Research, teaching and public engagement in Physics at UW–Madison
By Daniel Heimsoth, Physics PhD student Simulating quantum systems on classical computers is currently a near-impossible task, as memory and computation time requirements scale exponentially with the size of the system. Quantum computers promise to solve this scalability issue, but there is just one problem: they can’t reliably do that right now because of exorbitant …
This story is modified from one published by University Communications Eight University of Wisconsin–Madison scholars — including physics professor Vernon Barger — have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society. Barger was elected for “seminal work in studying fundamental particles at colliders and leadership …
Wasikul Islam, a postdoc with Prof. Sau Lan Wu, is a winner of the 2024 Wisconsin Initiative for Science Literacy Award for Communicating Postdoctoral Research to the Public. For this award, postdocs write a short article that describes their research for the general public. Interested postdocs apply to submit an article, then receive guidelines and …
Earlier this year, physics professors Tulika Bose and Kyle Cranmer were selected to serve on the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel, or P5, a group of High Energy Physics experts that advises the Department of Energy Office of Science and the National Science Foundation’s Division of Physics on high energy and particle physics matters. P5 …
This story was originally posted by WIPAC IceCube collaborator and UW–Madison assistant professor of physics Lu Lu received a 2023 International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) Early Career Scientist Prize “for her contributions to the development of high energy neutrino astronomy in the PeV energy region.” Lu accepted the award on July 27 during …
This story, by Meghan Chua, was originally published by the Graduate School In 2012, scientists at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider announced they had observed the Higgs boson particle, verifying many of the theories of physics that rely on its existence. Since then, scientists have continued to search for the properties of the Higgs boson and …
UW–Madison physics professor Francis Halzen has been named a Vilas Research Professor. Created “for the advancement of learning,” Vilas Research Professorships are granted to faculty with proven research ability and unusual qualifications and promise. The recipients of the award have contributed significantly to the research mission of the university and are recognized both nationally and …
The Department of Physics is pleased to announce that Prof. Yang Bai has been promoted to the rank of full professor. “It is my pleasure and honor as Dean to approve Prof. Yang Bai’s promotion to Full Professor. His creativity and impressive breadth in particle physics research make him a leader not only on dark …
Neutrinos mix and transform from one flavor to the other. So do quarks. However, electron and its heavier cousins, the muon and the tau, seem to conserve their flavor identity. This accidental conservation of charged lepton flavor must have a profound reason, or low-levels of violation of that conservation principle should occur at high energy …
New UW–Madison assistant professor of physics Lu Lu’s research program combines the past with the future. Her research looks for sources of ultrahigh energy particles, which is done by analyzing data that has already been collected. As she says, “Maybe data is already talking to us, we just haven’t looked.” But she is also working …