News 2024
Research Week Roundup
SJSU rounded up its second annual Research Week, boasting a packed schedule and celebrating
a pending classification upgrade for the university to "R2" status according to the
Carnegie classification system. SJSU phys/astro students Jacob Garner and Mariana
Rojas-Montoya occupied prominent roles in a university promotional video commemorating the event.
College of Science Student Research Day
SJSU's College of Science held our 19th annual College of Science Student Research Day this past Friday, on April 19th. Over 250 student authors showed up to present and share their work, and to learn about all the activities going on the college (visit the SJSU College of Science Student Research Day program page [pdf] to see details). These included 24 student participants and eight faculty members in the Department of Physics and Astronomy.
Gina Quan Recognized as an Outstanding Referee by the American Physical Society
Assistant Professor Gina Quan was selected as one of 156 Outstanding Referees for 2024 by the editors of the American Physical Society’s (APS) Physical Review
journals. Nominations for this award are made based on the number, quality, and timeliness
of referee reports as collected in a database over the last 40 years. Congratulations,
Gina!
If You Can Dream It, You Can (Probably) 3D Print it
Associate Professor Tom Madura's 3D Printing class (offered last fall in 2023 for the first time as a new physics elective) has been featured in the spring 2024 issue of Washington Square Magazine. For the class, instead of a textbook, Madura had students purchase 3D printers, and projects included a chance to use satellite and NASA data to 3D print topographical maps of sections of the Earth and other planets, and by almost all accounts the class was a huge success. "The most surprising thing to me was how fast the students picked it up and how quickly they got into it," Madura told WSQ Magazine. "They were very enthusiastic. They really just dove right in."
Solar Eclipse 2024
2024 brought a historic solar eclipse to North America, with the path of totality crossing the homes of over 30 million people (total eclipse image above courtesy of Sara Thompson). SJSU students and faculty members alike traveled far and wide for the event. Here in the Bay Area, only a partial eclipse could be seen, but professors Aaron Romanowsky and Peter Beyersdorf, lecturer Olenka Hubicky, and staff member Carlos Morante still brought the event to life by setting up telescopes and sunspotters for students to observe the event here on campus. The event was featured on NBC Bay Area.
Alexi Musick Selected as a Grad Slam Finalist
Physics and Astronomy Master's student Alexi Musick has been selected as finalist in the 2024 SJSU Grad Slam competition. He along with the other finalists will be competing for cash prizes as they present their graduate research and ideas in three minute, one-slide talks in front of a live audience on April 16, 2024 at 2:00pm in the Hammer Theatre. Alexi's talk is titled "Mapping out Globular Clusters in Perseus Cluster Ultra-Diffuse Galaxies Using the Subaru Telescope." Congratulations, and best of luck!
A New Twist on Spin Torque Oscillators
Spin torque oscillators (STO) are small magnetic nanopillars that can exhibit interesting dynamical behavior in the presence of magnetic fields and/or applied spin current. In a new paper published in Physical Review B, SJSU master's student Shivam Kamboj and collaborators including his advisor Hilary Hurst have shown that a two-dimensional array of these STO nanopillars hosts robust, one-dimensional edge states, where the oscillators on one edge of the system start to activate (i.e. undergo magnetic precession) while the rest of the array remains inactive. These edge states are observed even when oscillators in the bulk are driven with the same spin current as those on the edge. This novel behavior stems from the underlying parity-time symmetry of the array, and it can be described by a non-Hermitian Hamilonian (i.e. one where energy is not conserved). Results indicate that two dimensional arrays of STOs may be useful to explore novel behavior in dissipative systems.
Hilary Hurst Wins Early Career Investigator Award
Assistant Professor Hilary Hurst has won a prestigious Early Career Investigator Award from the San José State University Research Foundation. Since joining SJSU, Dr. Hurst
has published seven articles in peer-reviewed journals, and she has brought a total
of $947K in research awards from the National Science Foundation to the campus. In
addition to her research accomplishments, Dr. Hurst was key in establishing the Master
of Science in Quantum Technology (MSQT) program at SJSU, which is a joint endeavor
between the College of Science and the Charles W. Davidson College of Engineering,
and she also spearheaded an NSF Research Traineeship grant, which helped to position
SJSU as a leader in quantum information science research and education. Dr. Hurst’s
work actively supports undergraduate research opportunities through mentorship, underpinning
her student researchers' academic and professional success in a groundbreaking field.
Congratulations, Hilary!
Catching Some Rays
Spring has sprung here in Northern California! Associate Professor Tom Madura held his Astronomy 117B class outside last week, on tower lawn as the spring semester has rolled into March. Students used a variety of telescopes and imaging devices to view sunspots (dark patches corresponding to regions of concentrated magnetic field on the sun's surface) and limb darkening (a term describing the reduction of solar irradiation at the edges of the visible disk).
Spotlight on the MS in Quantum Technology Program
The Department's new Master of Science (MS) in Quantum Technology program has been featured on the SJSU Newsroom blog, featuring interviews from Assistant Professor Hilary Hurst and graduate students James Saslow and Daniel Pilipovic. AY 2023-2024 marks the program's inagaural year, and the program is offered as a joint master's degree between the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the College of Science and the Department of Electrical Engineering in the College of Engineering. Applications for the second-year cohort are open now, with an April 1st deadline. Visit the SJSU Graduate Admissions page for more information.
Oppenheimer's Wake
Assistant Professor Curtis Asplund has had Op-Ed piece on the nuclear weapons and
the recent movie Oppenheimer published in The Progressive Magazine. His work details the persistent threat that nuclear weapons pose and the advocacy
needed to counter that threat.
APS March Meeting
SJSU students, faculty members, and postdocs made a strong showing at the 2024 American Physical Society (APS) March Meeting. The meeting this year was held in Minneapolis, MN, draws over 13,000 physicists annually, and focuses on topics including condensed matter, quantum physics, materials science, and more. SJSU undergraduates Takuto Ueda and Mariana Rojas-Montoya presented talks on laser-scanning microscopy and optical interferometry. Master's student Zak Espley presented a talk on qubit arrays. Postdoc Eduardo Ibarra-García-Padilla presented a talk on the Fermi-Hubbard model. Professor Ehsan Khatami presented a talk on Nagaoka polarons. And master's student Imran Bashir and assistant professor Christopher Smallwood came along for the ride.
SU(N) Spots
Postdoctoral researcher Eduardo Ibarra-García-Padilla and collaborators have made headway toward solving difficult problems in condensed matter physics by developing and characterizing a new kind of quantum simulator.
In a paper that was published on February 21st in Physical Review Letters and also featured in Physics Magazine, Ibarra-García-Padilla and colleagues have probed an ultracold ensemble of ytterbium atoms, and they have compared their experimental results to numerical methods such as determinantal quantum Monte Carlo (DQMC) and numerical linked cluster expansion (NLCE) techniques to learn about the SU(N) Fermi-Hubbard Model. Models of this type, in turn, have proven notoriously difficult to analytically solve, but they are expected to have relevance for systems ranging from high-temperature superconductors to exotic magnets.
The work was done in collaboration with researchers at Rice University, UC Davis, and also LMU München during 2022-2023. Congratulations Eduardo!
ISB's Upper Floors are Open for Business
Two of the Department's smaller classes this semester (PHYS 110B and 250) have been
testing the waters of meeting in the brand new upper-floor classrooms of the recently
fully-opened Interdisciplinary Science Building (ISB). These classrooms "belong" to
the College of Professional and Global Education, but College of Science instructors
have gotten permission to use the classrooms when they would otherwise be empty. There
are whiteboards in front and back, and a dedicated desktop computer with a touch screen,
projector, Zoom access, and webcams, and the view is spectacular!
NSF Funding for the Access Network
Assistant Professors Gina Quan and Brianne Gutmann have received $57k from the National
Science Foundation as part of grant entitled "Collaborative Research: Evaluating Access:
How a Multi-Institutional Network Promotes Equity and Cultural Change through Expanding
Student Voice." The award amount, consisting of $895k in total, has been shared across
five institutions. It continues Quan and Gutmann's work with the Access Network, a research-practice community of students, faculty, and staff across the country
working toward a more diverse, equitable, inclusive, and accessible STEM community.
Brianne Gutmann Elected as APS-AAPT Member-at-Large
Assistant Professor Brianne Gutmann has been elected as an APS-AAPT Member-at-Large.
The position was granted as an internal election within the APS Forum on Education.
The American Physical Society (APS) is the preeminent professional organization for
physicists in the United States, and is engaged in widespread conference organization
and facilitation. It also oversees the publication of important journals in physics
including Physical Review Letters. The American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT)
is the nation's most prominent educationally oriented professional organization in
physics. Congratulations, Dr. Gutmann!
Eduardo Ibarra Garcia Padilla invited to Chair an APS March Meeting Session
A session at the March Meeting of the American Physical Society this year features
invited speakers from the leading research groups in the world studying the behavior
of atoms cooled to temperatures one billion times colder than outer space. These experiments
can be used to emulate exotic superconductors, magnetic systems, and topological materials.
Dr. Eduardo Ibarra Garcia Padilla, a SJSU Postdoctoral Scholar, is a member of the
group of Prof. Ehsan Khatami, and is involved in quantum simulation and machine learning
studies of cold atoms. He has been invited to chair the session.
