College of Science and Technology
PHYSICS UPDATE SUMMER 2019
Chair’s Message It pleases me to reflect on the accomplishments of the Physics Department. I am now in the middle of my sixth year at Temple University, and the end of my fourth year as department chair. We’ve had many successes, and have overcome many obstacles, all thanks to our outstanding faculty, talented students and excellent staff. The academic promise of our students continues to be nationally recognized. One graduating senior has won a Knight-Hennessy Scholarship to Stanford University, and an undergraduate physics major is our second Goldwater Scholar in as many years. A new PhD graduate was awarded a Graduate Student Research opportunity from the U.S. Department of Energy. Our faculty continue their achievements. Andreas Metz was promoted to professor, John Noel was promoted to associate professor, and Matthew Newby, professor of instruction, won the CST Distinguished Teaching Award. Faculty research was featured in high-profile venues, and external research funding is strong. We are implementing key recommendations of the External Visiting Committee report from last year. Most important so far is the modernization of our Physics Graduate Program led by John Perdew, Laura H. Carnell Professor of Physics and Chemistry. We are working to address other recommendations of the report as well. Please get in touch if you would like to visit our department, meet our faculty and students or tour our facilities. I would be honored to show you around.
Jim Napolitano Professor and Chair
phys.temple.edu
Physics students earn national recognition Temple’s second Goldwater Scholarship Mitchell Young, a rising junior physics and mechanical engineering double major, has become the second Temple University student in as many years— and the second student ever—to win a prestigious Barry Goldwater Scholarship. The Goldwater Scholarship is the most prestigious STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) award for undergraduates. Ruth Ost, the senior director of the Temple University Honors Program, of which Young is a member, calls it “the Rhodes Scholarship of STEM.” Young was one of just 496 U.S. college students selected for the scholarship this year from a pool of over 5,000 college sophomores and juniors nominated by 443 academic institutions. “It was a bit shocking when I first learned about it,” says Mitchell, who is from Springfield, Delaware County, Pennsylvania. “Now it’s become something I am very proud to have accomplished.”
1st Temple Knight-Hennessy Scholar at Stanford Marcus Forst, BA ’19, a physics major, is the first Temple University student to be named a Knight-Hennessy Scholar. The competitive scholarship program awards financial support for the full cost of attendance for three years of graduate education at Stanford University.
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Knight-Hennessy Scholar
New PhD wins Argonne National Laboratory fellowship
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Daniel Trainer, PhD ’19, spent last summer as a U.S. Department of Energy Science Graduate Research Program fellow at the department’s Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Illinois. Working with Saw Wai Hla, the leader of the laboratory’s Quantum and Energy Materials Group, Trainer synthesized and studied samples consisting of magnetic and molecular films by using a synchrotron X-ray scanning tunneling microscope (SX-STM) at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) to characterize the electronic properties or these films. “I felt very fortunate to be able to immerse myself in a national lab like Argonne,” says Trainer, who is pursuing a postdoctoral fellowship. “The facilities, the people that work there and the research they are conducting is all incredible.”
“I am really excited to be a part of the prestigious Knight-Hennessy program and help shape what it will look like for years to come,” said Forst, who will pursue a PhD in applied physics. His path to the Knight-Hennessy Scholarship required perseverance. A 2015 diagnosis of T-cell lymphoblastic lymphoma kept him from completing coursework for close to a year and required three-anda-half years of chemotherapy. “I’ve never felt so proud to be from Temple,” says Forst, who also was Temple’s first Goldwater Scholar. “I realized in February, while meeting all of these finalists from Harvard, MIT, Oxford, Cambridge and Princeton, that being from Temple gave me a special perspective. Being the first Knight-Hennessy Scholar from Temple is something I’ll feel proud of for the rest of my life.”
Symposium in China honors John Perdew
Trainer’s research was related to investigations he conducted since 2014 as research assistant in both Professor Maria Iavarone’s Scanning Probe Group and Professor Xiaoxing Xi ‘s Synthesis Group.
PhD candidate researching the rubidium dimer structure and dynamics “In quantum mechanics, the wave function is a sort of mystical thing,” says PhD candidate
Phillip Arndt. Working with Professor A. Marjatta Lyyra and Research Assistant Professor Ergin Ahmed, Arndt has been able to observe the reflection structure of wave functions in bound-free spectra by using laser spectroscopy to identify energy levels in quantum systems—particularly the excited electronic states of the rubidium dimer, a pair of rubidium atoms composing a simple molecule. Arndt, who also is a teaching assistant for optics and introductory physics classes, is now working to create a lab for undergraduates that will enable them to observe the bound-free fluorescence spectra themselves. In fact, Arndt— who ultimately wants to become a laser engineer—has already helped develop undergraduate experiments that allow students to find diatomic rovibrational constants from simple spectra from nitrogen discharge tubes.
A symposium on materials theory and computation in X’ian, China, last summer honored Carnell Professor John Perdew. The symposium was organized by Bing Xiao, a professor of material science at Xi’an Jiaotong University, who earned his PhD in physics from Temple in 2014 with Perdew as his advisor.
“It was gratifying and enjoyable, and I appreciate the fact that so many people went to so much trouble for my symposium,” says Perdew, the director of Temple’s Energy Frontier Research Center, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. “A lot of those in attendance were current or former Temple faculty or students.”
Between June 27 to July 1, about 40 participants heard 30 presentations, including one from Perdew on his seminal research on the Hohenberg-Kohn-Sham density-functional theory of electronic structure.
These included Associate Professor Xifan Wu, assistant professors Adrienn Ruzsinszky and Qimin Yan, and former Temple research assistant professors or postdocs Jianwei Sun, Jeb Bates and Zenghui Yang, plus some of the leading experts in materials theory.
Research elucidates the origin of spin in the proton A major new finding about the fundamental structure of all matter was recently published by a group of researchers that includes a Temple University physicist and two former Temple graduate students. Appearing in March as a rapid communication in the journal Physical Review D, the research stems from an analysis of data produced by the STAR experiment conducted at the Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) on Long Island in polarized proton-proton collisions. The new data is derived from the STAR (Solenoidal Tracker At RHIC) experiment that added detail—and complexity—to an intriguing puzzle that scientists have been pondering: How the building blocks that make up a proton effect its spin (both protons and neutrons form the center of each atom). “After multiple years of experimental work at RHIC, this exciting new result provides a substantially deeper understanding of fundamental quantum physics questions regarding how quantum fluctuations affect the dynamics of quarks inside the proton,” says Professor Bernd Surrow, vice chair of the Temple Physics Department. In a field dominated by males, Surrow notes that two women who formerly were graduate students in his laboratory—Amani Kraishan and Devika Gunarathne—were two of the three graduate students who analyzed the data that led to the publication of the research, and continue in the field. Kraishan is currently an adjunct professor both in Temple’s Physics Department and at Al-Hussein Bin Talal University in Jordan. She continues to collaborate with the Temple group. The research was funded by an ongoing grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, which featured the research on its Office of Science website.
Solving a 200-year-old mystery Associate Professor Xifan Wu and Roberto Car, a Princeton University professor, recently solved a 200-year-old mystery: why do positive hydronium ions diffuse almost twice as fast in water as negative hydroxide ions? To solve the riddle, Wu told the journal Chemistry World, “We set up a state-of-the art theoretical scheme in which the proton transfer effects of the water ions could be accurately modeled and understood.” The researchers employed molecular dynamics based on density functional theory—with corrections for non-local van der Walls interactions and self-interaction in the electronic ground state. Their conclusion: hydronium diffuses faster in water because its structure of three hydrogen bonds usually transfers protons in concerted double and triple jumps. By comparison, the researchers determined that hydroxide diffuses more slowly because its stabilized, hyper-coordinated structure, which typically contains four bonds, prefers single proton jumps. The study was published last year in Nature Chemistry.
FACULTY NEWS Andreas Metz was promoted to professor John Noel was promoted to associate professor of instruction Dean’s Distinguished Teaching Award:
• Matthew Newby, professor of instruction
NEW EXTERNAL RESEARCH GRANTS Martha Constantinou • A New Era for Lattice QCD: Unveiling the Mysteries of a Proton, NSF
Maria Iavarone • Scanning Tunneling Spectroscopy and RF Investigations of Effect of Strong Currents on Superconducting Properties and Surface Resistance of High Performance Materials for Accelerator Cavities, NSF • Spectroscopic Study of the Coupling Effect between the Two Gaps of Magnesium Diboride on its RF Properties, Office of Science/DOE
Svetlana Kotochigova • Effect of Conical Intersections on Chemical Reactivity of Ultra-cold Molecules in Optical Potentials, Department of the Army
C. J. Martoff • Direct Search for Dark Matter with Underground Argon at LNGS, NSF • Search for Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter with K-Capture Nuclear Decay in an Atom Trap, W. M. Keck Foundation
Zein-Eddine Meziani • Nuclear Research Using the Electromagnetic Probe, DOE
Adrienn Ruzsinszky • FLO-SIC: Efficient Density Functional Theory Calculations without Self-Interaction, DOE
Bernd Surrow • Design and Assembly of Fast and Light-Weight Barrel Forward Prototype Tracking Detector, Brookhaven National Laboratory • Studies on the Structure and Dynamics of Matter at JLab and RHIC, DOE
Jianmin Tao • Adsorption of Molecules, Clusters, and Layered Materials on Surfaces, U.S. Department of Energy
Rongia Tao • Mass Spectroscopy Measurement for Ionized Air by Various Isotopes and Other Gas Ionizers, Naval Research Laboratory
Xiaoxing Xi • Metamaterial Superconductors, Towson University
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Revised PhD curriculum enables earlier research A revised PhD curriculum will enable physics doctoral candidates to begin research earlier. A faculty committee headed by Carnell Professor John Perdew and an external review committee comprised of faculty from other institutions agreed on the curriculum changes. Beginning this fall, changes include: • reducing required credits from 42 to 38 • including two electives as part of 38 hours • research in 1 or 2 labs during summers following student’s first 2 years “The intent of these changes is to get our graduate students into research earlier, which is more in line with what other U.S. institutions offer,” says Perdew. “Exploring research opportunities during their first two summers should allow them to get a better idea of the research they want to do for their dissertation. In addition, the changes increase their chances of completing doctorates in five or six years.”
Undergrad Gregory Penn conducting research in Singapore For two months, until late July, rising junior Gregory Penn will be participating in the prestigious Singapore Optics Research Program. He will be working with Associate Professor Rainer Dumke’s group in the Center for Quantum Technologies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Dumke investigates hybridizing quantum systems by coupling atom chips with solid state superconductors. “I am excited about learning a new field of physics that I haven’t had much exposure to,” says Penn.
Optical spectrum research could have photovoltaics applications Since her arrival at Temple in 2013, Adrienn Ruzsinszky,
the Selma Lee Bloch Brown Assistant Professor of Physics, has focused on electronic structural theory with a combination of density functional theory and non-local many body electron theory. While a post-doctoral fellow at Tulane University, the dual U.S.-Hungary citizen was advised by John Perdew, a Carnell Professor who also arrived at Temple six years ago. Ruzsinszky is part of the Center for Complex Materials from First Principles (CCM), one of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Frontier Research Centers, which Perdew leads. Ruzsinszky’s research has received prestigious support, including, in 2016, both a three-year Humboldt Fellowship for Experienced Researchers and a five-year NSF CAREER Award. Lately, she has been developing a computationally efficient and accurate correction to some flaws in random phase approximation (RPA), a condensed matter and nuclear physics approximation method. Her optical spectrum research could have photovoltaics applications. “One of the potential applications,” she says, “is the computation of the electronic excitations and the excitonic spectra of semiconductors and insulators, which is of practical importance for the computation design of solar cell materials.”