Events

In addition to the College of Science and Engineering Commencement Ceremony, academic departments host smaller events for their graduates. These are invitation-only events.

Abstract: Active systems are driven out of equilibrium by exchanging energy and momentum with their environment. This endows them with anomalous mechanical properties which leads to rich phenomena when active fluids are in contact with boundaries, inclusions, or disordered potentials. Indeed, studies of the mechanical pressure of active fluids and of the dynamics of passive tracers have shown that active systems impact their environment in non-trivial ways, for example, by propelling and rotating anisotropic inclusions. Conversely, the long-ranged density and current modulations induced by localized obstacles show how the environment can have a far-reaching impact on active fluids. This is best exemplified by the propensity of bulk and boundary disorder to destroy bulk phase separation in active matter, showing active systems to be much more sensitive to their surroundings than passive ones.

Register to the 2025 Physics Force Winter Shows in Rochester. This year's shows are better than ever, with live fire, lightning, a crushing barrel, and a performer falling from a tower! Don't miss out on having fun with physics!

The performances take place at the Rochester Mayo Civic Center May 8th through May 9th.

Thursday, May 8th

• 10:00 AM
• 12:30 PM

Friday, May 9th

• 10:00 AM
• 12:30 PM
• 7:00PM

Abstract: 

The public viewing is scheduled every Friday during the University's Fall and Spring semesters. Spring 2025 events will run from January 24th to April 25th, except March 14th and March 21st. A presentation will be given at each event regardless of the weather, so we will always have something for you. Observing will follow the presentation if the weather is acceptable (clear with wind chill above -15° F). Click here for the schedule. For other questions, please email the outreach coordinator at [email protected].

The presentation begins at 8:00pm in the Tate Laboratory of Physics, room B50. After the presentation, we move up to Tate 510 where we can access the telescopes on the roof deck and the historic 10.5" refractor in the dome. Telescope observing usually begins around 8:30pm.

Abstract: Large telescopes like Keck and the James Webb Space Telescope can spatially separate gas-giant exoplanets from the glare of their bright host stars.  The technologies needed to image these exoplanets are complex, and only a small number of exoplanets have been imaged.  However, the planets that have been imaged are amenable to multi-band photometry and spectroscopy, providing an opportunity for detailed characterization of planetary processes.  I will share some early results from the James Webb Space Telescope, demonstrating the observatory’s ability to image new types of exoplanets, detect new molecules, and even detect weather-driven variability.   Finally, I will describe new Keck instrumentation that will obtain higher angular resolution and higher spectral resolution images of exoplanets.

The public viewing is scheduled every Friday during the University's Fall and Spring semesters. Spring 2025 events will run from January 24th to April 25th, except March 14th and March 21st. A presentation will be given at each event regardless of the weather, so we will always have something for you. Observing will follow the presentation if the weather is acceptable (clear with wind chill above -15° F). Click here for the schedule. For other questions, please email the outreach coordinator at [email protected].

The presentation begins at 8:00pm in the Tate Laboratory of Physics, room B50. After the presentation, we move up to Tate 510 where we can access the telescopes on the roof deck and the historic 10.5" refractor in the dome. Telescope observing usually begins around 8:30pm.

Abstract: An insulating phase was experimentally found to show 2e-Little-Parks oscillations suggesting the existence of a phase coherence in some insulating systems. I will try to give a theoretical explanation of this phenomenon.                                                                                                
We studied a mechanism of spin-triplet odd-frequency superconducting pairing between electrons in strongly disordered conductors. We show that mixing the conventional superconducting fluctuations above the transition temperature or critical magnetic field together with the spin part of repulsive Coulomb interaction results in an effective interaction which mediates the s-wave spin-triplet odd-frequency pairing in the particle-particle (Cooper) channel. Diffusion of electrons lead to the pronounced frequency dependence of the effective interaction required for this type of pairing. Thus, regular spin-singlet superconducting state in strongly disordered films may be accompanied by an intermediate phase characterized by spin-triplet odd- frequency pairing between fermions. We show that the transition into this phase may occur through the first order phase transition. Therefore, domains with different spin projection of the spin-triplet order parameter are expected to occur.        

                                                                      
We argue that the spin-triplet odd-frequency paired phase corresponds to the insulating state experimentally found in highly disordered films of InO and TiN. These materials show a superconducting-insulator transition as a function of magnetic field when the superconductivity is suppressed. At even higher magnetic field a reentrance into highly resistive conducting state occurs. The insulating phase is experimentally found to show 2e-Little-Parks oscillations suggesting the existence of a phase coherence in this state.

An ultimate picture for the description of the exotic insulating behavior is as follows: Domains with different spin polarization of the spin-triplet odd-frequency pairing block the supercurrent, while phase coherence still results in the 2e-Little-Parks oscillations. Absence of a bulk supercurrent makes the system to be an insulator (a sort of super-insulator) at low temperatures.
The work was performed in collaboration with Dr. Vladimir Zyuzin, now at the Landau Institute.