Groups

Nano-Optics Group Creates Record-Breaking Ultrafast Optical Microscope

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Feb 2016 17:26:33 +0000

Nano-Optics Group Creates Record-Breaking Ultrafast Optical Microscope Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 02/22/2016 - 10:26

Congratulations to the Nano-Optics Group, led by Professor Markus Raschke, who has announced a record-breaking new optical microscope that can capture images at both the ultrafast and the nano-scale. The paper describing the discovery appeared in the February 8 edition of Nature Nanotechnology, and is available online.

The Nano-Optics Group created an ultrafast optical microscope enabled by a new technique that allowed for super-focusing light to deep-subwavelength dimensions using a tiny conical nano-tip. Then combining near-field microscopy with ultrafast coherent laser spectroscopy images of 10 nanometer spatial and <5 femtosecond (fs) time resolution could be obtained. A femtosecond is equal one quadrillionth, or one millionth of one billionth, of a second; a nanometer is one billionth of a meter.

The ultrafast microscope thus allows researchers to capture real-time, slow motion images of light interacting with electrons in materials, as they demonstrated in nano-structures of thin gold films.

"This is the first time anyone has been able to probe matter on its natural time and length scale," physics Professor Markus Raschke said. “We imaged and measured the motions of electrons in real space and time, and we were able to make it into a movie to help us better understand the fundamental physical processes in complex materials.”

Capturing these images will help researchers better understand the most basic physical principles of functional materials—including quantum materials, energy conversion materials, and basic biological processes such as photosynthesis—which are all based on the transfer of electrons and ions from molecule to molecule.

“Our study brings nanoscale microscopy to the next level, with the ability to capture detailed images evolving on extremely fast time scales,” says Vasily Kravtsov, a CU-��«��Ƶ graduate student in physics and first author of the paper.

The team used a special technique to focus extraordinarily short laser pulses into a only nanometer size focus spot based on a trick of decreasing the speed of light as its propagates along a conical tip towards its apex. This leads to a strong optical field confinement in the nano-focus and the efficient generation of nonlinear optical radiation. An image is then generated when the tip is scanned in very close proximity to the sample while simultaneously controlling the details of the exciting lasers pulses with extreme single optical cycle precision.

This new technique directly overcomes several previous limitations in optical microscopy not only in spatial and time resolution, but also in sensitivity and spectroscopic specificity with respect to the sample properties to be investigated.

“This work expands the reach of optical microscopes into completely new dimension,” Raschke said. “Using this technique, researchers can image the elementary processes in materials ranging from battery electrodes to solar cells, helping to improve their efficiency and lifetime.”

Unlike electron microscope approaches, the new technique does not require vacuum techniques and is applicable under a wide range of sample conditions making it particularly promising for studying ultrafast processes like charge and energy transport in soft matter, including biological materials.

Other co-authors on the Nature Nanotechnology paper include CU-��«��Ƶ postdoctoral researcher Ronald Ulbricht and former CU-��«��Ƶ postdoctoral researcher Joanna Atkin, now a faculty member at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

The study was funded in part by the National Science Foundation and with support from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Off

Traditional

White

Science as art: the colorful world of liquid crystals on display at Gemmill Library

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Feb 2016 23:15:01 +0000

Science as art: the colorful world of liquid crystals on display at Gemmill Library Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 02/01/2016 - 16:15

If you visit CU’s L.H. Gemmill Library of Engineering, Mathematics and Physics this semester, one of the first things you are likely to see is a collection of colorful, eye-catching images of liquid crystals created by researchers in the Soft Materials Research Center, based in the Department of Physics.

When the call for art exhibits grounded in science went out from the library last summer, Christine Morrow, the Center's Education and Outreach Director, immediately recognized an exciting opportunity to create an educational exhibit centered around liquid crystal images obtained by Center scientists in the course of their research. The microscopic textures of liquid crystals viewed in polarized light are colorful and visually appealing, and she realized that a set of liquid crystal images would make a striking display that could engage and intrigue library patrons. "The idea of our exhibit is to get people's attention, to make them curious about where these gorgeous images come from, and to show them how scientific researchers think and feel."

The Gemmill Library has featured displays of student and faculty research, art and other works in engineering and the applied sciences since 2014. Scientific information resulting from academic research is traditionally shared in many ways, including lectures and peer-reviewed papers. However, these communications are often couched in language that is technical and directed to a specialized audience. The Stairwell Gallery, created in the belief that science and engineering students are inspired by relevant, accessible art, encourages creativity, collaboration and community and provides an alternative, informal venue for learning about science.

The liquid crystal exhibit was created over several months by Center students, faculty, and staff. Morrow views the gallery project both as an ideal opportunity to use images obtained in the laboratory to showcase Center research, and as a way of training Center graduate students in how to communicate science-related topics to non-experts. The student participants were also encouraged to compose vignettes that communicate their own perspectives of what it is like to conduct leading-edge, academic research. These personal reflections form part of the display in the gallery.

Morrow suggests that the exhibit can be enjoyed at many levels. "If people are attracted by the images and then make the connection that this is the same stuff used in their TVs and smart phone displays, this is already an achievement. If they learn anything more by reading the image captions, or come away with some insight into what it means to be a researcher, this is a bonus."

The Soft Materials Research Center is funded by the National Science Foundation to pursue new, inter-disciplinary science and applications of soft materials. The liquid crystal exhibit will be on display in the Gemmill Library of Engineering, Mathematics and Physics through the end of the spring semester.

Contact:
Joe Maclennan

Off

Traditional

White

CU Physics team shares in 2016 Breakthrough Prize for Fundamental Physics

Anonymous — Tue, 10 Nov 2015 01:50:55 +0000

CU Physics team shares in 2016 Breakthrough Prize for Fundamental Physics Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/09/2015 - 18:50

The 2016 Breakthrough Prize for Fundamental Physics was awarded November 8, 2015 for the discovery and study of neutrino oscillations, revealing a new frontier beyond the standard model of high energy particle physics. The $3M Prize is shared among the all of the scientific collaborators including CU-Physics Professors Eric D. Zimmerman and Alysia Marino, as well as CU postdoctoral researchers Robert Johnson and Stephen Coleman, and graduate students Scott Johnson, Andrew Missert, and Tianlu Yuan.

Neutrinos are the most elusive of all of the fundamental particles that make up the universe. They are produced in many nuclear reactions. Since they interact so weakly with other matter, they can travel all the way through the sun or the earth. Because of this, very large underground detectors have been built to catch and study these elusive particles. The CU team works at T2K in Japan, which generates an intense beam of muon neutrinos on the east coast of Japan using a device built at CU, and shoots them through the earth aimed at the Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector deep inside a mountain 180 miles away on the other side of Japan. Professor Marino was also a team member in the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO), one of the other collaborations cited in the prize. The Breakthrough Prize was awarded for the observation that muon neutrinos can oscillate into electron neutrinos by the time they reach the detector.

The Breakthrough Prize ceremony was broadcast live from the NASA Ames Research Center in California on Sunday. A one-hour version of the broadcast is scheduled for November 29. The Breakthrough Prizes were established in 2012 to recognize achievements in three fields:
Fundamental Physics, Life Sciences and Mathematics. Laureates receive $3 million each in prizemoney, making the Breakthrough Prizes the largest scientific awards in the world.

Off

Traditional

White

CU Physicists help reveal secrets of the "perfect fluid" formed in Big Bang

Anonymous — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 06:34:43 +0000

CU Physicists help reveal secrets of the "perfect fluid" formed in Big Bang Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 07/17/2015 - 00:34

The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory has succeeded in creating distinct droplets of the quark-gluon plasma, the material that made up the Universe during the very first moments of the Big Bang. "These experiments are revealing the key elements required for creating quark-gluon plasma," said CU physics professor Jamie Nagle, co-spokesperson for the PHENIX experiment at RHIC.

In 2005, scientists at RHIC (pictured right) observed that gold-gold nuclear collisions created a quark-gluon plasma that acts like a "perfect fluid" which flows nearly without resistance. This experiment collides small nuclei, such as deuterium and helium, with gold nuclei, producing distinct droplets of the quark-gluon plasma in order to measure the properties of the perfect fluid. "RHIC is the only accelerator in the world where we can perform such a tightly controlled experiment, colliding particles made of one, two, and three components with the same larger nucleus, gold, all at the same energy," said Nagle. "This is the way to do good basic science—change just one thing at a time, the number of particles in the ion smashing into the gold nucleus, to test for these interesting geometrical effects."

The analysis of the events (pictured right) reveals that the helium-gold collisions exhibit a triangular pattern of flow that is consistent with the creation of three tiny droplets of quark-gluon plasma.

Nagle and physics assistant professor Paul Romatschke (pictured left) proposed this experiment in 2014. Romatschke's theoretical calculation correctly described the behavior of the droplets in the experiment. "The fact that our predictions were confirmed by experiment seems to suggest that hydrodynamic theory is much more robust than was thought just a few years ago. This is very gratifying," said Romatschke.

"This is a pretty definitive measurement," Nagle said. "We are really engineering different shapes of the quark-gluon plasma to manipulate it and see how it behaves.”

View the BNL Press Release

Off

Traditional

White

NASA Selects CU ��«��Ƶ's SUrface Dust Analyzer Instrument for Europa Mission

Anonymous — Thu, 28 May 2015 23:59:54 +0000

NASA Selects CU ��«��Ƶ's SUrface Dust Analyzer Instrument for Europa Mission Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 05/28/2015 - 17:59

Congratulations to Physics Professors and Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics fellow Sascha Kempf, whose proposal for a SUrface Dust Analyzer (SUDA) instrument was selected by NASA to join the upcoming landmark mission to Jupiter's moon, Europa. NASA announced their selection on Tuesday, May 26th. According to NASA, the Europa Mission will investigate whether the icy moon could possibly harbor elements which support life. NASA selected nine scientific instrument proposals that will investigate the moon's magnetic field, the thickness of the moon's icy shell, the thermal makeup of the moon, and many other factors which will point to the possibility of liquid water which may indicate the precursors of life on Europa.

SUDA was one of nine proposals selected by NASA, from 33 proposals from around the world.

The CU-��«��Ƶ Team will consist of Sascha Kempf as Principal investigator, and will include physics Professor and LASP fellow Mihaly Horanyi (serving as Co-Investigator), and aerospace engineering Assistant Professor Zoltan Sternovsky. The instrument will be designed and built at LASP.

The instrument, known as SUDA, will directly measure the composition of solid particles released from Europa’s surface due to meteoroid bombardment. SUDA will also be able to measure the properties of small, solid particles believed to be spewing from a hidden ocean within the moon, according to Kempf. Measuring this cloud surrounding Europa will help the SUDA team better understand the moon's interior structure, and the repository of material in the water under the ice crust, according to Kempf.

SUDA will weigh about 24 pounds, much of which will consist of high-tech shielding designed to protect the instrument from radiation, and will be about the size of a lunch box, according to LASP.

NASA’s fiscal year 2016 budget request includes $30 million to formulate a mission to Europa. The mission would send a solar-powered spacecraft into a long, looping orbit around the gas giant Jupiter to perform repeated close flybys of Europa over a three-year period. In total, the mission would perform 45 flybys at altitudes ranging from 16 miles to 1,700 miles (25 kilometers to 2,700 kilometers).

According to NASA, the Europa Mission is set to launch sometime in the 2020s. In the meantime, the SUDA team will begin work in August, 2015.

View the NASA press release.

View the CU-��«��Ƶ press release.

View the 9-News (KUSA) story.

View the LASP press release.

Off

Traditional

White

OASIS Project Set To Launch on SpaceX This Afternoon

Anonymous — Tue, 14 Apr 2015 18:17:21 +0000

OASIS Project Set To Launch on SpaceX This Afternoon Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 04/14/2015 - 12:17

A new experiment by the Liquid Crystal Material Research Center in the Department of Physics is slated to go up to the International Space Station as part of NASA's SpaceX Commercial Resupply Launch this afternoon. The OASIS project will join several ongoing experiments on the space station when it launches today at 4:10 EDT/2:10 MT. The launch was originally scheduled to take place on Monday, April 13th, but called at T-Minus 2:39 due to weather.

Watch Professor Noel Clark describe the OASIS experiment during the Prelaunch Press Conference.

the Project OASIS: Liquid Crystal Bubbles in Space

Be it your health, your cellphone or any one of thousands of other electronic devices, NASA's research on the International Space Station can make a difference. A current experiment looking into fluid dynamics and liquid crystals may lead to benefits both on Earth and in space.

The Observation and Analysis of Smectic Islands in Space (OASIS) experiment will study extremely thin film bubbles of liquid crystals in the weightless environment of the International Space Station. The liquid crystal bubbles can be as thin as 6 nanometers, just two molecules in thickness, stabilized by their (smectic) tendency to form molecular layers

OASIS researchers will observe the motion and merging of small hockey puck-shaped liquid crystal layers, known as smectic islands, that move around on the two-layer thick bubble film. The scientific objectives are to study how liquid flows in two dimensions, known as fluid dynamics, and to explore the interactions, self-assembly and coarsening, as well as the dynamics of colloidal dispersions of islands and droplets.

On Earth, as the islands coarsen, or form, into larger sizes or multiple layers, they slide to the bottom of the bubble in the same way as soap bubbles thicken at the bottom. In the microgravity environment of the space station, the islands can be studied without the effects of gravity.

"OASIS is the first study of smectic liquid crystal materials in microgravity, and may well be the first study of any liquid crystal material in microgravity," said OASIS Principal Investigator Professor Noel Clark of the University of Colorado, ��«��Ƶ. "Smectic liquid crystal bubbles constitute a unique experimental platform for advancing fundamental understanding of fluid dynamics and colloid physics in two-dimensional systems."

OASIS will use the Microgravity Science Glovebox onboard the space station. The Glovebox enables a wide range of experiments in a fully sealed and controlled environment.

While OASIS is focused on basic physical phenomena, the findings may have a long-term impact on technology and human health, as is often the case with basic research.

Most living things either are or once were in a liquid crystal state. All biological liquid crystals are formed by aggregates of molecules in a solvent, like water. Perhaps the most important example of a biological liquid crystal is the cell membrane.

"Since many of the processes critical for the life of the cell take place in the plasma membrane or in the membranes of organelles, the physics of transport, diffusion and aggregation of particles in thin, fluid membranes is of fundamental interest, with clear relevance to the life sciences," said Clark.

Liquid crystals and fluid dynamics are fundamental to many things that touch life here on Earth and in space. A better understanding of how they work provides a better opportunity to improve our lives and our technology.

The OASIS mission is the culmination of almost 20 years of ground-based research in the liquid crystal laboratories of the Department of Physics at the ��«��Ƶ. Physics research faculty Joe Maclennan and Matthew Glaser are co-PIs on OASIS and senior scientist Cheol Park is the project manager. Since the inception of the smectic bubble project, no fewer than four graduate students (Darren Link, Apichart Pattaporkratana, Duong Nguyen and Zhiyuan Qi) and seven undergraduates enrolled in the Physics honors program (Markus Atkinson, Aaron Goldfain, Kate Wachs, Kyle Meienberg, Kyle Ferguson, and Kaitlin Parsons) have been involved in research related to OASIS.

Recent years have also seen the inclusion of experimental collaborators from the Otto Guericke University in Germany, who will investigate the dynamics and self-organization of fluid droplets inkjetted onto the bubbles in microgravity, and theorists from the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.

The OASIS experiment will be delivered to the ISS as part of the payload of the sixth SpaceX resupply mission, scheduled to be launched from Cape Canaveral today. The experiments will be carried out remotely over the course of three months, with occasional astronaut intervention, supervised by the mission scientists and controlled by engineers at NASA’s Glenn Research Center.

Microscopic detail of liquid crystal islands tethered like necklaces when an external electric field is applied near the very thin film surface. (Credit: ��«��Ƶ)

Within minutes the small islands/domains on this very thin bubble prepared in the laboratory form into larger domains and are pulled down by gravity. The bubble film is extremely thin and one cannot see the edges. (Credit: NASA)

Contributions from Noel Clark, Cheol Park, Matt Glaser, and Joe Maclennan at the ��«��Ƶ and Padetha Tin at NASA Glenn Research Center.

Original images are available on request.

Off

Traditional

White

Faculty, students revved up about Large Hadron Collider restart

Anonymous — Mon, 06 Apr 2015 22:34:06 +0000

Faculty, students revved up about Large Hadron Collider restart Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/06/2015 - 16:34

��«��Ƶ faculty and students are primed to get back in action following the Easter restart of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s most powerful atom smasher located near Geneva, Switzerland, after a two-year hiatus.

Following intensive upgrades and repairs, proton beams from the LHC once again began flying around a 17-mile underground loop below the Swiss-French border at nearly the speed of light. In 2012 the international research team -- which includes 10 CU-��«��Ƶ faculty, students and technicians -- used the particle collisions in the LHC to discover the elusive Higgs boson, a particle believed by physicists to endow the universe with mass.

The CU-��«��Ƶ high-energy physics team is involved with the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), one of two massive particle detectors in the LHC and which weighs more than 12,500 tons. The CU team helped design and build the CMS forward pixel detectors -- the “eyes” of the device -- that help researchers measure the direction and momentum of subatomic particles following collisions, providing clues to their origin and structure.

William Ford, who recently retired from CU-��«��Ƶ as a physics professor but remains active in the LHC program, said four CU-��«��Ƶ graduate students working on the project -- Frank Jensen, Andrew Johnson, Mike Krohn and Troy Mulholland -- are eager to get their hands on new data. “They have published papers on earlier LHC data and tuned their techniques, and the real opportunity comes now as the LHS approaches its full design energy,” said Ford.

In addition to Ford, other CU-��«��Ƶ faculty and staff involved in the project include CU-��«��Ƶ physics Professor John Cumalat, physics Associate Professor Kevin Stenson and physics Professor Attendant Rank Steve Wagner. The CU-��«��Ƶ team also includes technical staff members Douglas Johnson and Eric Erdos.

During the LHC’s second run, particles will collide at a staggering 13 teraelectronvolts, which is 60 percent higher than any particle accelerator has achieved before. The particle collisions, hundreds of millions of them every second, are expected to lead scientists into unexplored realms of physics and could yield extraordinary insights into the nature of the physical universe.

“As we increase the energy we will certainly learn more about the properties of the Higgs particle, and maybe there will be other Higgs particles,” said Cumalat. “The next couple of years of accumulating and analyzing data should be very exciting.”

Fifteen years in the making, the $10 billion LHC involves an estimated 10,000 people from 60 countries, including more than 1,700 scientists, engineers and technicians from 94 American universities supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation.

Contact:
John Cumalat, 303-492-8604
john.p.cumalat@colorado.edu
William Ford, 303-492-6149
wtford@colorado.edu
Jim Scott, CU-��«��Ƶ media relations, 303-492-3114
jim.scott@colorado.edu

University of Colorado News Release

Off

Traditional

White

NASA-MMS Project Launched Thursday, March 12

Anonymous — Tue, 10 Mar 2015 17:04:52 +0000

NASA-MMS Project Launched Thursday, March 12 Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 03/10/2015 - 11:04

Congratulations to the NASA MMS Team, led by CU Physics Professor Marty Goldman who launched the NASA Magnetosphere Multiscale Mission (MMS). The Mission launched from Cape Canaveral on an Atlas V rocket on Thursday, March 12.

The MMS Mission will study explosive events in two regions of Earth’s magnetosphere. One is on the day side (“magnetopause") — where solar magnetic field lines run counter to Earth’s compressed dipole magnetic field lines. The other is on the night side (the highly elongated “magnetotail”) where neighboring field lines oppose each other. Opposing magnetic fields can “reconnect,” snapping back over huge distances (many Earth radii), while releasing stored magnetic energy. This “Magnetic Reconnection” energizes particles and produces radiation which can interfere with communications and power grids and endanger spacecraft and aircraft.

For the past seven years Professor Goldman has been Principal Investigator on a 3.3M$ NASA grant providing theory and simulation support for the MMS mission. He and his IDS team (http://mms.gsfc.nasa.gov/inter_scientist_team.html) have studied particle heating and motion, nonlinear waves, and energy transport during magnetotail and solar wind reconnection. Goldman’s team consists of simulation and theory experts, Dr. David Newman (Physics) and Prof. Giovanni Lapenta (consultant) as well as LASP observational scientists Dr. Stefan Eriksson, Dr. Laila Andersson and Dr. Jack Gosling.

Off

Traditional

White

PhET Wins "Oscars" of Higher Education

Anonymous — Thu, 15 Jan 2015 21:48:25 +0000

PhET Wins "Oscars" of Higher Education Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 01/15/2015 - 14:48

Congratulations to the PhET Interactive Simulations team, who took home one of two prizes from the Wharton-QS Stars Awards 2014: Reimagine Education. The PhET Simulation project will share a $50,000 price with PaGamO, the world's first multi-student social game.

Founded in 2002 by Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman, PhET provides more than 130 free interactive math and science computer simulations that are based on extensive education research and support more effective and engaging education. Going beyond traditional educational resources, PhET simulations offer an intuitive, game-like environment where students can learn through scientist-like exploration, where dynamic visual representations make the invisible visible, and where science ideas are connected to real-world phenomena.

Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), publisher of the QS World University Rankings, developed the global Wharton-QS Stars competition to identify the most innovative approaches in higher education to enhance learning and student employability in partnership with The Wharton School SEI Center of the University of Pennsylvania.

For more information, view the news release.

Off

Traditional

White

Ye Lab Builds Record-Breaking Atomic Clock

Anonymous — Mon, 03 Feb 2014 23:43:51 +0000

Ye Lab Builds Record-Breaking Atomic Clock Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 02/03/2014 - 16:43

A JILA team—led by Physics Professor and JILA Fellow Jun Ye—has created the highest standard in timekeeping. The experimental atomic clock (pictured left) has set new standards for both precision and stability.

According to the University press release, "Described in a new paper in Nature*, the JILA strontium lattice clock is about 50 percent more precise than the record holder of the past few years, NIST’s quantum logic clock. Precision refers to how closely the clock approaches the true resonant frequency at which its reference atoms oscillate between two electronic energy levels. The new strontium clock is so precise it would neither gain nor lose one second in about 5 billion years, if it could operate that long. (This time period is longer than the age of the Earth, an estimated 4.5 billion years old.)"

Image Caption: JILA’s experimental atomic clock based on strontium atoms held in a lattice of laser light is the world's most precise and stable atomic clock. This image is a composite of many photos taken with long exposure times and other techniques to make the lasers more visible. (Image credit: Ye group and Brad Baxley/JILA)

Read the press release here.

Off

Traditional

White

Groups

Nano-Optics Group Creates Record-Breaking Ultrafast Optical Microscope

Off

Science as art: the colorful world of liquid crystals on display at Gemmill Library

Off

CU Physics team shares in 2016 Breakthrough Prize for Fundamental Physics

Off

CU Physicists help reveal secrets of the "perfect fluid" formed in Big Bang

Off

NASA Selects CU ��«����Ƶ's SUrface Dust Analyzer Instrument for Europa Mission

Off

OASIS Project Set To Launch on SpaceX This Afternoon

Off

Faculty, students revved up about Large Hadron Collider restart

Off

NASA-MMS Project Launched Thursday, March 12

Off

PhET Wins "Oscars" of Higher Education

Off

Ye Lab Builds Record-Breaking Atomic Clock

Off

NASA Selects CU ��«��Ƶ's SUrface Dust Analyzer Instrument for Europa Mission