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IAP 2003 Activity


Physics Lectures for the General MIT Community
Professor Edward Farhi
No enrollment limit, no advance sign up
Participants welcome at individual sessions (series)

A series of physics lectures, scheduled dates and times appear below. Titles to be announced; please continue to refer to this page for lecture updates.
Web: http://websis.mit.edu/iap/ns8.html
Contact: Professor Edward Farhi, 6-309, 253-4871, farhi@MIT.EDU
Sponsor: Physics

What You Could Do With a Quantum Computer If You Had One
Edward Farhi
If a big enough quantum computer is ever built it could do things that no ordinary computer could ever do. I will explain the power of quantum computers to solve problems faster than ordinary computers.
Mon Jan 6, 12:30-01:30pm, 6-120

Cosmic Inflation and the Accelerating Universe
Alan Guth
Inflationary cosmology offers possible explanations for many features of our universe, including its uniformity, its mass density, and the faint ripples that are now being observed in the cosmic background radiation. The recently discovered acceleration of the universe has radically changed some aspects of our theories, but has helped to confirm the basic predictions of inflation.
Wed Jan 8, 12:30-01:30pm, 6-120

Teaching Feynman's Tools: The Dispersion of Feynman Diagrams in Postwar Physics
David Kaiser
Feynman diagrams have revolutionized nearly every aspect of theoretical physics since the middle of the 20th century. By following how young physicists learned about the new techniques from the late 1940s through the 1960s, broader changes in the infrastructure and intellectual development of postwar physics come into focus. The diagrams' history thus helps us to make sense of what it was like to become a young theoretical physicist in the decades after World War II.
Fri Jan 10, 12:30-01:30pm, 6-120

Detection of Gravitational Waves With Interferometers
Nergis Mavalvala
Observatories worldwide are coming on the air to launch an era of astrophysics with gravitational waves. I will describe the principles of gravitational wave generation and detection.
Mon Jan 13, 12:30-01:30pm, 6-120

String Theory and Black Holes
Barton Zwiebach
Black holes have temperature and radiate. These facts, hard to understand within the context of Einstein's theory of General Relativity, have a surprisingly natural explanation in String Theory.
Wed Jan 15, 12:30-01:30pm, 6-120

Scanning Tunneling Microscopy: A Tool for Atomic Scale Measurement and Manipulation
Eric Hudson
As technology drives electronics towards nanoelectronics, where wires are a few atoms wide and transistors are sensitive to single electrons, physicists must have a tool to investigate the new phenomena that arise in this regime. The Scanning Tunneling Microscope is one such tool, and in this talk I will highlight its ability to image and move atoms, and discuss some results of studies of individual atomic impurities in high temperature superconductors.
Wed Jan 22, 12:30-01:30pm, Topic TBA

How to Do an Experiment in Space
Ulrich Becker
Doing an experiment is not easy -- especially in space. But it is great fun to be challenged by ABC = Alligators, Bureaucracy, Cosmic conditions. An example is given.
Fri Jan 24, 12:30-01:30pm, 6-120

An Intriguing Transition in Quantum Dots
Ray Ashoori
About 30 years ago, experimenters learned how to place electrons on the surface of liquid helium. They found evidence that these electrons, spaced about a micron apart, are localized in a hexagonally ordered crystal. In semiconductors, experimenters can also produce such two-dimensional electron gases. However, the spacing between electrons is much smaller (about 0.01 micron), and the electrons are instead delocalized in a "quantum fluid". In laterally confined two-dimensional systems (quantum dots), we can produce two-dimensional systems of variable density, and we have observed striking signatures of such a localization to delocalization transition as we increase the electron density.
Mon Jan 27, 12:30-01:30pm, 6-120
Latest update: 10-Jan-2003


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