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Summer 2004

Physics Faculty Now & Then!

THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMYMOMENTUMMOMENTUMMOMENTUMMOMENTUMMOMENTUM

1977 First Row: Richard Sapp, Jack Culvahouse, Herman Munczek, Robert Bearse, David Beard,Tom Armstrong. Second Row: J.D. Stranathan (e), Gordon Wiseman, Ken Wong, Nowhan Kwak,Paul Goldhammer, Robert Friauf, Jack Enoch, Wyman Storer (e), Raymond Ammar. Third Row: C.McElwee (g), Steve Shawl, Bob Stump, Frank Prosser, Ron Bass, Jack Davidson, Robin Davis,Harold. Yarger (g), Ralph Krone, Dan Ling, Wes Unruh, Ed Zeller. Missing: Doug McKay, GiselaDreschhoff.

2004 First Row: Linda Olafsen, Barbara Anthony-Twarog, Alice Bean, Judy Wu, Herman Munczek (e).Second Row: Jacob Enoch (e), Sergei Shandarin, Misha Medvedev, Steve Sanders, Doug McKay, PhilBaringer, Robert Friauf (e), Adrian Melott, Gordon Wiseman (e). Remaining Rows: Jack Culvahouse(e), Graham Wilson, Hume Feldman, Jack Davidson (e), Robin Davis, John Ralston, Bruce Twarog, JeffOlafsen, Siyuan Han, Steve Shawl, Jack Shi, Tom Cravens, Michael Murray, Dick Sapp(e). MissingCurrent Faculty: Raymond Ammar, Dave Besson. Missing Emeritus Faculty: Tom Armstrong(e),Robert Bearse(e), Joe Eagleman(e), Nowhan Kwak(e), Frank Prosser(e), Ken Wong(e). (Davis, Melottand Wilson’s images were added after photo was taken.)

(g) = Geological Survey (e) = Emeritus

(e) = Emeritus

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A Letter from the Chairman

Chairman Steve Sanders

We had a productive year. The de-partment has succeeded in tak-ing advantage of a number of

University-wide initiatives aimed atstrengthening KU by increased staffing,renovation of instructional laboratoryequipment, and support of additional in-structional resources. Two new facultyjoined us this Fall: Professor Chris Fischercomes as the first of several anticipatedhires in the area of biophysics. The Univer-sity has identified bioscience as a focusarea for development at KU, and we arecommitted to having Physics & Astronomybe part of this endeavor. Danny Marfatiajoins us from Boston University. Danny’sexpertise in particle astrophysics will helpbridge already strong programs in as-tronomy, cosmology and particle physics.The department was also successful thisyear in obtaining significant Universityfunding to enhance our advanced physicslaboratory classes.

I would like to give credit to some of thepeople who have helped shape the directionof the Department this past year and havebrought recognition to it. Undergraduatestudent Sarah Feldt and graduate studentLeah Bowen have done magnificent jobs asco-chairs of our SPS chapter. The chapter’sin-depth explorations of the physicsunderlying bad sci-fi movies has provenquite popular. Sarah was recognized forher exceptional scholarship by beingawarded a “Chancellors’s OutstandingSenior” award. Engineering physics studentJoni Jorgenssen has set the standard as thefirst chair for our new engineering physicsstudent group, PESO. The award of aGoldwater Scholarship to undergraduateStephen Floor brings to 4 the number of thishighly competitive science and engineeringscholarship awarded to our students overthe past 3 years—25% of the total numberof these awards to all Kansas institutionsduring this period! Stephen’s awardrecognizes his scholastic excellence,including his highly productive cosmologyresearch under the direction of Prof. AdrianMelott.

Anyone who has gone through ourdepartment in the past decade will appreciatethe dedication that Professor Phil Baringerbrings to the teaching profession. Phil hasnow been recognized for these efforts bybeing awarded a prestigious KemperTeaching Award. As the new co-Department Chair, Director ofUndergraduate Studies, and EngineeringPhysics Director, Phil has been veryeffective in helping set the tone for ourundergraduate program. Phil has now takenon the challenge of implementing the firstmajor change in our introductory calculus-based physics sequence since the early1980’s, bringing to the KU classroom someof the concepts developed by the physicseducation community during the pastdecade. Co-conspirator for promotingchange in our undergraduate program,Professor Barbara Anthony-Twarog hastaken on the reigns of UndergraduateCommittee Chair. In addition to this keycommittee, Barbara also chaired the ad hoccommittee that last year took an in-depthlook at all of our introductory courses tosee where we could do better.

Following reorganization of some of theadministrative responsibilities in theDepartment, Professor Doug McKay hasbeen truly tireless in his role as theDepartment’s first Director of GraduateStudies. Even though changes in GraduateSchool rules and in INS procedures onadmitting foreign student into the countrywould bring most of us to our knees, Doughas managed to recruit a strong graduate

student class for this fall. Sharingresponsibilities for shaping our graduateprogram, Professor Tom Cravens has takenon the position of Graduate Committee Chair.Although the past year has been relativelyquiet on the graduate program front, thedevelopment of a new biophysics programin the department is certain to keep Tom andhis committee busy over the next few years.

One of the “perks” of office is to be ableto track the research activities and fundingof the faculty. Although I knew thedepartment had a strong research basebefore becoming Chair last year, I didn’t fullyappreciate the breadth of the work beingperformed. Most of this work is representedelsewhere in Momentum. I think it is worthnoting that both of the two faculty joiningthe Department last year, Professors MishaMedvedev and Michael Murray, havealready been awarded significant researchgrants. The overall funding of theDepartment’s research programs continuesto improve, with over $3M in researchexpenditures.

I would like to acknowledge Jack andCathy Lowry for giving a greatly appreciatedendowment gift to the department last yearin memory of their son John Lowry. Johnwas a Master student under the direction ofTom Armstrong in the early 1980’s. Morewill be said about John and his time in thedepartment elsewhere in Momentum. TheLowry’s gift will allow us for the first time tooffer a graduate student scholarship to helpin recruiting exceptional students.

The disciplines of Physics andAstronomy have seen many fascinatingdiscoveries over the past decade, rangingin scale from the first deconfinement in thelaboratory of quarks and gluons from theirnucleon bonds to the realization that theUniverse has much more interestingdynamics than previously envisioned. TheDepartment of Physics and Astronomy iswell positioned to explore the ramificationsof these discoveries and to convey to ourstudents the excitement that comes fromworking in these fields.Stephen J. SandersChairperson

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STUDENT NEWSStudent Awards

Sarah Feldt decided to attendgraduate school in physics at theUniversity of Michigan starting in

the fall of 2004. At graduation, Sarah wasrecognized as a recipient of the Class of1913 Award, and shared the ‘stage’ with theChancellor, Deans and other graduating se-niors of note.

Undergraduate Stephen Floor worked forthe summer at Lawrence Livermore NationalLaboratory with Dr. Chris Fragile andcollaborators. LLNL has a cosmology codecalled COSMOS that they use to performcutting-edge simulations of astrophysicalphenomena from black hole accretion diskdynamics to GRB’s/blazars to large scalestructure evolution. He will be addingradiative energy transport to this programso that one object in the code that is emittingradiation can energetically excite anotherobject in the code. This modification will alsoallow for mock observations to be performed,using the emitted radiation that impinges ona plane as the image. Stephen Floor did a bitof traveling in Europe. Stephen has beencollaborating with Professor Adrian Melotton galaxy clusters. He gave talks at institutesin Estonia, Copenhagen, and at a conferenceon galaxy clusters in the Greek Islands. Sincethen, Stephen has been awarded a Goldwaterscholarship. He is one of two students atKU and about 300 in the USA to receive suchan award.

Graduate student Scott Graham attendedthe Nuclear Science Symposium in Portland,Oregon and presented a paper titled“Calibration of the RICE - RF antennas”.

Graduate student Katie Green has beenawarded a thirteen-week internship to workas an apprentice science writer with TheEconomist in London. She has demonstratedher excellent writing aptitude in a variety ofvenues at KU, including in her upper levellaboratory class, newsletter editor of AAAS,and as co-secretary of SPS. She was the topchoice from a pool of 150 other applicants.She completed a comparative investigationof the optical and electronic properties ofmid-infrared light emitting diodes for herMaster’s degree with Professor Linda

Olafsen (in collaboration with Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia).

Because Lawrence isn’t cold enough,Graduate student Shahid Hussain attendedthe Lake Louise Winter Institute onFundamental Interactions in February 2004.He gave two talks: “Differentiating BetweenLow-Scale Gravity and Standard Model withUltra High Energy Astrophysical Neutrinos”and “Radio Cherenkov Signal from UHENeutrino Initiated Showers in Antarctic Ice.”

Kevin Kohlstedt graduated in May. Hespent the spring semester in Copenhagenas part of a semester abroad programstudying environmental engineering. Hewas supported in part by a fellowship forScandinavian Studies funded by theJohnson Family of Kansas City. He was anEPHX major who has been working in theISLE lab the last three years, and spent lastsummer working with Professor JeffOlafsen’s collaborator, Igor Aronson, atArgonne National Lab. He is spending thissummer working at Argonne as well beforestarting graduate school in ChemicalEngineering this fall at Northwestern.

Graduate research assistant ToddMcAlpine received an award from theGraduate Student Paper Presenter Fund andattended the Materials Research Society fallmeeting in Boston. Todd presented recordroom-temperature efficiency results in a talktitled “Pump Wavelength Tuning of OpticalPumping Injection Cavity Lasers forEnhancing Mid-Infrared Operation.” He alsosuccessfully completed his Mastersexamination (en route to the Ph.D.!) with apresentation titled “Measuring the ImpulseResponse of a Photoconductive HgCdTeDetector for Pulsed Semiconductor LaserApplications.” His advisor is Linda Olafsen.

Josh Meyers, a Goldwater Fellow,traveled to Seattle to attend the 8th

International Workshop on Topics inAstroparticle and Underground Physics. Histalk, “Radiowave Detection of Neutrinos”,summarized the RICE project’s results.

Brian Thomas attended the annualmeeting of the American ScientificAffiliation in Denver, where he presented twotalks: “An Analysis of Steinhardt and Turok’s

Winners AnnouncedTwo students, David Hover and DanaMaher, received this year’s Prosser Scholar-ship. This scholarship, created and fundedby emeritus faculty member Frank Prosser,serves to recognize outstanding sopho-mores majoring in physics or engineeringphysics. Both Hover and Maher are en-gaged in undergraduate research in the De-partment. Hover has worked on twoprojects with the experimental high energyphysics group. He helped to diagnose prob-lems with the electronics hybrids used inthe D0 experiment at Fermilab and he hashelped to study noise problems in the D0silicon microstrip detector. Mr. Maher hasbeen designing two new experiments in theISLE Lab to investigate sound propagationin granular media. The results of his experi-ments might be used to improve land minedetection in shallow sand beds.

Cyclic Universe Model” and “PresentingCosmology to a Local Church”. He alsoparticipated in two panel discussions onthese topics. He attended the AstrobiologyGraduate Student Conference in Tucson inJanuary 2004.

Frank Prosser greets some new SPSinitiates Alan Dibos, Josh Meyers, IanLewis, David Hover.

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STUDENT NEWSDepartment AwardsE.E. Slossen Award for Outstanding Gradu-ate Teaching Assistant

Tareq AlrefaeMisty CracraftAshwin Mohan

Prosser Scholarship AwardDana MaherDavid Hover

Engineering PhysicsOutstanding Senior

Joni Jorgensen

Graduation with HonorsJoni JorgensenKevin Kohlstedt

Graduation with DistinctionKristin Larson

Graduation with Highest DistinctionJoni Jorgensen

PhysicsStranathan Outstanding Senior

Sarah FeldtJoshua Meyers

Graduation with HonorsSarah Feldt

Graduation with Highest DistinctionSarah Feldt

Graduation with University HonorsSarah Feldt

Outside DepartmentChancellor’s Class of 1913 Award

Sarah FeldtAlan Dibos-Honorable Mention

Goldwater AwardStephen Floor-AwardeeAlan Dibos-Honorable Mention

University Scholar (Top 20 Sophomores inthe University)

David HoverHannah SwiftShawn Henderson

KU Undergraduate Research AwardsAlan DibosJesse NoffsingerDavid HoverDaniel P. HoganLuis Vargas

REU Summer Research AwardsJake King (Berkeley)

Graduate DegreesPh.D. in Physics

Ina Robertson

M.S. in PhysicsMisty CracraftKatherine GreeneOrathai KheawpumDong-Chang LeeBrett David NeumannLori Sue PerryMichael SantilliDelora Tanner

Bachelor’s DegreesAstronomy

Jesse Atwell

PhysicsSarah FeldtJoel Lomasney

Engineering PhysicsKyle GonterwitzBrent HarrisJoni JorgensenKevin KohlstedtKristin Larson

Misty Cracraft and Ashwin Mohanreceive the E.E. Slossen Award forOutstanding Graduate TeachingAssistants from Bob Curry

Jack Shi presented the Stranathan Awardfor Outstanding Physics & AstronomySenior to Sarah Feldt, Josh Meyers (onright). David Hover (2nd from right)received the Prosser Award forOutstanding Physics Major. Not pictured:Dana Maher. David Hover, Hannah Swift, Shawn

Henderson all receive KU UniversityScholar Awards and Sarah Feldt receivesacknowledgement of her Chancellor’sClass of 1913 Award from Phil Baringer.

Jeff Olafsen presents the KUUndergraduate Research Awards toDaniel Hogan, David Hover, ShawnHenderson, Alan Dibos, Jessie Noffsinger.Not pictured: Luis Vargas and Jake King.

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TEACHING TIDBITS

With the increased interest in condensedmatter physics, Solid State Physics II wasoffered for the first time in a number of years.Professor Linda Olafsen offered the course,in which six graduate students were enrolled.The course provided an opportunity toexplore a variety of advanced topics in moredepth than can be achieved in theintroductory graduate course, includingsecond quantization of fermions and bosons,BCS superconductivity, and the QuantumHall Effect. In addition, each studentpresented two projects on currentexperimental and theoretical topics incondensed matter based on recent researchresults. The presentations were interactiveand enabled students to take concepts andtheories from the course and apply them to acurrent research topic.

Jeff Olafsen and physics master’sstudent Katie Greene gave a session at theCenter for Teaching Excellence’s New GTAConference last fall. The session focused onways of engaging and motivating studentsto come up with their own answers withoutrelying on the TA to give them the answer inlaboratory situations. Jeff also received a$750 teaching grant from CTE to add a“hands-on” laboratory experience to theFreshman Honors Seminar he taught in thefall. The lab experiments focused on

investigations into electronic circuits.Jeff Olafsen also taught a liberal arts

Honors Seminar that focused on thecontributions of women in science before

the 20th Century. As part ofthe class, students wereencouraged to do interviewsand write a biography of acurrent KU female facultymember in the sciences orengineering.

In the spring of 2004, Jeffparticipated in the FacultySeminar program at CTE,designing on-line (Web-based) posters of teachinginnovations from priorclasses at KU. The postersprovide an excellent way oforganizing one’s thoughts

about teaching without investing a largeblock of time trying to compose a teachingportfolio. The poster can be accessedthrough Jeff’s Webpage or directly at http://lumen.georgetown.edu/collaborators/kansascte.

Steve Shawl conceived and organized a

Phil Baringer was awarded one oftwenty Kemper Teaching Awards for2003-2004.

semester-long faculty Proseminar for KUscience faculty. Monthly meetings were heldto discuss a variety of topics of mutualinterest among faculty from the full range ofcourses that satisfy the science requirementat KU. Since not everyone could attend atone time, two parallel seminars met atdifferent times. Physics and Astronomywere well represented by Phil Baringer,Michael Murray, Steve Sanders, BruceTwarog, and Graham Wilson as well asShawl. Other departments representedincluded anthropology, biological sciences,chemistry, geology, pharmaceuticalchemistry, and psychology. A variety oftopics were covered, including the goals ofscience teaching (especially in the liberalarts courses), ways to go about attainingthose goals, and methods of assessingsuccess. Other discussions included howto get students to read assigned material(use web-based quizzes prior to class),making introductory courses rigorous andholding students accountable for their work,and the course withdrawal policy. Thesemeetings will continue this coming fallsemester.

Phil Baringer with Provost David Shulengerger

SPS Inductees: (Front row) Jake King, Hua Zhao, Ian Lewis, Hannah Swift, WeiQiu. (Back row) Shawn Henderson, Andy Womack, Rainer Schiel, Peter Bryant,Jan Kurzidim, Ben Anhalt.

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RESEARCHExtraterrestrial Physics

Astronomy

The KU astronomy group has beenbusy this past academic year. Westart our annual summary with simi-

lar words most years, and it’s usually true.This year’s busy activities have had aslightly different flavor, provided by new in-gredients.

While we always have terrific students,most readers realize that our numbers arefairly small and highly variable. Theastronomy students receiving degrees sincelast summer are both masters’ recipients.Delora Tanner completed her master’sresearch and thesis in December 2003, andis now working with Raytheon Corporationin Tucson, Arizona. Misty Cracraft finishedin May 2004, and has been hired as the thirdJayhawk at the Hubble Space TelescopeScience Institute. Both women completedmaster of computational astronomy degrees,both participated in observing campaigns atthe WIYN 0.9-meter telescope at Kitt Peak,and both contributed software componentsto the reduction of image data of NGC 2420.KU has been invited to become an informalpartner of the WIYN Open ClusterConsortium and receives one or more weeksof telescope time per year at the WIYN 0.9-meter telescope. With two winter runscompleted, reductions are centering ondetermining the foreground reddening toNGC 2420 with very high precision. This is anecessary first step before verifying thechemical composition of this few billion yearold open cluster. Recent measurements havedisputed the former assignment of a metalabundance to NGC 2420 that is about 4 timeslower than the sun’s metal content; it is thischemical composition that makes NGC 2420a convenient proxy for stars in our neighborgalaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud. Theyhope to improve the precision of allphotometric estimates for this importantanticenter cluster.

Another different component of dailyactivity in Malott is the steady stream ofconversations with engineers, both fromKU’s aerospace engineering department and

Space Physicsfrom our collaboration partners at CompositeMirror Applications in Tucson, DartmouthUniversity and San Diego State University.KU is managing a $1.4 million-dollarenterprise to design, build, locate and testthe most radical technology for telescopematerial design since glass. All participantsare having a wonderful time learning enoughto communicate with each other andanticipating our 1-meter telescopeinstallation at Mt. Laguna Observatorysometime in 2005. At last report (!), thetelescope is to be a Ritchey-Chretien designwith an effective focal length of 7.5 meters— a tight fit for a dome building built tohouse a 16-inch telescope! A separate articleon this project is on page 13.

More traditional astronomical researchprojects have not been left behind.Capitalizing on the dubious honor of amostly cloudy run at Cerro Tololo in June2003, followed by a six-week mini-sabbaticalthere, the Twarogs hammered on thereductions and calibration of observationsin NGC 3680 to solve one mystery about thisopen cluster, and develop an entirely new

Tom Cravens (along with his son, Jeff, and Tom Armstrong attended the Cassiniencounter with Saturn. This picture was taken in an auditorium. The center screenshows the JPL control room while the righthand screen shows the Doppler shiftedsignal from the low-gain antenna. The inflections in the curve show the main engineturn-on and turn-off. The noisy signal shows the effects as the signal passed throughSaturn’s various rings.

Professor Tom Cravens, together withstudents and colleagues, has contin-ued research into solar system

plasma physics. Cravens and graduate stu-dent John Clark continue to work on mod-els of the upper atmosphere and ionosphereof Saturn’s satellite Titan. NASA’s Cassinispacecraft arrived at Saturn on July 1, 2004.The spacecraft’s first of many encounterswith Titan will take place in October 2004, atwhich time the validity of models developedat KU with the help of current and past stu-dents (including graduate student NedKeller and undergraduate Judy Yu) will betested. John Clark and Cravens presentedresults of their recent modeling work at theAmerican Geophysical Union meeting inMontreal in May and the COSPAR generalassembly in Paris in July. UndergraduateMatt Copeland is now assisting Clark andCravens with this work and is learningabout the orbital trajectory of the Cassinispacecraft.

Cravens and several colleagues heworked with during his Spring 2003sabbatical published a paper in December

(Continued on Page 12) (Continued on Page 12)

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RESEARCHCondensed Matter

The semiconductor laser opticsgroup, led by Linda Olafsen, hasmade excellent progress this year on

a variety of projects aimed toward under-standing the physics of semiconductor ma-terials that emit and absorb light in the mid-infrared (especially 2–5 micrometers)portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.Applications of the materials currently be-ing studied in the group include infraredcountermeasures, methane or carbon diox-ide sensors, and glucose monitoring.

Ph.D. student Todd McAlpine has beeninvestigating the effect of tuning theexcitation wavelength that pumpssemiconductor quantum wells embedded inan “optical pumping injection cavity” (OPIC).Tuning the pump wavelength to theresonance of the optical cavity greatlyenhances the absorption of the pump beamand results in many more mid-infraredphotons emitted per pump photon. Not onlydoes this result in a more efficient mid-infrared laser, but it also displays interestingoptical effects related closely to the bandstructure of the materials. Further studieswill include measuring light emission not onlyas functions of pump intensity, pumpwavelength, and sample temperature, butalso as a function of the cavity length of theOPIC laser. This will enable the group tostudy both quantitatively and qualitativelythe loss mechanisms in these materials inorder to identify and better understand thephysical processes that dominate theelectron dynamics. The OPIC laser work isin collaboration with the Naval ResearchLaboratory and Sarnoff Corporation.

Katie Greene completed a Master’sproject studying the optical and electronicproperties of mid-infrared light emittingdiodes (LEDs). This comparativeinvestigation of materials from Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute in St. Petersburg, Russiais geared toward understanding the lifetimeof carriers in the system and the effects oncarrier transport and recombination due todifferent excitation mechanisms. An excitingresult that is being pursued is the apparentlasing of one of the nominal LEDs, and

further experiments will elucidate the physicsof the gain medium in that material structure.

Mike Santilli (Ph.D. student) continueswork done in collaboration with theUniversity of Iowa fabricating LEDs anddetectors for building a spectrometer forcontinuous glucose monitoring. With anever-growing infrastructure for deviceprocessing at KU, capabilities to design,fabricate, and characterize semiconductorquantum well heterostructures areimproving. Diodes have been grown andfabricated successfully, and the firstprototype glucose sensor is currently underconstruction.

Research activities of the quantumelectronics science and technology(QUEST) laboratory, led by Professor SiyuanHan, are focused on developing the basicbuilding blocks for a quantum computerusing superconducting flux quantum bits(qubits) and quantum gates. A flux qubit isessentially a small ring of superconductor inwhich electrical current circulates around thering without resistance (and hence is calleda supercurrent). In contrast to one’s intuitionthat electrical current can flow only in onedirection at a time, the supercurrent in a fluxqubit can flow in two opposite directionssimultaneously, which is called a coherentsuperposition state and is one of the uniqueproperties of a quantum object. This intrinsicquantum parallelism and another uniquequantum phenomenon called entanglementcan lead to a revolution in information and

computing technology. However, a qubit’squantum state is extremely fragile and verydifficult to maintain. Even a tiny amount ofdisturbance from its environment candestroy coherence (producing what is calleddecoherence). Thus, one must find ways toprotect qubits from decoherence. Last yearProf. Han organized a collaborative researchteam with scientists from KU, Stony BrookUniversity, and Communication ResearchLaboratory in Japan to investigate whetherand how different superconductors,fabrication processes, and circuit layoutsaffect decoherence. This project is supportedby the National Science Foundation at a levelof $680 thousand/year for 5 years. Membersof the group, including senior researchscientist Hongjie Tao, postdoctoral researchassociate Shaoxiong Li, graduate studentsWei Qiu and Richard Alexander, andundergraduate student Matt Matheny, areactively involved in this project and threenew graduate students joined the group inAugust 2004.

The KU thin film group led by Prof. JudyWu continued working on the highest-Tcsuperconducting (HTS) thin films andcoated conductors during the past year undersupport from NSF, AFOSR, and DOE.Through an AFOSR funded Multi-University Research Initiative (MURI) projectwith University of Wisconsin and StanfordUniversity, the focus of the research has beenon solving fundamental problems limiting thecritical current carrying capability of thecoated conductors that is required for power-related applications and high-field magnets.This research has also involved collaborationwith Oak Ridge National Lab and the AirForce Research Lab. Exciting results havebeen achieved in understanding the currentlimiting factors and in improving currentcarry capability via microstructuralengineering using nanotechnology. The KUthin film group has also made excitingprogress in developing novel scanningprobe microscopy for room temperaturemapping of electric currents in coatedconductors.

Mike Santilli with the new evaporatorused for depositing metal contacts onsensors for developing glucose monitors.

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Particle Physics-Experiment

RESEARCH

Is it possible to create conditions in thelaboratory where quarks become de-confined from their nucleon containers?

This is the key question being asked by theExperimental Heavy Ion Research Groupconsisting of Professors Michael Murrayand Steve Sanders, postdoctoral researchassistants Eun-Joo Kim and Erik Johnson,graduate students Brett Neumann andChaitanya Kalavagunta, and undergraduatestudents Brent Harris and MeganLehnherr. The major part of the group’seffort involves work on the BRAHMS ex-periment at the Relativistic Heavy Collider(RHIC) facility located at Brookhaven Na-tional Laboratory on Long Island.

A significant discovery was made by theBRAHMS collaboration last year inanalyzing data from the collisions ofdeuterons with gold nuclei at a center-of-mass energy for each constituent nucleonpair of 200 GeV. In exploring the yield ofoutgoing charged hadrons emitted in thecollisions, a deficit with respect to proton-proton collision results was found in themomentum spectra obtained at far forwardangles on the deuteron fragmentation side.This behavior has a natural explanation interms of a “Color Glass Condensate” picturewhere the gluons in the gold nucleus withlow momentum fraction become saturated.The discovery raises the possibility of usingrelativistic heavy ion collisions to studyhigh-density, non-perturbative QCD effects.

A new threshold Cherenkov detector thatwas built at KU and installed as part of theBRAHMS mid-rapidity spectrometer armnearly doubles the range in momentum wherepions can be identified in the spectrometer.This allows a study of “hard” scatteringprocesses involving the interactions ofindividual quarks and gluons. The detectorperformed well this past winter during a longrun where gold ions were collided at themaximum RHIC energy. Data analysis is nowtaking place.

A surprising result from earlier RHIC runswas the observation of strong collective floweffects manifested in an observed directionalasymmetry for the produced particles. In a

Nuclear Physics typical gold-on-gold collision at the maximumRHIC energy, some 6000 charged particlescan be produced for central collisions. Theprimary directional correlations of theseparticles with the reaction plane, so-called“elliptic flow” correlations, are sensitive tothe initial partonic dynamics and can dependon the collision centrality and on thetransverse momentum of the observedparticles. To explore these correlations, theKU group reconfigured elements of theBRAHMS multiplicity array (a KU builtdetector described in previous Momentumcontributions) to be able to measure ellipticflow correlations. This rearrangement wasin place for the most recent RHIC runs.Correlations between particles observed withthe BRAHMS spectrometer arms and theelliptic flow measurements are now beingstudied. Graduate student Brett Neumannsuccessfully completed his Master’sresearch last year based on the new flowdetector at BRAHMS.

The early years of RHIC have provenvery exciting with numerous unexpectedresults being developed at all four of themajor experiments (BRAHMS, PHENIX,PHOBOS, and STAR). The hope is that thefacility will also lead to answers to many ofthe questions that have developed.However, on what appears to be anincreasingly near horizon is the promise ofheavy-ion collisions at the Large HadronCollider facility at CERN with energies 27times greater than that achievable at RHIC.Many of the subtle signatures being seen atRHIC for the production of a deconfinedquark-gluon plasma or for gluon saturationeffects may well become pronounced effectsin the data obtained at the LHC. Lookingtowards this future, Michael Murray hasbeen working with Megan Lehnherr on thedesign of a new zero-degree calorimeter tobe installed at the CMS experiment at theLHC. It is hoped this device will be installedand operational by the time CMS starts itsheavy-ion program later this decade.

The University of Kansas groupcontinues to place its main focus onthe D0 experiment, but they are also

working on the CMS Tracker Outer BarrelSilicon and on Linear Collider calorimetrydetector research and development. Thereis a wide ranging program with D0 that in-cludes: analysis of the Run II dataset, devel-opment and calibration of the track triggeralgorithm, calibration and operation of thepresent silicon detector, and upgrades tothe silicon detector.

Human ResourcesAlthough the faculty component remainsthe same this year, the DOE EPSCoR granthas allowed the KU high energy group tosupport 2 postdoctoral researchers, twograduate students, 12 undergraduate stu-dents, and three technicians. The groupalso receives extensive electrical engineer-ing support through the InstrumentationDesign Lab at KU. Postdoc Carsten Henselhas been very active working on the D0tracking trigger system and Linear ColliderR&D. Postdoctoral research associate LenChristofek ramped down his extensivehardware involvement in the SVX4 chip forthe D0 RunIIb detector and CMS silicontesting to concentrate on the Single Topphysics analysis of the D0 data. Graduatestudent Peter Bryant helped to set up all ofthe D0 silicon testing program at KU and isnow involved in studying neural net vari-ables for a single top quark analysis. Ourother DOE EPSCoR supported graduatestudent, Darius Gallagher, has been in-volved in the simulation work for the LinearCollider detector.

The undergraduate students who haveworked with the KU group on DOE EPSCoRprojects are: Eric Benavidez, JustaceClutter, Kalifa Dieme, David Hover, JoniJorgensen, Vitaly Kheyfets, Jake King,Jason Myers, James Snow, Amena Syeda,Jonathan Van Eenwyk, and alum Judy Yu.Justace Clutter is a Senior at SouthwestMissouri State University working on hissenior thesis studying the D0 silicon detector

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RESEARCHnoise. Benavidez, Dieme, and Van Eenwykare working on Linear Collider Detector R&D.Hover, Kheyfets, King, and Syeda havestudied silicon detector issues and testedhybrids for the silicon upgrades. Myers andYu have assisted with the computerinfrastructure of the group by setting up theLinux cluster and developing web pages.

Other group members include electronicstechnicians Juan Hernandez and Jeff Worth.Our departmental machinists, Zach Kesslerand Alan Hase, have helped to specify,purchase, and operate a new coordinatemeasuring machine.

Infrastructure DevelopmentInfrastructure changes and equipment pur-chases are adding to the HEP group’s capa-bilities. The major infrastructure project hasbeen the installation of a 600 square footclean room facility in a low-vibration base-ment location. The group was able to secureanother 500 square foot laboratory spacefor detector development projects. Therenovations for both rooms were completedin the spring. The second laboratory will al-low for use of the smaller existing cleanroom as well as the linear collider detectorcosmic ray test stand.

New equipment for use at KU includes:an Optical Guage Products (OGP) Flashcoordinate measuring machine, two 2 x 2.8GHz Linux workstations, three Linuxworkstations, and two PC’s runningWindows. The Linux machines are clusteredto a 3 TB RAID array. The OGP machine hasallowed KU to take on more responsibilityfor measuring hybrid flatness and it will alsobe used in the linear collider detector effort.The purchase of the computers has allowedthe group to load the D0 software suite inKansas and provides our undergraduateresearchers with the computing resourcesthey need.

The HEP group, in conjunction with theDepartment of Physics and Astronomy, hasdeveloped a new video conferencing room.A Polycom 128 videoconferencing systemwith large screen display is connected toanother computer with a projector displayfor use with IP, VRVS, or ISDN conferencing.

Research ActivitiesDuring the past year, the RunII data analy-sis effort has included studying the Z→e+e-

and W→e±ne production cross sectionsand a search for single top. Graduate stu-dent John Gardner’s Ph.D. thesis project,which is supervised by Professors PhilBaringer and Graham Wilson, is a mea-surement of the ratio of cross section timesbranching ratio of W→e±ne to Z→e+e- . Themeasurements of the production cross sec-tions for W and Z bosons test theoreticalpredictions as well as help to understandand calibrate the detector. The ratio mea-surement will constrain the width of the Wboson and is not sensitive to the luminositycalibration. Preliminary measurements werepresented at winter 2003 conferences. Cur-rently, the measurement on the ratio hasabout a 1% statistical error. The work hasbeen to decrease the systematic error of2.2%. One crucial part of this effort wasGardner’s work to understand noisy calo-rimeter data. For single-top production,there are three modes at hadron colliders.The s-channel signal gives the theoreticallycleanest and experimentally most precisedetermination of the CKM matrix element|Vtb|. The KU group has embarked upon thisanalysis by assisting with b-quark taggingoptimization, electron identification, triggerefficiency studies, QCD background optimi-zation, and studying the decays of W’s toelectrons. The KU part of the effort focuseson the electronchannel and in-cludes graduates t u d e n t sShabnam Jabeenand PeterBryant, postdocLen Christofek,with faculty as-sistance fromBaringer andBean. The firstupper limit re-sults from the D0Run II datasetwill be presentedat the 2004

Moriond conferences. Peter Bryant is cur-rently pursuing a Master’s thesis optimizingvariables for use in the neural net analysisof these data.

The KU group has responsibility in D0for the development of the track triggeralgorithm and is participating in theperformance verification, improvement,simulation and upgrades for higherluminosity (part of the approved RunIIbtrigger project). In particular, there has beena major breakthrough in the last months,which has shown significant improvementover the baseline design allowing thepossibility of triggering on tracks with muchhigher efficiencies, close to 99%, andindependent of the occupancy rates.

Undergraduate students JustaceClutter, David Hover, Vitaly Kheyfets, JakeKing, and Amena Syeda have been workingwith Alice Bean on improvements andcalibration of the D0 silicon microstripdetector. A study was undertaken to seewhether noise effects could be reduced.Unfortunately, the material may be breakingdown in what is called microdischarge orgrassy noise. This occurs when a region ofthe material experiences a voltage thatexceeds its localized break down point.Because of manufacturing defects orweakness in the silicon, the breakdownvoltage is less than expected, so the biasvoltage is enough to break through thematerial. As a consequence, whole wedges

From top to bottom, Undergraduate students Jake King andJonathan Van Eenwyk, and Graduate Students Darius Gallagherand Peter Bryant work on the new Linux workstations on D0analysis and Linear Collider detector modeling.

10

The ISLE (Imaging Systems Labora-tory Experiments) Lab underwent alot of changes this last academic

year. To make room for a new clean room inthe basement, the ISLE Lab was moved fromthe basement of Malott to the top floor. Thenew facilities are a significant improvementand many of the experiments that had to bedelayed due to space issues during therenovation are now back up and running.

The lab personnel have changedconsiderably. The group, lead by ProfessorJeff Olafsen, includes Dana Maher, who wasa recipient of a Prosser Scholarship thisspring, Bill Cross, and Ben Bammes.Professor Bill Baxter was a long term visitoras part of his sabbatical from Penn State,Erie.

The ISLE lab was the recipient of aPlanning Grant from Kansas NASA EPSCoR(KNEP) in the last academic year. Theproposal supported a new camera system inthe ISLE lab with a variable image rate (60 –200 fps) that fills in an important gap betweenthe two main CCD imaging systems in thelab. The camera and other supplies supportedpilot data that formed the basis of a grantproposal submitted to the NASA FluidPhysics competition in December. ThePlanning Grant also allowed for a newcollaboration to begin between the ISLE laband Chris Sorensen’s research group atKansas State University. The mostprovocative part of the collaboration issimilar-ordering dynamics between themacroscopic hard sphere systems studiedin ISLE and the nanoscale systems at KSUthat differ in scale by an order of 105.Collaborations are at the heart of the ISLElab’s recent successes. Collaborationsincluded people in Civil Engineering,Geology, and Entomology & EnvironmentalBiology at KU, as well as Penn State Erieand the Rochester Institute of Technology.

The beam-dynamics group in theDepartment of Physics & Astronomy at theUniversity of Kansas has currently, in addi-tional to Professor Jack Shi, three graduatestudents Lihui Jin, Ben Anhalt, and Tareq

Nonlinear Dynamics

RESEARCH

2

3 4

have been shut down so it won’t overloadthe filters with unacceptable data. A studyof the clustering algorithm and improvementsto the Monte Carlo code is also currentlyunderway.

The KU group continues to pursueelectronics development work inconjunction with both the D0 silicondetectors and the CMS silicon detector.There was extensive effort in studying theSVX4 chip and testing hybrid substructuresfor the D0 RunIIb silicon detector. With thecancellation of the RunIIb silicon project, theD0 silicon group has proposed placing a newinner layer of silicon in the present detector(Layer 0). The project was rebaselined in theFall of 2003 and Bean currently is the Level 2project manager for the Layer 0 project. TheKU group will continue to lead the hybridtesting effort and will procure and test digitaljumper cables and pitch adapters.

KU’s efforts for the CMS detectorproduction mirror the D0 effort. CMS usesan analog readout chip that will eventuallybe interfaced to a fiber optic readout system.The KU group has implemented test standsat the Fermilab production facility that checkfor readout viability and search the silicondetectors for pinholes shorts. Post-doc LenChristofek spearheaded this testing programand currently postdoc Don Coppage isrunning the tests along with technician JuanHernandez. A preproduction run in the springof over 100 modules tested the throughputof the assembly.

Graduate student Darius Gallagher hasbeen working on evaluating the importanceof various sources of measurementuncertainty to the jet energy resolution.Undergraduate student Eric Benavidez hasbeen working with Wilson on design studiesof various ECAL arrangements. A particularemphasis has been the study of a hybridsampling ECAL, with tungsten absorberplates and active layers of both scintillatingtiles with wavelength shifting fiber readouts,and silicon pads. The silicon pads providethe high granularity while the scintillatorlayers provide timing information, frequentsampling, and affordable cost. A fullsimulation has been developed to investigate

various geometries. There is now a goodunderstanding of the relationships betweenthe calorimeter geometry configurations andsingle particle performance measures suchas energy and position resolution. This workis also providing benefits to studies by otherHEP groups (Kansas State, Colorado, SLAC,Oregon).

Graham Wilson and undergraduatestudent Eric Benavidez have commissioneda VME-based cosmic-ray test-stand dataacquisition system for studies of light-yield,uniformity and timing resolution of varioustile-fiber arrangements. Recentlyundergraduate Jonathan Van Eenwyk hasjoined this project.

Graham Wilson and graduate studentDarius Gallagher have started aninvestigation of the sensitivity of a linearcollider to the detection of supersymmetricpartners of the leptons. Of particular interestis the possibility inferred from cosmologicaldark matter data that the stau is nearly massdegenerate with the dark matter particle, thelightest neutralino. This leads to a difficult-to-detect, low-energy signature that hasimplications for the forward calorimeterdesign and, perhaps, the accelerator design.

An effort to develop and test radioantennas for use with the South Pole ultrahigh energy neutrino RICE detector hasresulted in a test beam run at Fermilab. AliceBean, with theorist John Ralston andundergraduate students James Snow andJoni Jorgensen, is also studying cosmic raysusing radio antennas at KU. Results fromthe test beam experiment are currently beinganalyzed. KU theorist Doug McKay, and gradstudents Scott Graham and Shahid Hussain,as well as undergrad Josh Meyers andexperimentalist David Besson, have alsohelped with this effort. The particle physicsgroup also maintains an ongoing particlephysics effort at the Cornell Electron StorageRing (CESR), including undergrads KarlByleen-Higley, Gary Graves, ShawnHenderson, and Jason Shea.

11

RESEARCH

Alrefae. For the past seven years, the grouphas been supported by the U.S. Departmentof Energy and the National Science Founda-tion and has been involved in several majoraccelerator projects around the world, suchas the LHC (Large Hadron Collider beingbuilt in CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland),the HERA Upgrade (Hadron Electron RingAccelerator at DESY, Hamburg, Germany),the Tevatron RUN II upgrade at Fermilab,and future upgrades of RHIC (RelativisticHeavy Ion Collider) at Brookhaven NationalLaboratory. During the last several years,the group’s research has been focused onthe beam-beam effect in storage-ringcolliders. In a storage-ring collider, the mo-tion of particles in one beam is perturbed atinteraction regions by the electromagneticfield of the counter-rotating beam.Thishead-on beam-beam interaction is a majorsource of the growth in beam size and limitsthe luminosity. One important result of theKU research is the discovery of a chaoticcoherent beam-beam instability due tohead-on beam-beam interactions. The onsetof the coherent beam-beam instability canresult in a significant beam-size growth andluminosity reduction. Such collective beam-beam instability has been confirmed inbeam-dynamics experiments in HERA. The

Particle Physics-Theory

The past year was a mixture of the newand the old. The newest event wasthe successful search for a new fac-

ulty member, recruited for a position in “par-ticle theory including applications in astro-physics.” Danny Marfatia will join us as anassistant professor. After graduating fromthe Indian Institute of Technology inKanpur, Danny earned an M.S. in physics atClemson and a Ph.D. in physics at the Uni-versity of Wisconsin, Madison, in 2001.Since then he has been a postdoc with theBoston University particle theory group,working on the role of neutrino physics inastrophysics and cosmology.

In the old part of the mix, the particletheory group continued its long standingtheme —particle physics in both laboratoryand astrophysical settings. The neutrino, the“particle of the turn of the century”,continues to be a favorite target for thegroup. The lowly neutrino has had a placeof prominence in particle physics recently,prompted by “mass and mixing” phenomena.The American Physical Society sponsoredseveral workshops during the past year tofocus the attention of nuclear-, particle-, andastro-physicists on the open problems in thefield. Doug McKay participated in the firstworkshop at Argonne Lab and joined the

working group “What can astrophysics andastronomy tell us about the neutrino?”, ledby KU undergraduate alumnus JohnBeacom. Doug contributed a piece on theultra-high energy neutrino frontier for thegroup’s report. The final version will serveto guide and inspire neutrino physicsresearch for the next 5 - 10 years.

John Ralston has also continued to wearhis experimentalist’s hat, collaborating withProfessor Alice Bean and undergraduatestudent James Snow on an experiment atFermilab to detect Cherenkov radiation fromproton induced showers in their home-builttargets. Several successful runs at Fermilabthis year have produced data that iscurrently under analysis. One of the targetsused is a wax plug, inspired apparently byJames’ hobby of raising bees!

The experiment by John and Alice is partof a background study for RICE (Radio IceCherenkov Experiment). As described inprevious Momentum reports (experimentslast so long!), RICE searches for radioemission from giant particle showers causedby ultra-high energy cosmic neutrinoscolliding with ice molecules in the Antarcticice cap. John, Doug McKay and graduatestudent Shahid Hussain worked on variousfeatures of the experiment this year. Shahidreported for RICE in February at the LakeLouise Conference on New Interactions,emphasizing the simulation work he has doneon the neutrino showers and the radio pulsesthey produce. He also reported there and atthe American Physical Society meeting in

phenomena observed in the HERA ex-periments agree remarkably well withthe theoretical predictions. In the caseof the Tevatron, since two beams aresharing the same beam pipe, seriouslong-range beam-beam effects resultfrom many non-localized parasitic colli-sions that are not in the interaction re-gions and are distributed around thering. This long-range beam-beam effectis the dominant problem that currentlylimits the luminosity and beam lifetimein Tevatron RUN II. In order to improvethe situation, the KU group is develop-ing a compensation scheme to controlthe long-range beam-beam effect in theTevatron.

An unnamed theorist

Jack Shi

12

RESEARCH

(Space PhysicsContinued from Page 6)2003 on the source mechanisms for theJovian X-ray aurora. Cravens continues toparticipate in the analysis and interpretationof Chandra X-ray Observatorymeasurements of Jovian X-rays.

Ina Robertson successfully defendedher Ph.D. dissertation in August 2003 and isnow a post-doctoral researcher with the KUspace physics group. She continues toinvestigate X-ray emission due to solar windcharge transfer collisions with neutrals inthe heliosphere and in the terrestrialmagnetosheath. She, Cravens, andProfessor Misha Medvedev are nowworking with scientists at NASA’s GoddardSpace Flight Center and at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics tounravel the detailed physical processesresponsible for this emission. Robertsongave an invited presentation in February atthe Physics of the Outer HeliosphereConference in Irvine, CA, and she gave acolloquium at the Goddard Space FlightCenter in June 2004.

Professor Misha Medvedev is alsocontinuing a collaborative project withCravens and Robertson on X-ray emissionfrom Mars and what it can tell us about thesolar wind flow around that planet. Thisproject has grown considerably and nowincludes studies of X-ray emission from theouter heliosphere as well as fromatmospheres of nearby stars. This opens thepossibility of remote studies of thecomposition and other parameters of stellarwinds and their local interstellar medium.

Together with Professor Adrian Melott,graduate student Brian Thomas, andcollaborators from the Geology Departmentat KU and from NASA, Medvedev has beenstudying how a gramma-ray burst (GRB)explosion occurring in our galaxy can affectlife and climate on Earth. They have foundthat the Ordovician mass extinction mighthave been caused by such a GRB.

Medvedev also continues his researchon the physics of accretion flows andcompact cosmic objects with strong gravity:black holes and neutron stars. In particular,he has discovered a new self-similar solutionfor a boundary layer that forms when hotaccreting gas settles onto a rapidly spinningneutron star. Such a boundary layer doesnot form in black hole accretion.

Medvedev continues his work on thephysics of gamma-ray bursters. He, alongwith collaborators from the InstitutoSuperior Tecnico in Lisbon, Portugal,continues the study of long-time evolutionof magnetic fields at collisionless shocks.He is also studying radiation mechanismsoperating at these shocks. Without fullunderstanding of these two crucialtheoretical questions, it seems impossibleto understand how gamma-ray bursts shine.

And finally, during the past year TizbyHunt-Ward, program assistant with thespace physics group, reorganized andmoved the group’s website from a local vmsmachine to one of the servers at theComputer Center. The new URL iswww.ku.edu/~kuspace/; this is alsoaccessible from the Physics Department’swebsite.

Denver at the beginning of May on histheoretical work with Doug on methods todetect hypothetical new physics interactionsof neutrinos that enhance their cross sectionsfor collision at extreme energies.

As always, the best hope for physics funis the discovery of something completelyunexpected. Meanwhile our theoristscontent themselves with the implausible andthe difficult.

(Astronomy:Continued from Page 6)one. The outstanding mystery concernedNGC 3680’s chemical composition — theirmulti-band photometric approach allowedthem to resolve that controversy and verifya metal content for NGC 3680 that is about30% depleted compared to the sun. Now thatthey are more sure about the exact details ofthe cluster and can compare it to moreappropriate stellar evolution models, theyhave been able to draw some conclusionsabout the fine details of stellar evolution afterthe main sequence phase and even after thehelium ignition that ends the first phase onthe red giant branch phase. The red giantbranch stars that seem to be betweensuccessive stages of being red giants alsoappear to have depleted lithium in theiratmospheres. Such depletion is a consistentsignal of greater and deeper mixing ofatmospheric gas in their recent evolution.Since other researchers have found somecontradictory behavior in similar clusters,these stars are not entirely out of the mysterywoods yet.

Steve Shawl’s contributions this pastyear have been otherworldly—other than“real” astronomy, that is. Most importantwas that his publisher reversed an earlierdecision not to publish a 5th edition of hisintroductory Discovering Astronomy. Withthe original authors relinquishing theirrights, he sought out and obtained two newcoauthors. One, Keith Ashman (Universityof Missouri at KC), had been an adjunct atKU for many years; he brings expertise inextragalactic astronomy and cosmology tothe project. Beth Hufnagel, with a PhD fromthe University of California at Santa Cruz is

a stellar astronomer with expertise inastronomy education research. As acommunity college instructor, she bringsexperience that can help gain a larger hold inthat large market. Her immediate contributionwas to write a new chapter on extraterrestriallife. The book is due to come out late in Fall2004 . In addition, Shawl worked to producea customized and somewhat updated versionof the 4th edition specifically for theUniversity of South Carolina, which will be alarge adopter of the book.

Saturn as viewed by the Cassinispacecraft on July 3, 2004.

13

FEATURE ARTICLES

Progress in astronomy, as in anyphysical science, is heavily depen-dent upon experimentation or, in the

case of astronomy, observation. Our under-standing of the Universe outside the solarsystem is almost exclusively the product ofthe light we receive from distant sources.The quantity and quality of that under-standing is ultimately constrained by thetools available to collect and analyze thesignals. Over its history, the astronomy pro-gram at KU has had limited access to state-of-the-art instrumentation, having to relyupon either home-built amateur telescopeslike the Pitt 27-inch or restricted observingruns obtained via the highly competitivetime-allocation process at the national ob-servatories or through the good graces ofother Universities. Over the last 40 years,sporadic attempts have been made to alterthis situation through discussions of col-laborative projects with other astronomyprograms both in and outside the Midwest.Unfortunately, the absence of financial sup-port coupled with the low priority of the as-tronomy programs by Universities withinthe region turned the second part of theKansas state motto (Ad Astra per Aspera—to the stars through difficulty) into almost aconstitutional imperative.

Starting in October 2003, a new era beganfor astronomy and astrophysics at KU. Thechange is the immediate product of over 15months of effort by a large group ofindividuals at four institutions, but ultimatelytraces its origin at KU to the dedicated facultyand staff who worked for decades to buildand maintain a quality undergraduateastronomy program, often under less thanideal conditions. The catalyst for the changeis the ULTRA Project (Ultra LightweightTelescope for Research in Astronomy), a $1.4million program. Funding has come from NSFvia the Major Research Instrumentationdivision, with additional support from KU,NASA/EPSCOR-KS, San Diego StateUniversity, and Composite MirrorApplications. The goal is the designing,

Astronomy goes forULTRA!

testing, and building of a 1-meter-class,research-quality, ultra-lightweight telescope.The prime focus of the project is a newtechnology developed by Composite MirrorApplications (CMA) of Tucson forgenerating telescope mirrors for opticalastronomy from composite, lightweightgraphite-fiber materials. In conjunction withthe Aerospace Engineering Department atKU, CMA is testing and refining thestructural properties of the composite mirrors,as well as the optical tube assembly forholding the primary and secondary mirrorswithin the telescope.

The value of the new process is easilyunderstood. A 1-meter mirror can be made inless than two weeks and, based upon ourcurrent design, the entire optical tubeassembly, primary and secondary mirrorsincluded, will weigh approximately 35 kg,more than an order-of-magnitude reductionfrom traditional glass and steel technology.The reduction in weight and time ofconstruction could have a dramatic impactupon all ground and space-based astronomy,especially the planned next generation of30-meter-class segmented mirror telescopes.

Design and testing has been underwaycontinuously at KU and Tucson since

October; the first 16-inch prototype shouldbe completed and observationally tested inearly fall with the collaboration of DartmouthCollege. After further refinements,construction of the 1-m telescope will beginat Mt. Laguna Observatory, in cooperationwith San Diego State University. Whencompleted in Fall 2005, the researchtelescope will be jointly run robotically andvia the WEB by KU and SDSU, with KUguaranteed approximately one-third of thetelescope time. This project and the resultingaccess to a research-quality telescope willproduce a dramatic change in the researchopportunities available to students andfaculty at KU. However, it also representswhat we regard as only one step in anongoing program to ensure that our studentsreceive even better preparation in the futureso they, and KU, can remain competitive inastronomy and astrophysics in the comingyears.

From the old and massive... to the new and light weight. Professors Wyman Storerand Henry Horak at the old 27-inch telescope. A 16-inch Composite Mirror Tele-scope.

14

FEATURE ARTICLES

In an editorial column published in theAugust 26, 2003 Lawrence Journal-World, President William Walker of Au-

burn University called for research that will“demonstrably promote economic develop-ment.” This attitude is particularly danger-ous to our country’s future, for it may causeus to reduce funding for that which willbring new technologies.

If we look to the 19th century, we canidentify research that led to importantmodern technology. To cite one example, theelectromagnetic research led by MichaelFaraday and James Clerk Maxwell gave usnow-familiar devices such as the electriclight, telephone, electric motor, radio, andtelevision. All this work was of no obvioussocial value at the time, and, in fact, Faraday’swork was questioned as useless by agovernment official.

To give another example, astronomersseeking to understand light coming from thestars built a database of spectra, which ledto the development by physicists of anabstract theory called quantum mechanics,and our understanding of atoms, makingmodern chemistry possible. This theory isalso at the basis of most new technologies

Blast From the Past

This article was written by M.S. gradstudent Katie Greene, who won a 13 weekapprenticeship as a summer intern inLondon for The Economist. This articlewas part of her application.

A new hypothesis claims gammaray bursts are responsible for

second largest mass extinction

The idea of earth’s imminent destruc-tion appeals not just to a doom say-ing few, but to almost everyone. It’s

the glamour of annihilation that explains themovie industry’s infatuation with extremedisaster films.

So imagine this scene. A star with themass of 100 suns sits in our galaxy. Itexplodes, then collapses into a black hole,which expels a jet of highly energetic gammarays (known as a gamma ray burst, or GRB)from its poles.

A GRB 10,000 light-years away that lastedjust 10 seconds might blind surface dwellersand ionize Earth’s atmosphere. The energyfrom the burst would tear apart nitrogen andoxygen molecules, smearing the planet innitrogen dioxide, a brown gas that is acomponent of industrial smog. The hazewould shield Earth from sunlight and triggera global temperature drop. Nitrogen dioxidewould also deplete the ozone layer, allowing

ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun tobombard Earth for about a year, until theozone recovered.

Such an event may have been responsiblefor the second largest mass extinction inEarth’s history, says University of Kansascosmologist Adrian Melott. Melott andcollaborators in the disciplines of physics,paleontology, and geology will propose thishypothesis, supported by preliminarycalculations for atmospheric radiation levels,in a forthcoming issue of the InternationalJournal of Astrobiology. They propose amodel in which a GRB is responsible for themass extinction at the end of the Ordovicianperiod 443 million years ago. The Ordovicianis distinguished by its diverse marine life,including its poster-species, the trilobite.The period also immediately precedes theemergence of land plants and insects. TheOrdovician extinction, one of the five majorextinctions, was marked by a loss of over100 families of marine invertebrates.

Previously, scientists had credited an iceage for the extinction. While an ice age didoccur around that time, the massive glaciersappeared somewhat abruptly and at a timewhen Earth’s climate was still generally quitewarm. Melott believes that a GRB could havequickly caused temperatures to fall,precipitating an ice age. Additionally, fossilrecords show that species of trilobites thatinhabited the plankton layer near the ocean’ssurface fared worse than their trilobitecounterparts that lived in more isolated areasand in deeper waters. The finding isconsistent with a GRB, as UV radiation wouldaffect the more vulnerable shallow-seacreatures, due to the decrease in radiationintensity with water depth.

It is the combination of a GRB rippingapart atmospheric molecules along withdamaging levels of solar UV radiation hittingEarth’s surface that gives this destructivescenario a one-two punch. Even so, Melottconcedes the hypothesis is not complete,and it awaits computer simulations ofatmospheric chemistry to bolster its efficacy.

In the meantime, the hypothesis iscreating a one-two punch of controversywith some scientists. Theories of mass

The following is a letter to the editor of theLawrence Journal-World written by Profes-sor Adrian Melott.

Research: Basic vs. Applied

Katie Greene

extinction fade in and out of vogue, andthere are many aspects of GRB research thatare without firm consensus amongscientists. For instance, the connectionbetween supernovas and GRBs has onlyrecently been observed, and the actualcause of the bursts is still unknown.

So is a nearby GRB in Earth’s future?Scientists say a damaging burst within ourgalaxy might occur once every 500 millionyears. And since the Ordovician endedroughly 443 million years ago, it shouldn’tbe long before the screenplay is written anda big name actor is cast in Mass Extinction6: Return of the Gamma Ray Burst.

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FEATURE ARTICLESSYMPOSIUM HONORSRETIREMENT OF TOMARMSTRONG

Former students, friends and col-leagues gathered to honor ProfessorTom Armstrong (aka TPA), who re-

tired from the Department of Physics andAstronomy after 35 years. The symposiumpresentations, on September 12 and 13,2003, were anchored by three invited speak-ers: Rob Decker of the Johns Hopkins Uni-versity Applied Lab and former Ph.D. stu-dent of Armstrong (Ph.D. 1979); StamatiosM. Krimigis, also of the Johns Hopkins Uni-versity Applied Physics Lab, and long-timefriend and colleague; and Dennis W.Hewett, Lawrence Livermore National Lab,TPA’s first Ph.D. student (Ph.D. 1973). Inaddition, there were presentations by thefollowing alumni of our department: DennisHaggerty, Ph.D. 1996; Joe Giacalone, Ph.D.1991; Doug Patterson, Ph.D. 2002; MonaKessel, Ph.D. 1986; Lucas Miller, B.S. Phys-ics, 2002; Ed Bell, Ph.D. 1989; Claude Laird,Ph.D. 1986; Yue Wu, Ph.D. 1989; AlexeiNikitin, Ph.D. 1998; Jerry Manweiler, Ph.D.1997; and Shawn Stone, Ph.D. 1999. Profes-sors Cravens and Medvedev also gavetalks, as did colleague Carol Maclennan ofLucent Technologies.

Many of TPA’s followers.

Social events included an open houseon Friday afternoon at FundamentalTechnologies, a party Friday evening at thehome of Professor Tom Cravens and his wife,Jean, and a Saturday evening dinner at theHereford House attended by approximately70 people.

Other alumni of the department attendingall or some of the activities were: Dr. MoncefBoufaida and family; Dr. Ina Robertson andhusband; Dr. Tim Duman and Michelle(Leonard) Duman; Colleen McKee andhusband; Chris Brull and wife; Dr. MikeHolmes; Laura (Jiang) Wu; Dr. ScottBrandon; and Dr. Pat Briggs.

based on lasers, miniaturized electronics,and of course computers.

A monk, Gregor Mendel, curious aboutwhy and how pea plants inherited flowercolor and other characteristics, laid thefoundation for modern genetics. This willhave increasing impact in the future,particularly in medicine.

What would have constituted “useful”research in the society of 1880? Any scientistwhose basic work had anything to do withthe formation of boiler scale in steamengines would have had an edge. Factorypower was usually belt-driven, so anythingin mechanics relating to belt-drive efficiencywould be big. The telegraph was clearlyimportant, so any coding work offering a new,more efficiently tapped-out replacement forMorse code would be targeted as useful.

Studies in buoyancy (and in producinghydrogen) would be extremely important, toprepare for the great 20th-century travelmode of balloons/dirigibles lying ahead.(Helium, the gas used now for safety reasonsin many balloons, is another discovery madein astronomy.)

We can never know what is strategic morethan a few short years ahead. We thereforeare likely to waste our money on “useful”research, as the society of 1880 would havedone, for the most part. Its usefulness lastsonly a few years at most.

On the other hand, the return on basicresearch is high — 28 percent annualinterest, according to a CongressionalBudget Office report. This includes the costof all the projects that come to nothing; thebig payoffs are so big that they change theworld forever.

It is natural for Dr. Walker to wish for anemphasis on research topics which are easyto explain to legislators as important. Wemust avoid the temptation to stop there, forthis shortchanges society.

We can do no less than take on the taskof explaining the value of basic research,which provides the possibility of learningtruly new things, and of defending the roleof researchers whose primary mission is todo it. “The man” in deep thought.

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FACULTY NEWS

Barbara Anthony-Twarog and BruceTwarog spent six weeks at the CerroTololo InterAmerican observatory in

summer 2003. They gave talks on the latestresults on precision photometry of openclusters, and the ULTRA light-weighttelescope project. Bruce gave a colloquiumat Catholic University in Santiago on StarClusters as Tests of Stellar and GalacticEvolution.

Hume Feldman was an invited speakerin the XVth RENCONTRES DE BLOISPHYSICAL COSMOLOGY: New Results inCosmology and the Coherence of theStandard Model 15th - 20th June 2003. Hegave a plenary talk “Velocity Fields” andanother talk “Optimal Moments” in theconference. He also attended the “GalaxyFormation” workshop at The HebrewUniversity of Jerusalem June 1-27, 2003 andgave a talk “Unbiased Analysis of PeculiarVelocities.” Then, he visited the CopernicusAstronomical Institute in Warsaw and thePhysics department in Cracow, Poland for aweek to do research and meet the natives.Professor Feldman also visited Los AlamosNational Lab for a week in January (11-17).He gave a talk “Velocity Fields as Probes ofthe Large Scale Structure in the Universe”.He was an invited speaker at a week-long(January 18-26) conference “The Distributionof Light and Mass in the Universe” in Aspen,where he talked about “Velocity Fields andLarge Scale Structure.”

Siyuan Han gave an invited talk“Measurement of Energy Relaxation Time inSuperconducting Flux Qubits” at theInternational Workshop on MesoscopicSuperconductivity and Spintronics inAtsugi, Japan and visited the KansaiAdvanced Research Laboratory’ssuperconducting electronics group in Kobe,Japan. He also gave an invited talk “EnergyRelaxation Time of rf SQUID Flux Qubits” atthe Quantum Technology Workshop inVancouver, Canada.

Misha Medvedev presented an invitedreview talk on “Radiation Processes inGRBs” at the GRB 2003 conference in SantaFe.

During the summer, Adrian Melott stayed

home and worked. His time was divided intoa number of projects: One was acollaboration with cosmologists atNottingham University (UK) on the explicitintroduction of phase information fromFourier analysis of large-scale structure inthe Universe. Another project involvedcollaboration with Professor Medvedev andChris Miller of Carnegie-Mellon, on thermalconduction in galaxy clusters. Twoundergraduate physics majors, HannahSwift and Stephen Floor, receivedUndergraduate Research Awards for thesummer and worked on statistical studiesseeking to find environment/morphologycorrelations with galaxy clusters. Thesestudents were also supported by an NSFgrant supplement for Research Experiencesfor Undergraduates.

Michael Murray began the summer 2003with 2 days at KU’s Center for TeachingExcellence followed by a stint as a visitingfellow at the Institute for Nuclear Theory inSeattle. He then went to Washington, DC topresent a progress report to the DOE onheavy ion physics in the CMS experiment.Then, on to CERN in Geneva to present aconceptual proposal for a Zero DegreeCalorimeter CMS collaboration. FinallyMichael went on to Delphi in Greece topresent the latest BRAHMS results at aworkshop on Heavy Ion Physics. In January,he gave a plenary talk at the Quark MatterConference in California.

Jeff Olafsen traveled to the APS FluidDynamics Meeting to present two talks, onewith G. W. Baxter on Molecular Chaos inGranular Gases and the other on a newpolymer-like folding dynamic in amacroscopic granular chain, work that isdone with undergraduate Ben Bammes. Thetalks were also presented at the APS MarchMeeting in Montreal. The polymer foldingpresentation was submitted as a video entryto the Group on Statistical and NonlinearPhysics (GSNP) first annual Gallery ofImages. The video won 3rd place for both itsscientific content and artistic presentation.

Linda Olafsen has been awarded$457,601 from Department of DefenseExperimental Program to Stimulate

Competitive Research (DEPSCoR) for theproject “High Efficiency, Room TemperatureMid-Infrared Semiconductor LaserDevelopment for IR Countermeasures.” Theobjective of the project is to study opticaland electronic properties of novelsemiconductor quantum well structures withthe ultimate goal of developing highefficiency, room temperature mid-infrareddiode lasers to be implemented in high powerarrays for infrared countermeasures. Theaward is targeted to enhance infrastructureat KU through acquisition of equipment andeducation and training of graduate students.Professor Olafsen is one of only 20investigators to receive a DEPSCoR awardthis year, and she is the only recipient fromthe State of Kansas.

Among highlights this year was JohnRalston’s visit to Nijmengen, theNetherlands, in August 2003 where he wasan invited lecturer at the Summer School onParticle and Nuclear Astrophysics. Helectured on the themes of ultra-high energycomic rays and neutrinos. John reports thatthe students were terrific, catching John’sspirit of “challenge authority” physics. InJohn’s opinion the young Europeanpostdocs and students are much more opento radical ideas and to taking chances thanin the past.

Sergei Shandarin attended NonlinearCosmology Program 2003 at Observatory dela Cote d’Azur in Nice France from May 17to August 17, 2003 sponsored by FrenchMinistry of Education, Programme Nationalde Cosmologie and Observatory de la Coted’Azur. He gave an invited lecture on“Dynamics of the Large-Scale Structure inthe Universe” and a talk on “Morphology ofthe Large-Scale Structure”. During summer2003 he also visited the Galileo GalileiDepartment of Physics at University ofPadua, in Italy, and the Department ofTheoretical Physics at University of Munichin Germany. In both places he gave acolloquium on “Dynamics and Morphologyof the Large-Scale Structure in the Universe.”In addition he gave six lectures on“Formation of the Structure in the Universe”at Galileo Galilei Department of Physics.

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Stephen Shawl has decided that after 32years it’s time to begin a phased retirement.He will teach in the fall semester only andthen pull a disappearing act to Tucson untilthe following fall. He accomplished a verylong-term goal in August 2003 by climbingthe Grand Teton (13,770 feet) in Wyoming.The first couple of hours were done only tothe light of the waning gibbous moon, withMars only a few degrees away. He wasinvited to give a talk at the 2004 summermeeting of the American AstronomicalSociety at a session dealing with studentresponse systems and peer tutors inintroductory astronomy courses.

Jack Shi received a three-year renewalof his DOE grant for research in nonlinearbeam dynamics in accelerators. The totalamount is $270,000.

Prof. Judy Wu gave an invited talk at theAir Force MURI (Multi-University ResearchInitiative) focused workshop on “KeyScientific Issues in Coated Conductors” heldin Madison, Wisconsin in June 2003. Shealso chaired a session and was one of theorganizers of the workshop. She attendedthe Department of Energy’s annual peerreview on its superconductivity for electricsystems program, directed by its Office ofElectric Transmission and Distribution.

Faculty of 1954: Paul Ott, J.D. Stranathan, Daniel Ling, Grant Pistorius, Ralph Krone,Gordon Wiseman, Robert Stump, Robert Friauf, and L. Worth Seagondaler.

FACULTY NEWS

Physics class of 1893 (from University Archives)

Shawl in 1972 - His first semester at KU.

Emeriti Faculty Frank Prosser, JackDavidson and Jack Culvahouse converseat the annual Departmental Picnic.

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FACULTY NEWS

Chris Fisher joins the department asour first faculty member in biophys-ics. He is excited about developing

the biophysics research community in thedepartment and creating ties and collabo-rations to other departments on campus. Hispresence in our department will provide usan opportunity to learn a new language, asdemonstrated below!

His general research interests includeboth the kinetics and the thermodynamicsof protein-protein and protein-nucleic acidinteractions as well as the development andimplementation of new biophysicalmethodologies and techniques for the studyof these phenomena. More specifically, heis interested in understanding how molecularmotors move and manipulate DNA. Researchat KU will focus on two such motors: theISW2 enzyme, a member of the ISW familyof chromatin remodeling proteins, thatmanipulates the 3-D topography ofeukaryotic DNA and the terminase enzymethat packages viral DNA.

Chris attended graduate school in theApplied Physics program at the Universityof Michigan in Ann Arbor. His thesisresearch centered on developingapplications of tryptophan triplet-statespectroscopy to studies of protein dynamics(such as protein folding, protein-proteinassociation, ligand binding, and others).After completing his graduate work in thesummer of 2000, he began postdoctoralresearch in the department of Biochemistry

at Washington University School ofMedicine in St. Louis, Missouri. At this timehe studied the translocation of severalprokaryotic helicases along single-strandedDNA. He was primarily interested inunderstanding the kinetic mechanism of howthese proteins move along DNA and howthey utilize the chemical energy derived fromthe binding and hydrolysis of ATP toperform this mechanical work. One of themore interesting results of this research wasthe demonstration that single-stranded DNAtranslocation was necessary, but notsufficient, for double-stranded DNAunwinding for these enzymes.

Chris met his wife, Melinda, in collegeand married shortly after he started graduateschool. They have two daughters, Katie andEmily Elizabeth, who was born August 21!They are very excited about their new life inLawrence.

New Faculty

Danny Marfatia was brought to KUto help bridge the gap between theimmensity of cosmology and small-

ness of the matter that particle physics dealswith.

He was born in Bombay, India andreceived his pre-graduate school educationin India. While not having a bachelor’sdegree(!), he earned his first degree at theIndian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. HisMaster’s thesis was titled “MathematicalFoundations of Quantum Mechanics” andwas concerned with the axiomatic Hilbertspace formalism of quantum mechanics andwith propositional calculus and theirconnection via projective geometry.

His doctoral work was done at theUniversity of Wisconsin, Madison with adissertation titled “New Aspects of Physicswith Extra Dimensions.” The work involvedconstraints on theories with large extraspatial dimensions from precisionmeasurements at colliders, the cosmologyemerging from such theories, and solutionsto Einstein’s equations corresponding tonetworks of higher-dimensional spacetimes.

Postdoctoral work was at Boston

Chris Fischer

Danny Marfatia

Chris Fischer

Danny Marfatia

University. His work included projects onneutrino physics, cosmology and to a smallerextent on collider physics. At BU, he and hiscollaborators embarked on a long series ofstudies on effects associated with having afinite neutrino mass, including howoscillations can resolve the solar neutrinoproblem, and effects on neutrino propertiesfrom a supernova explosion, neutrinolessdouble beta decay and cosmological darkmatter. He is also interested in the futuredetermination of neutrino parameters in longbaseline experiments with off-axis andsuperbeams, and the probe of CPT violationwith neutrinos and antineutrinos. In a reviewarticle, he and his collaborators summarizedthe astounding recent progress in thephysics of massive neutrinos. They alsoexplored the physics of the early universeconnected with the cosmic microwavebackground data from the WMAP satelliteand Big Bang nucleosynthesis, obtainingconstraints on models of inflation and theeffective number of neutrinos in the earlyuniverse. More recently, they placedcosmological bounds on neutrino massesusing Large Scale Structure data from theSloan Digital Sky Survey and 2dF (two degreeField) Galaxy Redshift Survey observations.

When not involved in physics, Dannyenjoys food and drink! He notes a specialfondness for Single Malts!

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FACULTY NEWS

Students often become angered whena professor is not in the office whenthe student comes by. Students, leg-

islators, and the general public are gener-ally unaware of the varied demands on fac-ulty time. In this article we wish to point outthe variety of ways in which some Physicsand Astronomy faculty have recently con-tributed to the College and the greater Uni-versity beyond their Departmental duties.

The Faculty governance system at KU isknown for its openness and inclusiveness.It is a shared system that is driven by thefaculty but inclusive of both classified (civilservice) and unclassified staff (such as non-faculty professionals), and students. Thegovernance system recommends policies andprocedures that affect faculty, staff, andstudents. The range of concern is large:calendars, grading policies, expenditures ofstudent tuition, teaching evaluation,basketball seating policies, and an infinitevariety of other questions.

Changes within the University oftenoccur at glacial rates. Part of it is because, asan academic institution, faculty membersenjoy talking! The slow pace also comesabout because most of our time is taken byteaching and research, and decision makingcommittees may not meet often.

Most of the real work is done in smallsubcommittees. This past year, ProfessorBarbara Anthony-Twarog was on theUniversity Council and chaired thesubcommittee on Organization andAdministration. This committee translates thedecisions of governance into the languageof the adopted codes of regulations. Theentire product of last year’s O&A committeework was the drafting of code for the FacultySenate Rules and Regulations to require thatdramatic changes in academic programs mustdemonstrate a reasonable degree ofconsultation and cooperation before beingapproved by academic units. While thissounds straightforward, this smallachievement took nearly 30 years to achievein a manner that was acceptable to allconcerned.

The main governing body is the SenateExecutive Committee (SenEx). It sets theagenda for the year by establishingcommittee charges and by setting the agendafor discussions and for the Councilmeetings. This past year, Professor StephenShawl was a member of SenEx, which had sixfaculty, 4 students, and one representativeeach of the classified and unclassified staff.Throughout the year SenEx meets andconfers with the Chancellor and the Provostso that all parties are aware of each other’sconcerns. Traditionally, SenEx holds weeklymeetings for 2-2.5 hours each. However, whenthey first met this year, they decided to tryto meet only every other week. That hopedid not last however, as the heavy work loadsometimes resulted in two meetings in aweek. That work load included a 5 monthdiscussion of faculty-staff tickets andseating for KU basketball—a topic close tothe hearts of many! More typical topics forconsideration included writing a policy forthe review of academic deans anddepartment chairs. Student government wasmoving to institute a controversial onlinecourse evaluation system that SenEx wasable to help improve through its discussions.The subject of the costs of college textbookswas brought to SenEx’s attention through aletter from a local bookstore and the concernof students and faculty. The over allexperience was gratifying, as it provided anopportunity for input at the highest levelswhile allowing for close working among asmall group of faculty and students.

Professor Bruce Twarog was theDepartment’s liaison (Faculty Ambassador)to the Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE).These faculty members serve to guide theCTE in its development of programs, tocommunicate with the faculty in theirdepartment, and advocate for teaching withintheir department.

Perhaps the most important input facultycan have in the realm of teaching is in thesetting of the curriculum. The University is(again) looking at its General Educationrequirements to determine how our studentscan be more successful at meeting the sixgoals that have been developed. Professor

Alice Bean is a member of the University’ssteering committee and chairs asubcommittee to think about the acquisitionof knowledge in the fine arts, the humanities,and the social, natural, and mathematicalsciences, and how students might integratethat knowledge across disciplines. They areproceeding by reviewing the current KUcurriculum and assessing its strengths andweaknesses, reviewing other universitymodels, and then making suggestions forimprovements to the KU curriculum asappropriate.

Another important faculty role is in thedecisions of appointment, promotion, andtenure. Professors Adrian Melott and RobinDavis have been involved in that in recentyears. Melott is on the committee in theCollege of Liberal Arts and Science. Thecommittee consists of nine faculty, three fromeach of the sciences, humanities, and socialsciences. The work involves reading files forall candidates for promotion and tenure.While extremely time consuming over a shortperiod of time, the work is interestingbecause it provides an opportunity to learnabout widely varying fields and about thefaculty in other departments.Recommendations of the various schoolsand colleges then go to the Universitycommittee, on which Robin Davis has satfor a number of years. This committee alsoreads the files and evaluates the decision ofthe previous committee before making itsrecommendation to the Provost. Theseevaluations are far from pro forma; reversalsin both directions have occurred at eachlevel.

A similar committee looks at applicationsfor sabbatical leave. Sabbatical leaves at KUare not automatic but are competitivebecause the Regents allow only 4% of thefaculty to be away in any year; thus, in 7years, only some 28% of the faculty canreceive a sabbatical. Professor SergeiShandarin has been serving on the CollegeCommittee on sabbatical leaves.

Thus, if faculty are not in their offices,they may be serving on one of the manyCollege or University committees that helpmake KU run. Wait and he/she will return!

Faculty Contributions to KU

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John W. LowryEnhancement Award

ALUMNI NEWS

John W. Lowry

We are pleased to announce the es-tablishment of the John W.Lowry Enhancement Fund in

Physics. Cathy and Jack Lowry establishedthe fund in memory of their son, John, whodied recently at his home in Los Angeles,CA. He was a graduate student in the de-partment in the early 1980’s. John did his un-dergraduate work in the KU Department ofMathematics, earning his degree in 1980. Hethen joined the Department of Physics andAstronomy, working with Professor TomArmstrong in the Space Physics program toearn his Masters degree in Physics in 1984.

John worked in the Space Physicsprogram during a time of great excitement asprobes were just reaching the outer solarsystem. At KU, the Space Physics group hadtaken over the old van de Graaff lab in thebasement and set up their own warren,pushing the Department into new computertechnologies to analyze the steady streamof incoming data. John wrote computerprograms that were needed to place theVoyager 1 and 2 Jupiter flyby observationsmade with the Low Energy Charged Particle(LECP) in the correct spatial relationship toJupiter’s magnetic field. Since the LECP

instrument observed the electrons the ionstrapped in this magnetic field, it was crucialto establish the directions that the observedparticles moved relative to this magnetic fieldand to pick out the correct magnetic fieldlines along which these particles moved.John was a contributor to the success of thespace group’s participation in the LECPinvestigation. He also assisted greatly invarious indirect ways in the dissertation workof Ed Bell, Mark Paonessa, and Gul Tariqwho were also in the space group along withJohn.

John also added greatly to a light-hearted, humorous, and enjoyableintellectual climate in the group. He was afrequent feature of the “Hotel Physica”established at Meadowbrook apartments asthe drop-in social center for physics andastronomy graduate students. He was animportant and valued member of theDepartment.

Upon graduation, John was hired byHughes Aircraft Corporation in their RadarSystems Division in Los Angeles, California.This Division of Hughes eventually becamepart of the Raytheon Corporation. Johnworked there for 19 years. His early trainingat KU prepared him well for his work in thisfield. He did research and development workon radar systems at Hughes/Raytheon, withmost of this work highly classified. His workwith Synthetic Aperture radar (SAR) wasespecially helpful in the efforts of ourCountry to win the Desert Storm War. Hehelped to develop radar technology thatcould identify targets as small as a pie panfrom an extremely high altitude. John wroteseveral scientific papers and a syllabus thatwas used daily by many of his colleagues asa reference guide for their department. Johnreceived numerous Achievement Awardsfrom his company. He also served as a mentorto several younger engineers as theyprogressed in their profession. One of John’sassociates wrote “John was and remains atechnical and personal inspiration. Hispublications will stand forever. His insightwill help the Company. His contributionshave made us strong”. Another (KentEdmonds) wrote “John always had a deep

sense of compassion for others and a greatsense of humor. He will be missed by many.”From a fellow Kansan and KU graduate.

Since early childhood, John was an avidreader. His personal library included over5,000 volumes ranging from the classics toPhilip K. Dick, Asimov to Stephen Hawking,as well as numerous scientific texts. He waswell versed in Latin and also studied Greek,French, Russian and Japanese. John hadcollected over 10,000 comic books and hadthem cataloged by name and author. His coinand stamp collections were extensive. He hadalso collected over 3,000 records, VCR tapes,DVD’s, Laser Disks and CD’s, with musicranging from the Beatles to Bach, Rock toOpera and movies from Charlie Chaplin toThe Matrix.

Those who knew John well, including hisKU friends, were aware of his compassionfor others and his great sense of humor. As aKU undergraduate, John served as a PatientEscort at the Baptist Memorial Hospital inKansas City, as Editor of the Naismith HallNewspaper, and as a Naismith Hall CouncilRepresentative.

The John W. Lowry Enhancement Fundwill be used to offer fellowship support toeither an entering or existing graduatestudent in the Department, with the recipientchosen by a selection committee. An annualgrant will be made based on the earnings ofthis fund. The larger the fund -- the greaterthe annual grant will be.

Please make your check out to KUEA, andspecify the John W. Lowry EnhancementFund. You may mail your contribution toThe Kansas University Endowment Asso-ciation, P.O. Box 928, Lawrence, KS 66044-0928. Or, you may contribute on-line atwww.kuendowment.org Your gift will goeven further if your employer has a match-ing gift program. For more information, callKathleen Brady, Endowment Senior Devel-opment Director for the College, at (785)832-7357, or toll-free at (800) 444-4201.

Tax-deductible contributionto the John W. LowryEnhancement Fund

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1990’sJohn Beacom (BS Physics 1991), who hadhis first publication with the cosmologygroup while and undergraduate in 1991, hasjust become an Assistant Professor ofPhysics at Ohio State University.

Joe Giacalone (PhD, 1991) became anAssistant Professor in the Department ofPlanetary Sciences at the University ofArizona in January 2004. Joe has been withthat department since early 1993, mostrecently as a research scientist. His researchinterests include solar and heliosphericphysics and theoretical and computationalastrophysics. Joe and his family are veryhappy to live in Tucson, which sometimesentails chasing javelina’s from theirbackyard at 2AM.

Juan Gomez (PhD, 1999) is teaching thisyear at Xavier University in New Orleans.He writes that he’s teaching introductoryphysics and labs: “I am actively workingwith the Physics Department’s Teacher-in-Residence, which is a program started byPHYSTEC. The goal is to have thedepartment work closely with a high-schoolteacher (who essentially is on sabbaticalfrom their high school job for a year) withthe idea of teaching them new techniquesin physics education that they can use whenthey return to the classroom. Thesetechniques are mainly based on taking a morehands-on, activity- and inquiry-basedapproach to teaching intro-level physics.”Juan also enjoys the French Quarter.

Ned Keller (PhD 1992) continues to teachmath at The King’s College, NY, a Christianliberal arts college that hosts around 120degree-seeking students (as well as an ac-tive ESL program) in the lower lobby (sub-basement) of the Empire State Building.Ned writes, “Most days I feel right at homejust as I used to in the ‘Empire Room’” whenthe Space Physics group was housed in thebasement of Malott. This semester the col-lege added a conceptual physics course toallow the students something besides biol-ogy to fulfill their lab science requirement.

ALUMNI NEWS1970’sTom Chester (BA Physics 1973) has retiredfrom Caltech after the completion of NASA’sTwo Micron All-Sky Survey. As is typicalof retired physicists, he is now meddling inanother field, in this case, botany.

Ron Snell (BA Astr 1973) is the currentastronomy departmental chairman atUniversity of Massachusetts. He visitedKU on a recent trip to his home town ofSalina.

1980’sLindley Johnson (BA Astronomy 1980)retired from the US Air Force as a Lt. Coland is now working for NASA in the SolarSystem Exploration Division at NASAHeadquarters in Washington. One of hisresponsibilities is the funding of researchon Near-Earth Objects; it is his office thatprovided funds to the NEKAAL (North EastKansas Amateur Astronomers League) forbuilding a new telescope around KU’s old27-inch telescope mirror.

Jounghun Lee (PhD 1999), who got herPh.D. with the cosmology group, has be-come an Assistant Professor at the KoreaInstitute for Advanced Study in Seoul.

Jay Lindgren (PhD Physics 1995) is HeadQuantitative Analyst for the Enterprise RiskManagement group at R. W. Beck, Inc., aconsulting firm that has been in business for62 years and has a niche helping the smallerplayers in the electric power market. His jobis to help clients understand and quantifythe risks they are taking by trading in theenergy commodity markets. Jay writes: “I’mstill solving partial differential equations onan everyday basis. Professor Cravens surehelped me get set up for this profession!Ten years after graduation and I’m still solv-ing the Fokker-Plank equation. I travel justenough that it’s still fun. I publish andspeak frequently, mostly for my clients, notfor my peers.” Jay and his family live in Den-ver.

Pamela Puhl-Quinn (PhD 1995) has re-cently moved to New Hampshire after sev-eral years in Germany. She works as a Re-search Scientist in the area of terrestrialspace physics at the Space Science Centerat the University of New Hampshire. Cur-rently she is focusing on ULF wave analysisand the response of the inner magneto-sphere to geomagnetic storms using theCluster data set. Cluster is a suite of 4 space-craft orbiting the earth. Each is equippedwith identical instrumentation (approxi-mately 10 instruments), and each has an or-bit and separation strategy designed tostudy key boundaries and plasma pro-cesses related to the transfer of mass andenergy from the sun into the earth’s mag-netic environment. She writes that she isvery happy with New Hampshire so far, as itis a beautiful state, but Kansas weather stillwins, hands down. (Some of us who live inKansas disagree with her positive opinionon Kansas weather.)

Ron Snell

Lindy Johnson with his ex astronomyteacher Steve Shawl.

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Alice L. BeanRobert C. & Margaret M. BearseDr. James G. BerrymanPatrick R. BriggsAmanda B. BuchholzRebecca C. ChakyJohn P. & Mary R. DavidsonGisela M. DreschhoffLaurence A. EichelCharles Lee Francis Jr.William G. & Neoma GalinaitisSharon A. GravesDean W. , & Cynthia Williams HaldersonGary E. & Kay Blauer HansonKevin J. HillJack G. HillsGerald E. & Dr. Margaret Cooper-HolmbergPhillip A. Hornung

Donor’s Hall of Fame

We are honored to acknowledgethe generosity of those whohave made donations to the

Physics and Astronomy Department Devel-opment Fund or the Tombaugh Observa-tory Fund during this past year.

ALUMNI NEWS2000’sJesse Atwell (BS physics, BS Astronomy2003) is now pursuing an MBA at NYU, butis still interacting with Jeff Olafsen’s lab at adistance, collaborating on a statisticalmodel for predicting what the market will tol-erate in pricing music CDs.

Ryan Kinser (BS physics, 2003) is now pur-suing a graduate degree in mathematics atthe University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Suruj Seunarine (PhD 2001) is a postdocat U. Canterbury. He represented the RICEexperiment at the International Cosmic RayConference in Japan in August 2003 andpresented two posters and a talk. These arein the Proceedings of the ICRC: “Limits onthe Ultra-High Energy Electron NeutrinoFlux from the RICE experiment”,“Simulations of the Radio FrequencySignals Produced by ElectromagneticShowers in Ice” and “In Situ Measurementof the Index of Refraction” (of ice at theSouth Pole). Co-authors on these papersinclude undergrads Karl Byleen-Higley,Jesse Drees, Josh Meyers and James Snowand grad students Will Chambers, Lori Perryand Scott Graham and faculty membersAlice Bean, Dave Besson, Doug McKay andJohn Ralston.

Brian Wilhite (B.S. Physics and Math 1998)is a postdoc with Robert Brunner at Illinoisand the National Center forSupercomputing Applications. He’ll beusing large datasets (Sloan, QUEST) tostudy optical variability of active galacticnuclei and hopefully, ultimately to usequasars as cosmological probes. He isexpected to receive his Ph.D. from theUniversity of Chicago this summer, and startat Illinois around September 1.

Richard F. HubbardBrenda S. & Lindley N. JohnsonGary W. & Susan Lord KrausChi Kin LamThomas W. LamingRichard G. Leamon & Yvonne LazearMatthew S. MarkeyLaurence R. McAnenyDouglas W. McKayRalph M. & Barbara Longfellow MoonJeffrey & Linda J. OlafsenJames D. PattersonJames A. PintarFrancis W. ProsserRaymond J. ShuRonald L. SnellBarbara J. Twarog & Bruce A. TwarogEsther Storer UtchenFred L. Wilson, PhD & Jimmie J. WilsonJeff A. Winger, PhDRandall R. Zombola

We are grateful for corporate matchesfrom The Boeing Company, MotorolaFoundation, and the Northrop GrummanFoundation.

Professor Judy Wu’s research team: Allen Dibos, Jessie Noffsinger,Jonathan Dizon, Roberto Aga.

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Keep in Touch!!Let your KU friends know what you’re doing…If you would like to hear from the Department more often, you might enjoy our bimonthly in-house newsletter, whichcontains more details of what individuals are doing throughout the year. You can obtain it on-line at the DepartmentWeb site (www.physics.ku.edu), or we can send you a copy if you write to Ms. Teri Leahy in the Department with the request to the address given below.

Please return to:Department of Physics and AstronomyMalott Hall1251 Wescoe Hall Dr., Room 1082Lawrence, KS 66045-7582

To submit a news item for next year’s Momentum, please complete and return the following form to the above address or e-mailto momentum@ku.edu

Name: ______________________________________________________________________Home address: _______________________________________________________________City: ____________________________ State:__________ ZIP: ________Degree and date: _____________________________________e-mail: ______________________________________________________________________News for the next issue of Momentum: __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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Professor Phil Baringer converses with EmeritusProfessor Nowhan Kwak at the AnnualDepartmental Picnic.

David, Thomas and Don Nieto and Adrian Melottall converse with Bob Curry: aka The BBQ Guru.

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Please help us do more!Your tax-deductible contribution to the Department of Physics and Astronomy will help us do things we otherwisecouldn’t. So, please make your check out to KUEA, and earmark it for the Department of Physics and AstronomyDevelopment Fund, the Clyde W. Tombaugh Observatory Fund or the John W. Lowry Enhancement Fund. Youmay mail your contribution to The Kansas University Endowment Association, P.O. Box 928, Lawrence, KS 66044-0928 or do it on-line at www.kuendowment.org. Your gift will go even further if your employer has a matching giftprogram. For more information, call Kathleen Brady or Rich Kaler, Endowment Development Director for the Col-lege, at (785) 832-7357, or toll-free at (800) 444-4201.

The University of KansasDepartment of Physics and Astronomy Malott Hall1251 Wescoe Hall Dr., Room 1082Lawrence, KS 66045-7582

Web site: http://www.physics.ku.edu

Editor: Stephen ShawlDesk Top Publishing: Teri Leahy

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