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Title: Visualizing Strongly Interacting Quantum Matter in Two-dimensional Materials

Abstract: 
The advent of two-dimensional materials and their stacks have revolutionized our ability to engineer novel states of matter, especially those with strong interaction and topological properties. The ability to visualize these states with the scanning tunneling microscopy and related techniques materials are also making it possible to study interacting systems from unprecedented microscopic perspective. In this talk, I will describe some of these experiments that include direct visualization of Wigner crystal phases and study of fractional quantum Hall states with high spatial and energy resolution. I will also describe how these experiments created the opportunity to probe single anyons and their novel properties.

Abstract: Planets are born in dusty, gas-rich disks around young stars, and the properties of planetary systems, including their architectures, atmospheres, and potential habitability, reflect the conditions in these birth environments. In this talk, I will show how facilities such as the ALMA radio telescope and James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are transforming our ability to probe the structure, composition, and chemistry of protoplanetary disks. These observations show that disks are not smooth and featureless, but instead are full of rings, gaps, and spirals that play a key role in shaping how and where planets form. I will also highlight our efforts to develop new methods to identify the chemical fingerprints of protoplanets still embedded in their natal disks. Finally, I will look ahead to how the next generation of wideband radio telescopes will open new frontiers in disk chemistry, planet formation, and molecular astrophysics

Learn best practices when applying to graduate schools

You are thinking about going to graduate school. But there you have many questions: 

• How to select a school? There are so many choices ...

• Schools are asking for a statement. What should I write? What should I include? What are they looking for? 

• I need three letters of recommendations. What do I do? I hardly know any professors. 

• My GPA is 3.6. What are my chances for admission to (xyz)? 

   

A Panel Will Provide Some Useful Perspectives

The panel will include:  

Our Director of Graduate Studies, Jorge Vignal, who will provide the perspective of the admissions committee; 

A faculty member who will provide the perspective of a letter of recommendation letter writer; 

A couple of recent admitted graduate students who will talk about their recent experience applying to graduate schools (and being accepted!).  

Register Here

Title: When a Symmetry Breaks

Abstract: What is common among a magnet, a halibut, a rack of laundry, cubes of ice, superconductor, and the Higgs boson? The concept of spontaneous symmetry breaking is a common theme for many natural phenomena. I'll describe the basic concept and its applications. In particular, the original concepts from Anderson, Nambu, Goldstone, and Higgs do not quite work in many systems that include a magnet on your fridge. I generalize the concept so that it is applicable to all known natural phenomena around us.

About the Speaker: Hitoshi Murayama is a High Energy Theorist, in 2026 he was awarded the Julius Lilienfeld Prize by the APS. This award is intended to recognize outstanding contributions to physics by a single individual who also has exceptional skills in lecturing to diverse audiences.

COSMIC CODA
A Science Documentary (Sort Of)

Some burning questions:  How do you build a machine to test Einstein's Relativity Theory?  Will you need a screwdriver?  What does an astrophysicist do exactly on any given Tuesday while searching the cosmos?  

In 1985, a clueless but educable filmmaker pursues these questions, skips 3 decades, then picks the story up again, 39 years later.  One of the most important discoveries in physics then, is told as it happens.

COSMIC CODA follows that remarkable journey across 39 years, bringing us along as one of the most important discoveries in physics unfolds. It’s a story about science, curiosity, persistence, and the wonderfully human people behind our quest to understand the universe.

Come watch this free screening, then stay for a Q&A with filmmaker Mary Jane Doherty (MJ).

Event Schedule 
6:00 PM — Doors Open
6:30 PM — COSMIC CODA Screening (87 minutes)
Following the film — Q&A with filmmaker Mary Jane Doherty (MJ)

Free Movie • Filmmaker Q&A • Everyone Welcome

Learn More About the Film Here

Title: Mapping the Quantum Limits of Classical Simulatability

Abstract: Quantum many-body systems are significantly more challenging to simulate than their classical counterparts. This is primarily due to the quantum sign problem, which prevents a reformulation in terms of stochastically sampling classical configurations. While many “sign problem-free” models have been discovered, which admit high-accuracy numerical simulations, many believe that certain phases of matter are intrinsically sign-problematic. In this talk, I present counterexamples to a number of no-go theorems by constructing sign problem-free models for phases of matter believed to be sign-problematic, and develop a revised perspective for how one should think about intrinsic sign problems.

Title: The interesting and unusual: Anomaly Detection in Astronomy’s Big Data Era

Abstract: Astrophysics has always made use of the unexpected, from unusual supernovae to the discovery of objects such as pulsars. As we enter an era dominated by data from facilities such as the Vera C Rubin Observatory, producing 30 Terabytes and 10 million alerts a night, this talk considers whether there’s still a place for anomalies, and how we might find them. Zooniverse co-founder Prof. Chris Lintott (University of Oxford/Gresham College) will use examples from nearly twenty years of citizen science to make the case for anomalies, including the most interesting star in the galaxy and an unusual light-echo, and then explore how modern machine learning can - and can’t - help us make these discoveries at Rubin scales.

Professor Chris Lintott is Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford and Gresham Professor of Astronomy in London. He is best known for his work on galaxy formation and citizen science, leading the Zooniverse project which has enabled millions of volunteers worldwide to contribute to scientific discoveries—from distant galaxies to exoplanets and beyond. Alongside his academic work, Chris has presented the BBC’s The Sky at Night TV program for more than 25 years, is an occasional stand-up comic, and is a passionate advocate for public engagement in science. He’s the author of several popular science books, including ‘Accidental Astronomy' and ‘The Crowd and the Cosmos’, and combines deep expertise with an accessible, often entertaining approach. When not exploring the universe, he enjoys cricket, real tennis, cooking, and walking his lurcher, Mr. Max.

Zoom Meeting

https://umn.zoom.us/s/93134319363

Host: Clem Pryke

It Came From Outer Space: Interstellar Objects and Solar System Stories.

In July 2025, a telescope in Chile detected an incoming object, known as 3I/ATLAS. This small comet likely formed more than seven billion years ago - before the Sun - in a star system in a very different part of the galaxy to that which we find ourselves in, and is only the third interstellar object yet detected passing through the Solar System. In this talk, Chris Lintott explores what these enigmatic objects can tell us and how they might have influenced the Earth’s formation, place them in the context of what we’re learning from the small bodies of the Solar System, including the latest results from the OSIRIS-REx mission to threatening near Earth object Bennu. The results taken together suggest a much more dynamic, and even chaotic, history for the Solar System than many would have expected. With the Vera Rubin Observatory, which will discover 3-5 million asteroids in the next year or two now coming on stream, we stand on the cusp of a revolution in what we know about our cosmic neighbourhood - and the interstellar objects that visit it.

Wednesday, September 16th, 2026, at 7 pm.

Bio: Professor Chris Lintott is Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford and Gresham Professor of Astronomy in London. He is best known for his work on galaxy formation and citizen science, leading the Zooniverse project which has enabled millions of volunteers worldwide to contribute to scientific discoveries—from distant galaxies to exoplanets and beyond. Alongside his academic work, Chris has presented the BBC’s The Sky at Night TV program for more than 25 years, is an occasional stand-up comic, and is a passionate advocate for public engagement in science. He’s the author of several popular science books, including ‘Accidental Astronomy' and ‘The Crowd and the Cosmos’, and combines deep expertise with an accessible, often entertaining approach. When not exploring the universe, he enjoys cricket, real tennis, cooking, and walking his lurcher, Mr. Max.

More information on the Kaufmanis public lecture and registration

Title: Quantum materials through the nano-lens: polariton waves, phase competition, and surprises beyond the diffraction limit

Abstract: Textbook optics holds that the stubborn “diffraction limit” limits the ultimate spatial resolution achievable by optical imaging.  However, I’ll show how marrying “conventional” optics with a sharp scanned probe circumvents this diffraction limit, empowering a nanometer-resolved optical spectroscopy mediated fundamentally by electromagnetic near-fields.  In this seminar, I review and celebrate the breakthrough of “nano-optics” into the energy, temperature, and spatial scales important to fundamental studies of quantum materials.  In this class of matter, intrinsic spatial inhomogeneity at scales well below the diffraction limit of light provides a feature, not a bug!  I’ll show how light waves can be coaxed to propagate in nanometer-scale volumes as polaritons, which we excite, manipulate, and even train into propagating backwards in quantum materials, as revealed through nano-optics of freestanding membranes [1].  I’ll also show how nano-optics allows mapping and quantifying the identity of electronic and structural phases of matter that both compete and coexist at nanometer scales thanks to strong interactions, and will be key to multifunctional technologies enabled by quantum materials [2].   Finally, I will show how nano-optics at cryogenic temperatures helps uncover the keys to stabilize superconductivity in a new family of quasi-two-dimensional “square planar”  nickel oxides.  I will share my perspectives for the future of nano-spectroscopy of quantum materials, a future that is simultaneously ultra-bright and ultra-small, and fundamentally transformative for metrology of complex matter at nanometer scales [3].