superconductors a decade ago,the race is on. Among the proven com-petitors at the world’s universities andresearch institutions: two University ofFlorida scientists. Physics Associate Pro-fessor Stephen Hill and Drago Profes-sor of Chemistry George Christou sayup front they’re nowhere near buildingwhat remains a device rooted partly inscience and partly in science fiction. But,in a paper published last fall in the jour-nal Science,1 the two demonstrated anew possibility for the basic mechanismthat could underlie a quantum machine.Supported by $2 million from the Na-tional Science Foundation, they’re con-tinuing to pursue that possibility - whichthey believe may have key advantagesover a handful of other candidates forthe quantum computer’s mysterious in-nards.

Today’s computers rely on bits ofinformation stored as magnetic states onhard drives or in a compact disc’sgrooves. These states are represented aszeros or ones. The quantum computerwould have a radically different foun-dation: the quantum bit, or qubit. It maysound bizarre, but the qubit would leadto vast increases in a computer’s process-ing power. Here’s why: Four bits in aconventional computer can store onlyone of 16 different patterns at a time –0001 at one time, 0011 the next time, then0111, and so on.. But four qubits, ifachieved, could store all 16 patterns at

A Quantum Leapadapted with permission from Aaron Hoover,UF News and Publications, by ProfessorStephen Hill

the same time. So, while each additionalbit gives a conventional computer justone more bit of power, each qubit in-creases the quantum computer’s powerexponentially.

Mathematicians have already dem-onstrated formulae or algorithms thatwould use quantum computers to doremarkable things, Hill says. For ex-ample, today’s state-of-the-art militarycodes are immune to conventional com-puters, which would require centuriesof processing to discover the patternsneeded to crack them. “The joke is thatthe codes developed by the Pentagon aresupposedly safe for hundreds of years,but if someone makes a quantum com-puter they may only be safe for a fewminutes,” Hill says.

Although everyone agrees no onewill build a quantum computer nextyear, scientists have already madeprogress. In 2001, IBM researchers builtthe first “proof of concept” primitiveversion of a quantum computer, usingit to break the number 15 into its factorsof five and three. Most researchers sincehave concentrated their efforts on the

problem of developing the physical sys-tem that will serve as the main compu-tational ingredient – in other words, thequantum computer’s processor. It ispresently unknown what this systemwill consist of. Some teams are experi-menting with photons, others with thespins of atomic nuclei. Still others hopeto tweak the electron spin in a pursuitknown as spintronics.

Hill and Christou are working onyet another candidate: molecular mag-nets. Until 1992, no one had observedmagnetism on the molecular scale. Thatyear, Christou, then at Indiana Univer-sity in Bloomington, was among a groupof scientists who synthesized the world’sfirst magnet consisting only of a singlemolecule. With an inner core measuringjust one half of a nanometer, or a half ofa billionth of a meter, so-called “Man-ganese 12” was the smallest magnet thenknown to science. Each molecule is toosmall to probe by itself. But they formin crystals, each containing trillions ofidentical, ordered, similarly alignedmagnets. By studying the behavior ofmanageably large crystals, scientists can

L to R: Jon Lawrence, Stephen Hill, Tony Wilson, Susumu Takahashi, Sheng-Chiang Lee, and Norman Anderson.



deduce the behavior of each molecule.If Christou’s specialty is making the

crystals, Hill’s expertise is studyingthem. Hill’s lab has an elaborate and ex-pensive setup that boasts some of mod-ern physics’ most powerful instruments,including a spectrometer, a cryostat anda powerful magnet. He uses the cryostatto cool the sample to a few degreesabove absolute zero, a necessity to shel-ter the delicate quantum system againstheat-related disturbances. He then pow-ers up and manipulates the magneticfield to prompt the sample to enter aquantum state, firing microwaves at itand studying the return signal with thestate-of-the-art spectrometer. “With justthe right conditions of magnetic fieldstrength and temperature and magneticfield orientation, we can coax the sys-tem into a so-called superposition ofquantum states whereby pairs of mol-ecules act in unison,” Hill says. “Themicrowaves are our eyes looking intothe system, while the magnetic field, ifyou like, represents our hands.” The su-perposition state is stable for only a fewnanoseconds-just enough time for Hilland Christou to show, as reported in the2003 Science paper, that single-moleculemagnets could one day be used in aquantum computer.

Success may be a long way off, butno one disputes the importance of thisresearch. Already, as engineers tap thelast of silicon’s remaining potential, therapid increases in computing speed thatspurred the information revolution areslowing down. With modern scientificprogress so closely tied to computingheft, it’s important for acceleration tocontinue. “Once we figure out all theseissues with quantum mechanics theremight be another quantum leap,” Hillsays.

1 S. Hill, R. S. Edwards, N. Aliaga-Alcalde, G. Christou, Science 302, 1015-1018 (Nov 7 2003).

We have strong evidence on all cos-mic scales, from galaxies to the largeststructures ever observed, that there ismore matter in the universe than we canactually see. Galaxies and clusterswould fly apart unless they would beheld together by material which we calldark, because it does not emit electro-magnetic radiation. As early as 1933Fritz Zwicky had discovered that themasses of massive galaxy clusters areabout ten times larger than the sum ofthe luminous mass of their individualgalaxies. However, it was the pioneer-ing work of Vera Rubin in the 1970swhich provided dynamical evidencethat individual galaxies are embeddedin large, dark halos.

According to the Wilkinson Micro-wave Anisotropy Probe, or WMAP, asurvey of the microwave backgroundradiation left over from the big bang,ordinary (“bary-onic”) matter con-taining atoms makesup only 4% of the en-ergy-matter contentsin the Universe.“Dark energy”makes up 73%, andan unknown form ofdark matter makesup the last 23%.Some of the proper-ties of non-baryonicdark matter, such asits density, can be in-ferred from WMAP,with the Sloan Digi-tal Sky Survey re-cently confirmingthese results. Weknow that neutrinos,

Looking for Particles Left Over From theBig Bang with the Cryogenic Dark MatterSearch (CDMS) Experimentcontributed by Professor Laura Baudis

very light particles left over from the bigbang in massive quantities, make up asmall amount. WIMPs, or Weakly Inter-acting Massive Particles, may make upthe rest. WIMPs, which could have beenproduced in the very early universe,may have a mass 10 to 1000 times themass of the proton and interact only viathe weak force and gravity. Such par-ticles are outside the realm of the Stan-dard Model of particle physics and theirdiscovery would bring a breakthroughfor theories going beyond the StandardModel.

The CDMS experiment uses germa-nium and silicon crystals cooled downto mK temperatures to look for WIMPsscattering off Ge or Si nuclei. Since darkmatter particles will interact less thanonce per day in 1 kilogram of targetmaterial, the detectors have to be care-

A view of the inner layers of the cryostat with two towers installed.Detector towers are mounted in the holes covered by hexagonal plates.The coldest part of the cryostat stays at 10 mK (millikelvin, orthousandths of a degree above absolute zero) during operation. Thesurrounding layers are higher temperature stages of the cryostat.The cryostat is constructed using radiopure copper to provide a low-radioactivity environment for the extremely sensitive CDMSdetectors.

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fully shielded from cosmic rays and anyother interactions that would mimic aWIMP (so-called “background events”).The CDMS team thus practices ‘under-ground astronomy’, with the detectorsbeing located nearly a half-mile belowthe earth’s surface in a former iron minein Soudan, in northern Minnesota.

The power of the detectors residesin the capability of simultaneously mea-suring the charge and vibration pro-duced by particle interactions within thecrystals. WIMPs will signal their pres-ence by releasing less charge than otherparticles for the same amount of vibra-tion.

The current experimental set-up forCDMS at Soudan contains two towersof detectors, each with a kilogram ofgermanium and 200 g of silicon. Whilegermanium is heavier and has a higherprobability of seeing a WIMP interac-tion, silicon is used to distinguishWIMPs from neutrons, which producethe same ratio of charge to vibration asa dark matter particle.

With the first data from the Soudan

observatory, taken with only one towerfrom October 2003 to January 2004, theCDMS team has achieved the world-wide highest sensitivity on WIMPs.

The CDMS result, described in apaper accepted by Physical Review Let-ters (astro-ph/0405033), shows with 90percent certainty that the interaction rateof a WIMP with mass 60 GeV must beless than 4 x 10-43 cm2 or about one inter-action every 25 days per kilogram of ger-manium.

These measurements are at leastfour times more sensitive than the bestprevious measurement offered by theEDELWEISS experiment, an under-ground European experiment nearGrenoble, France.

The team is now analyzing the datafrom the two towers taken from Febru-ary to August 2004, while at the sametime they warmed up the experiment toinclude 3 additional towers. They expectto resume data taking by the end of theyear and to take measurements duringthe entire year 2005 before the nextscheduled upgrade.

CDMS includes 48 scientists from13 institutions, and is supported by

funds from NSF and DoE. The Univer-sity of Florida is the youngest additionto the CDMS II collaborating institu-tions. The UF group, led by ProfessorLaura Baudis, is playing a major role inidentifying and reducing the back-ground sources of CDMS detectors, aprecise detective work to chase down alltypes of interactions that may look likeWIMPs, but in fact, are not. The groupis also strongly involved in modelingthese so-called background interactionswith Monte Carlo methods, in the analy-sis of the WIMP search data and in op-eration of the experiment at the Soudanlaboratory.

The discovery of Weakly InteractingMassive Particles would have deep im-plications for cosmology and particlephysics, solving the double mystery ofdark matter on cosmic scales and on newparticle physics on subatomic scales.

Website of the UF group:http://www.phys.ufl.edu/darkmatter/Main CDMS website:http://cdms.berkeley.edu/

If not for a handful of materials, theproperties of optical transparency andgood electrical conductivity would bemutually exclusive. Glasses and plasticsare nicely transparent, but they are gen-erally electrically insulating. Metals, onthe other hand, while being good elec-trical conductors, tend to be opaque.They can be made very thin and therebytransparent, but most metals oxidize thedepth of the film making for poor con-ductors and the precious metals, whichdon’t oxidize, don’t like to form contigu-ous films, so their conductivity whenthin enough to be transparent, is also

Nanotube Films as Transparent Conducting Materialscontributed by Professor Andrew Rinzler

poor. This leaves a handful of semicon-ductors: the transparent conducting ox-ides (TCOs), like indium tin oxide, tocarry the burden. And a big burden it isbecause modern technology dependsheavily on the use of transparent con-ducting films and the need keeps grow-ing. Where? Well, in computer laptopdisplays, in infrared light emitting di-odes (LEDs) like in TV remotes and theirphotodiode receivers, in the visibleLEDs you see in traffic lights and com-mercial signs, in each of the Megapixelsof digital cameras, in photocopiers, insolar cells, and in digital watch displays.

The list goes on. Given this ubiquity theTCOs are obviously very successful.Nevertheless there remains considerableroom for improvement. The conductiv-ity of the TCOs depends critically ontheir oxygen doping, which is finicky tocontrol, and limits their temperature tol-erance during device fabrication. TheTCOs are brittle, limiting their use torigid devices. Finally, most TCOs are n-type conductors, which limits the rangeof materials to which they can electri-cally couple without the formation ofsignificant contact barriers.

Now a group of researchers at UF

CDMS continued from page 15



1 Z. Chen, X. Du, M-H. Du, C. D. Rancken, H-P. Cheng, A. G. Rinzler, Nano Letters 3 1245 (2003)2 K. Lee, Z. Wu, Z. Chen, F. Ren, S. J. Pearton, A. G. Rinzler, Nano Lett. 4, 911 (2004)3 Z. Wu, Z. Chen, X. Du, J. M. Logan, J. Sippel, M. Nikolou, K. Kamaras, J. R. Reynolds, D. B. Tanner, A. F. Hebard, A. G.

Rinzler, Science 305, 1273 (2004)4 H. H. Gommans, J. W. Alldredge, H. Tashiro, J. Park, J. Magnuson and A. G. Rinzler, J. Appl. Phys. 88, 2509 (2000)5 J. Hwang, H. H. Gommans, A. Ugawa, H. Tashiro R. Haggenmueller, K. I. Winey, J. E. Fischer, D. B. Tanner, and A. G.

Rinzler, Phys. Rev. B 62, R13310 (2000)6 D. A. Walters, M. J. Casavant, X. C. Qin, C. B. Huffman, P. J. Boul, L. M. Ericson, E. H. Haroz, M. J. O’Connell, K. Smith,

D. T. Colbert and R. E. Smalley. Chemical Physics Letters, 338, 14-20 (2001)

has demonstrated that thin films of puresingle walled carbon nanotubes(SWNTs) can provide transparent con-ductors having properties complimen-tary to if not outright competitive withthe TCOs. Fabrication of the films andapplication to GaN based light emittingdiodes were first reported in the Jour-nal Nano Letters.1,2 Elaboration of thefilm fabrication process and optical andelectronic characterization appeared inthe August 27th issue of Science.3 Thenanotube films are distinguished byhaving higher electrical conductivity, forequal transparency in the mid-IR com-pared to other known materials; they arehighly flexible, with no degradation intheir opto-electronic properties after re-peated flexing; and the semiconductingnanotubes in the mixture of ~1/3 metal-lic, 2/3 semiconducting, tend to be p-type conductors, although by simplechemical charge transfer doping (ef-

fected by exposure to vapors of the ap-propriate chemicals) their carrier con-centration can be modulated all the wayto n-type. This means that the nanotubefilms should permit the coupling of cur-rent into a broad range of materials.

How do the nanotubes achieve a si-multaneous high transparency in themid IR and good electrical conductiv-ity? Part of the high transparency is ex-plained the by the low nanotube carrierdensity, which limits their free carrier ab-sorption. Low carrier density usuallyspells poor conductivity however theremarkably high mobility of the itiner-ant carriers in the nanotube atomic lat-tice makes for a good electricalconductivity, despite the low carrierdensity. One further feature contributesto the high transparency. Optical absorp-tion is suppressed in the nanotubes forcomponents of the incident radiationpolarized perpendicular to the nanotube

axis. This was first inferred several yearsago by the UF researchers from polar-ized Raman spectroscopic data on fibersof aligned nanotubes4 and subsequentlyconfirmed by reflectance measurementson such fibers.5

High magnetic fields will soon beof relevance in this research. In 2001 RickSmalley’s group from Rice Universityused the high field facilities of theNHMFL to produce optically densefilms of aligned nanotubes. This mag-netic field induced alignment is consis-tent with the present method forforming the transparent films. Aligned,transparent nanotube films will be use-ful both for further scientific explorationof the one-dimensional character of thenanotubes themselves and for explora-tion of the technical limits of the filmtransparency to polarized light.

Transparent nanotube films (text lies behind the films) and their microstructure (AFM image, right)



The Society of Physics StudentsYear in Review- Catherine Yeh, SPS Vice President

Jacob Tosado sets up thelaunch pad at the Girls Club

Jim Davis, Amruta Deshpande, Tim Jones, andJacob Tosado are ready to paintball

The past 2003-2004 year was a pro-ductive one for the Society of PhysicsStudents. Prof. Yoonseok Lee proved tobe an involved, enthusiastic sponsor.Under his guidance and the leadershipof SPS president Colin Shepherd, ‘04graduate now headed for UC Santa Bar-bara, SPS initiated new activities andstrengthened the club treasury.

The well-attended Research Oppor-tunities for Undergraduates series ofphysics faculty lectures, dubbed“ROFU” by Prof. Lee, was instituted. UFphysics professors from a variety offields donated their evenings to presenttheir research to an attentive audienceof undergraduate physics majors. In ad-dition to lectures, SPS scheduled occa-sional lab tours. Students gawked atcomplex apparatuses as professors bliss-

fully described why they wish to levi-tate plants and smash particles. Thegrowing number of undergraduate re-searchers is due partly to ROFU, whichencouraged students to take advantageof the many research opportunities inthe physics department.

SPS also established UP (Under-graduate Physics), a monthly under-graduate physics newsletter run entirelyby students. UP helped to publicize SPSactivities and increase student aware-ness of events around the department.Subject matter ranged from student in-terviews to undergraduate advisor pro-files to coverage of the SPS versesChemistry Club Paintball fight (it endedin a draw). The newsletter is distributedto classrooms at the beginning of eachmonth and published online athttp://www.phys.ufl.edu/~upnews.

Activities like a month-long rocket

Professor Arthur Hebard discussesresearch in his lab

building project with the Girls Club ofAlachua County expanded communityoutreach. SPS members arrived eachweek at the Girls Club with armfuls ofrocket parts, bracing themselves for thelittle girls awaiting them at the doorwhose limitless supply of energy seem-ingly defied the laws of physics. Trans-formed from students to teachers, theSPS members were amused to observethe girls’ reactions to failures and tri-umphs during the construction process.Despite a few hitches along the way, ev-eryone was able to complete construc-tion and experience the satisfaction ofseeing her rocket soar high into the skyon the day of the launch.

Other SPS successes included thefirst meeting of the Female Physics Fo-rum, at which both undergraduate andgraduate female physics students con-vened over cookies and punch to hearnew faculty-member Prof. Laura Baudisdiscuss her experiences in a field domi-nated by men. Fundraising effortsthrough the sale of solution manuals, agenerous donation by Prof. GregoryStewart, and a Marsh White Award fromthe National SPS organization approv-ing a proposal to enhance current “Phys-ics is Fun” shows reinforced the treasury.The availability of funds paves the wayfor 2004-2005 SPS officers, who will havea firm footing with which to start the fallsemester.



Three students affiliated with the Department of Physicshave recently been awarded with an NSF Graduate Fellow-ship and one graduate student has been given an honorarymention. “NSF Graduate Fellowships offer recognition andthree years of support for advanced study to approximately900 outstanding graduate students in the mathematical, physi-cal, biological, engineering, and behavioral and social sci-ences, including the history of science and the philosophy ofscience, and to research-based PhD degrees in science educa-tion.”

AWARDEESRobert Abel received his bachelor’s degree in Chemistry

from UF and plans to use his fellowship at one of the schoolsthat has accepted him. (Scripps, UCSD, Columbia or Minne-sota)

Ryan Chancey received his bachelor’s degree in CivilEngineering from UF and is currently attending graduateschool at UF. He will be using his fellowship at Odense inDenmark.

Desika Narayanan received his bachelor’s degree in As-tronomy and Physics and is currently attending graduateschool at the University of Arizona, Department of Astronomy.

Christopher McKenney received his bachelor’s degreein Physics and Electrical Engineering and is currently attend-ing graduate school at the University of California at SantaBarbara. (Honorable Mention)

Apker Award - Finalist

Taylor Hughes (Class of 2003 valedictorian and recipientof an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship) was selected as afinalist for the 2003 Apker Award of the APS. The purpose ofthe award is to recognize outstanding achievements in phys-ics by undergraduate students. He was a participant in the2002 Summer REU program, which resulted in a coauthoredpublication [see T. L. Hughes et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 196802(2003)]. Jason Alicea (Class of ‘01) was the winner of the 2002Apker Award, Chris Schaffer (Class of 1995) won the ApkerAward in 1996 and Chris Harrison (Class of 1993) was a final-ist in 1994; we clearly have an undergraduate majors programof which we can be proud.

Aparna Baskaran, a third year graduate student work-ing with Professor Jim Dufty, was one of the 10 CLAS stu-dents chose to be recognized with a 2004 OutstandingInternational Student Academic Award. The awards are de-signed to recognize undergraduate and graduate studentswho not only meet exemplary academic achievement but alsoa wide range of accomplishments and contributions, includ-ing exceptional scholarly research, active participation in thedepartment, and service to the university community.

Aparna has also received a $1000 travel grant from theNational Science Foundation (NSF) for her presentation atthe IUPAP Statistical Physics meeting in Bangalore, India thissummer. She is one of 15 students to win this award.

Society of Physics Students LeadershipScholarship

Colin Shepherd has been named as one of the top threeSPS Leadership Scholarship Awardees from the American In-stitute of Physics. Colin was senior Physics undergraduatestudent and has been the President of the UF Chapter of SPSfrom 2003-2004. Colin plans to continue on with his gradu-ate work at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

National Awards garnered by the University of Florida Chap-ter of the Society of Physics Students:

Marsh W. White Award(2003-2004)Outstanding Chapter(2002-2003 & 2001-2002)SPS Leadership Scholarship(Colin Shepherd top threefinalist, 2003-2004)

American Physical Society Chemical PhysicsTravel Award

Brian Thorndyke received a “Graduate Travel Award”from the Division of Chemical Physics of the American Physi-cal Society. Brian is a graduate research assistant workingwith Prof. David Micha of the Quantum Theory Project (QTP).Brian used his award to attend the 2004 March APS meetingin Montreal, Canada.

Aditi Mallik also received a “Graduate Travel Award”from the Division of Chemical Physics of the American Physi-cal Society. Aditi is a graduate research assistant workingwith Prof. James Dufty. She presented a talk at the 2004 MarchAPS meeting in Montreal, Canada.

UNDERGRADUATE AND GRADUATEHONORS AND AWARDS

Outstanding International Student Award

2004-2005 National Science Foundation (NSF)Graduate Fellowships



DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICSANNUAL AWARDS FOR 2003

At the 2003 Holiday Celebration on December 11, the Physics Department awarded the yearlyhonors to those individuals who have demonstrated and achieved excellence throughout 2003.

Superior Accomplishment Award DivisionThree

One of the five (5) Division Three Superior Accom-plishment Awards for 2003-2004 has been awarded toYvonne Dixon. She is the Office Manager for the HighEnergy Theory Group. These awards serve to recognizeindividuals for meritorious service beyond their nor-mally assigned duties.

Each year the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences awardsgraduate students with the CLAS Dissertation Award. Twoof these were awarded to Luis Breva-Newell and SersitaSuzette Pabit.

The Physics department awards two graduate students,annually, with the Physics Teaching Assistant of the Year forLaboratory Sessions & Discussion Sessions.

Gregory Martin won for the Discussion Sessions &Kyoungchul Kong won for the Laboratory Sessions.

This year, two Excellence awards were given, one honor-ing the secretarial staff, and the other for the engineering andtechnical staff.

Cindy Bright, Accountant, was the winner for the secre-tarial staff and John Graham, Sr. Engineer Tech, of Cryogen-ics Services was the winner for the engineering & technicalstaff.

CLAS DISSERTATION AWARD

PHYSICS TEACHING ASSISTANT OF THE YEAR

EMPLOYEE EXCELLENCE AWARD

Professor Kevin Ingersent was awarded the Teacher ofthe Year. This award is voted on by the students and faculty.He was recognized for his outstanding teaching in the gradu-ate core courses.

Dmitri Tsybychev is the awardee for The Tom Scott Me-morial Award which is made annually to a senior graduatestudent in experimental physics who has shown distinctionin research. The award honors the memory of Professor TomScott who made significant contributions to the Departmentboth as a Chair and as a noted researcher. The award carries acash prize of $400.

Marc Soussa is the winner for The Charles F. Hooper Jr.Memorial Award which is made annually to senior graduatestudents in physics who have shown distinction in researchand teaching. The Award honors the memory of ProfessorCharles (Chuck) Hooper who made seminal contributions tothe Department as a Chair, as a distinguished researcher, andas a beloved mentor/teacher.

TEACHER OF THE YEAR

TOM SCOTT MEMORIAL AWARD

CHARLES F. HOOPER JR. MEMORIAL AWARD

PromotionsEffective August 16, 2004, President Machen hasapproved the following faculty promotions.

Guenakh Mitselmakher Distinguished Professor

Kevin Ingersent Professor

Bernard Whiting Professor

Stephen Hagen Associate Professorwith Tenure

Stephen Hill Associate Professorwith Tenure

Faculty Name New Promotion Title



Masters and PhD Theses Listing for 1990 - Spring 2004

Markus Rall (Sullivan)PhD: “NMR studies of molecular hydrogen confined to the

pores of zeolite”

Laddawan Ruamsuwan (Fry)PhD: “Analytical and numerical investigation of nonlinear

gravitational clustering”

Keith D. Bartholomew (Brown)MS: “Low and high frequency elastic measurements of

quasi-one-dimensional conductors”

Agustin C. Diz (Ohrn)PhD: “Electron-nuclear dynamics: a theoretical treatment

using coherent states and the time-dependentvariational principle”

Feng Gao (Tanner)PhD: “Temperature dependence of infrared and optical

properties of high temperature superconductors”

Jung Soo Kim (Stewart)PhD: “Doping experiments in heavy fermion

superconductors”

Linda K. Lars (Van Rinsvelt)MS: “Depth profile of trace elements in Fish Lake of

Indiana sediments by particle induced X-rayemission”

Dorte Sasse (Tanner)MS: “Structural studies of Langmuir-Blodgett films via

FT-IR spectroscopy”

Brian D. Watson (Ramond)PhD: “Renormalization group analysis of the standard

model and its minimal supersymmetric extension”

Hauku Arason (Ramond)PhD: “Renormalization group analysis of the standard

model, the minimal supersymmetric extension of thestandard model, and the effective action”

Steven L. Carbon (Thorn)PhD: “Sister trajectories in string theory”

Diego J. Castano (Ramond)PhD: “Renormalization group study of the minimal

supersymmetric extension of the standard modelwith broken supersymmetry”

James K. Blackburn (Detweiler)PhD: “The spiralling binary system of black holes”

Phillipe B. Chilson (Adams)MS: “The use of fiber optics in an ultra-low temperature

heater”

Meifang Chu (Thorn)PhD: “Operator methods in the superstring theory”

Christian A. Hagmann (Sullivan)PhD: “A search for cosmic axions”

Curtis R. Harkless (Nagler)PhD: “An X-ray scattering study of ordering in block

copolymers”

Erika G. Kisvarsanyi (Sullivan)MS: “Quantum tunneling of isotopic impurities in solid

H”

Thomas McCarty (Ramond)PhD: “A collection of theoretical problems in high energy

physics”

Howard C. Royce (Ihas)MS: “Vibrational and structural analysis of a system for

improved cryostat support and operation”

Robert F. Shannon (Nagler)PhD: “A time-resolved x-ray scattering study of the

ordering kinetics in Cu3Au”

Yuanshan Sun (Wolfle)PhD: “Matrix method of solution for coupled Boltzmann

equations and its applications to superfluid 3He andsemiconductors”

Hyung-Suk Woo (Tanner)PhD: “Optical properties of segmented and oriented

polyacetylene”

Dawei Zhou (Sullivan)PhD: “Quantum tunneling in solid hydrogen”

Eric Q. Feng (Micha)PhD: “A time-dependent molecular orbital approach to ion-

solid surface collisions”

David P. Kilcrease (Hooper)PhD: “Higher order microfield effects on spectral line

broadening in dense plasmas”

Gary Kleppe (Ramond)PhD: “Reparametrization invariant operators in string field

theory”

1990○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

1992○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

1993○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

1991○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○



Monique R. Chacon (Zerner)PhD: “The reduced-expended space method applied to

electronic spectroscopy”

Bettina E. Keszthelyi (Ramond)PhD: “Gravitational models in 2+1 dimensions with

topological terms and thermo-field dynamics of blackholes”

Eric J. Piard (Ramond)PhD: “Minimal supersymmetry extension of the standard

model of elementary particles: a renormalizationgroup approach”

Keith Runge (Micha)PhD: “A time-dependent many-electron approach to atomic

and molecular interactions”

Junqing Zhang (Nagler)PhD: “High resolution x-ray scattering study of the charge

density waves in quasi-one-dimensional K0.3Mo03”

Dario Beksic (Micha)PhD: “Electronically diabatic photodesorption of

molecules adsorbed on metal surfaces”

William W. Brey (Andrew)PhD: “Novel techniques for pulsed gradient NMR

measurements”

James C. Clark (Ihas)MS: “Conduction and localization in polyaniline and

polypyrrole”

George R. Duensing (Andrew)PhD: “Signal-to-noise ratio improvement in NMR via

receiver hardware optimization”

Morgan D. Evans (Sullivan)PhD: “Orientational and translational properties of

hydrogen films adsorbed onto boron nitride”

Mark D. Frederickson (Stanton)MS: “Computer visualization of solid-state phenomena”

Mark W. Grant (Seiberling)PhD: “Heteroepitaxial dimer structures on the silicon (100)

surface”

James A.S. Lee (Klauder)PhD: “The complex Langevin equation”

Wenhai Ni (Adams)PhD: “Melting pressure thermometry and magnetically

ordered solid 3He”

Manuel A. Quijada (Tanner)PhD: “Anisotropy in the infrared, optical and transport

properties of high temperature superconductors”

Jose A. Rubio (Woodard)PhD: “Reduced Hamiltonians”

Ramchander R. Sastry (Klauder)MS: “A study of discontinuous perturbations”

Qingbiao Shi (Cumming)PhD: “The kinetics of surface-mediated phase separation

in the quasi-binary mixture of guaiacol-glycerol-water”

Phillipe J.-C. Signore (Meisel)PhD: “Inductive measurements of heavy Fermion

superconductors”

David R. Stark (Tanner)MS: “Fluctuation effects in the optical conductivity of thin

film BiSrCaCuO”

Chengjun Zhu (Klauder)PhD: “Singular dynamics in quantum mechanics and

quantum field theory”

Lech S. Borkowski (Hirschfeld)PhD: “Impurities in unconventional superconductors”

Chad L. Davies (Hunter)PhD: “Numerical modeling of large N galactic disk

systems”

Anuradha Durbha (Sullivan)MS: “Study of ohmic contacts on gallium nitride thin

films”

Jaewan Kim (Sikivie)PhD: “Small scale structure on relativistic strings”

Weonwoo Kim (Stewart)PhD: “Doping experiments on magnetic heavy fermion

superconductors”

Satoru Miyamoto (Takano)PhD: “Torsion pendulum studies of 4He in nanopores”

Jorge L. Rodriguez (Avery)PhD: “Exclusive two body decays of the bottom meson”

Wolfgang Tome (Klauder)PhD: “Quantization and representation independent

propagators”

Gajendra Tulsian (Klauder)PhD: “Bicoherent states, path integrals, and systems with

constraints”

David E. Willmes (Kandrup)PhD: “The effect of noise in chaotic galactic potentials”

Young-Duck Yoon (Tanner)PhD: “Optical properties of doped cuprates and related

materials”

1994○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

1995○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○



Jianzhong Li (Stanton)PhD: “Electronic, optical, and transport properties of

widegap II-VI semiconductors”

Paul L. Moyland (Takano)PhD: “Nuclear magnetism and negative temperatures in

silver”

Wenhua X. Ni (Mareci)PhD: “Design of novel RF coils for signal-to-noise ratio

improvement in NMR”

Nacira Tache (Tanner)PhD: “Infrared and optical studies of rare earth substitution

in high temperature superconductors”

M. Reza Tayebnejad (Field)PhD: “Applications of neural networks in high energy

physics”

Allison A. Bailes, III (Seiberling)PhD: “Flat or lumpy: surface structure and growth modes

in silicon-germanium epitaxy”

Garrett E. Granroth (Meisel)PhD: “Experimental studies of integer spin

antiferromagnetic chains”

Andrew W. Garrett (Nagler)PhD: “Low dimensional magnetic exchange in vanadyl

pyrosphosphate and vanadyl hydrogen phosphatehemihydrate”

Youli A. Kanev (Field)PhD: “Application of neural networks and genetic

algorithms in high energy physics”

Andrew E. Rubin (Klauder)PhD: “The comparative roles of connected and

disconnected trajectories in the evaluation of thesemiclassical coherent-state propagator”

Timothy J. Schultz (Sharifi)MS: Electron beam lithography methods for fabrication

of magnetic nanostructures”

Stephen G. Thomas (Stewart)PhD: “An investigation of some unusual single crystals of

the heavy fermion superconductor UBE 13”

Zhigang Yi (Micha)PhD: “Computational aspects of the quantum molecular

dynamics of adsorbates”

Elizabeth L. Bossart (Mareci)PhD: “Magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy for

the study of translation diffusion: applications tonervous tissue”

Ejaz Ahmad (Ipser)PhD: “The spacetime manifold of a rotating star”

Mark A. Boshart (Seiberling)PhD: “A channeled ion energy loss study of the surfactant-

mediated growth of Ge on Si(100)”

Matthias H. Hettler (Hirschfeld)PhD: “Impurities in metals and superconductors”

Kiho Kim (Sullivan)PhD: “NMR studies of orientational behavior of quantum

solid hydrogen films adsorbed on boron nitride”

Tien Vu Lang (Adams)PhD: “Direct nuclear demagnetization of high density

body-centered-cubic (BCC) and hexagonal-close-packed (HCP) solid 3He”

Mirim Lee (Dufty)PhD: “Uniform shear flow far from equilibrium”

Samuel Mikaelian (Thorn)PhD: “Phenomenological aspects of the standard model:

high energy QCD, renormalization, and asupersymmetric extension”

Ma’an N. Raja Al-Ani (Dunnam)MS: “Effect of nicotinoid compound saturated ring size

upon interaction with nicotinic receptors”

Carsten Blecken (Muttalib)PhD: “Disordered conductors in a random matrix

formulation and the connection to complex systems”

Edgar B. Genio (Sullivan)PhD: “Low-temperature nuclear quadrupole resonance

studies of antimony and application of thermometry”

Kaundinya S. Gopinath (Kennedy)MS: “Relavistic charged particle in dipole-sphere

configuration”

Donald A. Haynes (Hooper)PhD: “Analysis of hot dense plasmas and consideration of

Stark broadening theory applied to transitionsinvolving continuum radiator wave functions”

Michael A. Jones (Fry)PhD: “Large-scale structure of the universe: simulations

and statistics”

Namkyoung Lee (Obukhov)PhD: “Conformational properties of polymers”

Hsiang-Lin Liu (Tanner)PhD: “Effects of high magnetic field and substitutional

doping on optical properties of cupratesuperconductors”

1996○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

1997○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

1998○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

1999○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○



Nikolaos Irges (Ramond)PhD: “Anomalous U(1) gauge symmetry in superstring

inspired low energy effective theories”

Joseph D. LaVeigne (Tanner)PhD: “Time resolved infrared spectroscopy at the NSLS

U12IR beamline”

Kingshuk Majumdar (Hershfield)PhD: “Study of transport properties in magnetic

nanostructures”

Sean Moore (Graybeal)PhD: “Optical properties of lamellar copper oxides with

in-plane magnetic and charged impurities”

Subrahmanyam Pilla (Sullivan)PhD: “Electric-field induced glass phase in molecular solids

at low temperatures”

Thomas A. Waddington (Monkhorst)MS: “A feasibility study on the nuclear spin polarization

of 11B for the colliding beam fusion reactor(CBFR)”

Lei Yang (Andrew)PhD: “Diffusion tensor imaging and the measurement of

diffusion tensors in biological systems”

Jiu Zheng (Yelton)PhD: “Studies of charmed baryons decaying in lambda_c

(n pi)”

Anatoly Efimov (Reitze)PhD: “Adaptive control of lasers and their interactions with

matter using femtosecond pulse shaping”

Heather D. Hudspeth (Sharifi)PhD: “Electron tunneling measurements on

ferromagnetically doped lanthanum manganitefilms”

Kirk Hunter (Reitze)MS: “The physical basis for optical functional imaging:

detecting intrinsic optical signals in vivo using opticalcoherent tomography”

Gwyneth C.A. Junkel-Vives (Hooper)PhD: “Second-order, full Coloumb electron broadening

calculations for multi-electron radiators in hot, denseplasmas: a focus on dense plasma line shifts”

Naoki Matsunaga (Adams)PhD: “Magnetic susceptibility and pressure measurements

in helium-three nano-clusters”

Eric O’Neill (Kandrup)PhD: “Hamiltonian structure and stability of relativistic

gravitational theories”

Bruce C. Paul (Ingersent)PhD: “A study of a three-impurity kondo model”

Teparksorn Pengpan (Ramond)PhD: “Equal rank embedding and its related construction

to superconformal field theories”

Artan Qerushi (Monkhorst)PhD: “Particles and energy transport in a field reversed

configuration”

Antonio I. Rubiera (Yelton)PhD: “Exclusive measurements in B --> D* N N X”

Brian C. Watson (Meisel)PhD: “Quantum transitions in antiferromagnets and liquid

helium-3”

Anatol Blass (Ohrn)PhD: “Quasiclassical and semiclassical methods in

molecular scattering dynamics”

Vladimir Boychev (Tanner)PhD: “Far-infrared studies of superconducting thin films

and Fabry-Perot resonators made of such films”

Tat-Sang Choy (Hershfield)PhD: “Electron transport theory in magnetic

nanostructures”

Thomas Delker (Reitze)PhD: “Demonstration of a prototype dual-recycled cavity-

enhanced Michelson interferometer for gravitationalwave detection”

Stephanie A. Getty (Hebard)PhD: “Electron transport studies of the ferromagnetic

semiconductor calcium hexaboride”

Mark A. Gunderson (Hooper)PhD: “Strong collisions in the electron broadening of

spectral lines from charged radiators in hot, denseplasmas”

Richard M. Haas (Field)PhD: “The underlying event in hard scattering collisions

of proton and antiproton at 1.8 TEV”

Quentin M. Hudspeth (Hebard)PhD: “Characterization of two-carbon-sixty systems:

electron-doped carbon-sixty monolayers on thin-filmmetal underlayers, and composite films of carbon-sixty and nickel.”

Jungseek Hwang (Tanner)PhD: “Electrochemical spectroscopy of conjugated

polymers”

2000○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

2001○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○



Mao-Hua Du (Cheng)PhD: “Theoretical modeling and design of complex

materials”

Alexios Klironomos (Dorsey)PhD: “Structural transitions of the vortex lattice in

anisotropic superconductors and fingering instabilityof electron droplets in an inhomogenous magneticfield”

Frank C. McDonald, Jr (Takano)MS: “Specific heat measurements of copper benzoate”

Eirini Messaritaki (Detweiler)PhD: “Radiation reaction on moving particles in general

relativity”

Vakif K. Onemli (Sikivie)PhD: “Gravitational lensing by dark matter caustics”

Linlin Qiu (Hagen)PhD: “Laser induced temperature jump investigations of

fast protein folding dynamics”

Thomas Henderson (Bartlett)PhD: “Short-range correlation in molecular physics: The

basis set problem and the correlation hole”

Rongliang Liu (Stanton)PhD: “Theoretical studies of coherent optic and acoustic

phonons in GaN/InGaN heterostructures”

Corneliu Manescu (Krause)PhD: “Controlling and probing atoms and molecules with

ultrafast laser pulses”

Suzette A. Pabit (Hagen)PhD: “Fast dynamics in protein folding: Time-resolved

fluorescence and absorbance studies of polypeptidereconfigurations”

Bryan Thorndyke (Micha)PhD: “Quantum dynamics of finite atomic and molecular

systems through density matrix methods”

Dmitri Tsybychev (Acosta)PhD: “Search for first-generation leptoquarks in the jets and

missing transverse energy topology in proton-antiproton collisions at center-of-mass energy 1.96TeV”

Linlin Wang (Cheng)PhD: “Density functional study of adsorption of fullerenes

on metal (111) surfaces”

Jeffrey M. Wrighton (Hooper/Dufty)PhD: “Correlation and collective effects in dense plasma

spectroscopy”

Kevin J. Kless (Adams)MS: “Magnetic susceptibility and melting in helium-three

nanoclusters”

Mark D. Moores (Reitze)PhD: “Adaptive control of the propagation of ultrafast light

through random and nonlinear media”

Steven E. Patamia (Kumar)PhD: “Spectrum and properties of mesoscopic surface-

coupled phonons in rectangular wires”

Richard Pietri (Andraka)PhD: “Magnetism and the Kondo effect in cerium heavy-

fermion compounds cerium-aluminum-3 andcerium-lead-3”

Ilya V. Pogorelov (Kandrup)PhD: “Phase space transport and the continuum limit in

nonlinear Hamiltonian systems”

Craig P. Prescott (Yelton)PhD: “Search for mixing in the neutral D meson system

with decays into CP even eigenstates”

Alexei N. Safonov (Korytov)PhD: “Jet fragmentation and predictions of the resummed

perturbative QCD”

Rupal S. Amin (Tanner)MS: “A technique for passively compensating thermally

induced modal distortions in faraday isolators forgravitational wave detector input optics”

Brian D. Baker (Detweiler)PhD: “Variational principles in general relativity”

Kevin T. McCarthy (Hebard)PhD: “Magnetocapacitance: a probe of spin dependent

potentials”

Nikoleta Theodoropoulou (Hebard)PhD: “Experimental studies of spin dependent phenomena

in Giant Magnetoresistance (GMR) and DiluteMagnetic Semiconductor (DMS) systems”

Xiaozhen Xiong (Ramond)PhD: “Noncommutative scalar field theories, solitons and

superalgebra”

Zhihong Chen (Rinzler)PhD: “Electron field induced transparency modulation in

single wall carbon nanotube ultra-thin films and amethod to separate metallic and semi-conductingnanotubes”

2002○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

2003○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

2004○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○



ALUMNI NEWS & UPDATESAlumnus Pledge

Alumnus Dr. J. Michael Harris(Class of '82) has generously pledged$12,000 in support of graduate educa-tion in theoretical physics. Mike, aSarasota internist in private practice,has a deep interest in particle physicsand cosmology.

In August 2004 he attended a threeday conference entitled "Einstein: ACelebration", at the Aspen Institute.The speaker list for the conference wasdiverse, from Nobel Laureate MurrayGell-Mann to novelist E. L. Doctor toour own Professor Pierre Ramond whowas an invited panelist.

Mike reports that "my visit to As-pen has reassured me that an underly-ing non-random theory is possible (noteveryone believes this, it seems). I amjust glad to be a part of a group who iswilling to pursue the answers. That isthe purpose of my investment."

Physics Graduate Elected To Distinguished AcademyProfessor Murray S. Daw received his Bachelors of Sci-

ence degree in physics from the University of Florida in 1976and his PhD from the California Institute of Technology in1981. He is currently the R.A. Bowen Professor of Physics atClemson University where he has been since 1994.

Professor Daw has recently been elected to the Ameri-can Academy of National Arts and Sciences. Daw sharesthis distinction with some of the world’s most influentialminds, including Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein andWinston Churchill.

Founded in 1780, the academy brings together scholars and leaders in everyfield of arts and sciences. The goal is to stimulate progress in international secu-rity, social policy, education and the humanities. Professor Daw joins 150 Nobellaureates and 50 pulitzer prize winners who are among the 4500 academy mem-bers.

Professor Daw uses theoretical physics to understand what makes metalsstrong to help make them stronger. His work, funded by NASA the Departmentof Energy and the National Science Foundation, could lead to new metal alloyscapable of enduring extreme stress and temperatures. Applications of his workinclude components of power-generating turbines and future generations of spacevehicles. - adapted with permission from Emily Keller,

Clemson University News Service [http://clemsonews.clemson.edu]

What are they doing now?

2001

Jungseek Hwang - [email protected] Associate, Department of Physics and

Astronomy, McMaster University

1993

Dohn A. Arms - [email protected] Physicist, Adv. Photon Source at

Argonne National Laboratory“I had a great time working with Liz Seiberling andYasu Takano as an undergraduate.”

1997

Benjamin Stillwell - [email protected] at the Advanced Photon Source/

Argonne National Lab and a graduatestudent at Northern Illinois University

“Thank you Dr. Adams and Dr. Ihas for being suchgreat mentors.”

1998

Chris Wickersham - [email protected] Engineer, CopperKey Technologies

1984Penny Haskins - [email protected], Radiation Technologies, Inc.Associate Director, Florida Space Grant

Consortium

1985Simon Phillpot - [email protected] of Materials Science and

Engineering, Univ. of Florida

1991Elaine Hunter - [email protected] Safety Specialist with Fred Meyer Stores

1992Leon W Couch III - [email protected] Professor of Music, Texas A&M

UniversityRecently earned his Doctorate of Musical Arts(DMA) and PhD from the Conservatory of Music inCincinnati.

This is a sample of some of our current entries on the UF Physics Alumni online survey!

ALUMNI SURVEYWhat are you doing?

Keep in touch with Physics. Visit our onlinesurvey and we’ll post your message on theweb and in the next issue of the FloridaPhysics News. Send a note and/or pictures to:

Florida Physics NewsDepartment of PhysicsUniversity of FloridaP.O. Box 118440Gainesville, FL 32611

Email: [email protected] Survey:http://www.phys.ufl.edu/alumni/

1995

Jorge Rodriguez - [email protected] Scientist with GriPhyN, Physics,

Univ. of Florida

Photo courtesy of Prof. Daw



The research work entitled, “Monolayer, Bilayer,Multilayers: Evolving Magnetic Behavior in Langmuir-Blodgett Films Containing a Two-Dimensional Iron-Nickel Cyanide Square Grid Network” was publishedin the May 5, 2003 Inorganic Chemistry Journal of theAmerican Chemical Society and also became the basisfor the cover art which appeared on the May 2003 cover.A collaborative effort between the Department ofChemistry, Physics and the Center for CondensedMatter Sciences, the research was funded by theNational Science Foundation and by the AmericanChemical Society.

Earlier this year, the authors were notified that thisartwork and research is featured on the InorganicChemistry Journal’s 2004 Calendar for the month ofSeptember.

The authors of this work are Jeffrey Culp, achemistry graduate student and Dr. Daniel Talham ofthe Department of Chemistry, and Ju-Hyun Park, aphysics graduate student, and Dr. Mark Meisel of theDepartment of Physics and the Center for CondensedMatter Sciences. Isa Benitez a graduate student in theDepartment of Chemistry was also a contributor to thecover artwork.

Reference: “Monolayer, Bilayer, Multilayers: EvolvingMagnetic Behavior in Langmuir-Blodgett Films Containinga Two-Dimensional Iron-Nickel Cyanide Square GridNetwork” Jeffrey T. Culp, Ju-Hyun Park, Mark W. Meisel,and Daniel R. Talham. Inorg. Chem.; 2003; 42(9) pp 2842 -2848; (Article) DOI: 10.1021/ic026158x

“Reproduced with permission from Inorg. Chem. 2003, 42(9) cover art - Copyright 2003 American Chemical Society.”



NONPROFIT ORGU.S. POSTAGE PAID

GAINESVILLE, FLPERMIT NO. 94

COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS & SCIENCESDEPARTMENT OF PHYSICSPO BOX 118440GAINESVILLE, FL 32611-8440

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