The department will share good news and plans for the future, followed by a Q&A session with faculty, staff, and students.

Raising the superconducting transition temperature (Tc) to a point where applications are practical remains one of the most critical challenges in condensed matter physics today. Recent advances in sulfur hydrides have renewed hope of reaching room temperature superconductivity, though the extremely high-pressure requirement limits their practical applications. In this talk, I will show our work on an alternative route to achieve high-temperature superconductivity. By the epitaxial growth of single-layer superconductors on tailored substrates, the superconducting Tc can be enhanced through interfacial interactions optimized to enable 1) charge transfer doping and electron-phonon coupling, 2) coupling to quantum fluctuations of the substrate, and 3) dynamic control via light-matter interactions. Using FeSe grown on SrTiO3(001) substrate as an example, I will show that growth on different terminations of the SrTiO3 substrate can enable the control of charge transfer doping and, in turn, superconducting Tc. Similarly, the substitution of isovalent sulfur (S) or tellurium (Te) in FeSe, equivalent to applying positive (negative) chemical pressure, can turn the interfacial atomic-scale geometry that controls the strength of electron-phonon coupling, thus the superconducting Tc. Finally, I will show that UV light can lead to enhanced superconductivity in the FeSe/SrTiO3, which is also persistent. These findings indicate that epitaxial Fe-chalcogenide heterostructures are a highly tunable quantum system and shed light on the mechanism of high-temperature superconductivity in Fe-based superconductors.

My research focuses on understanding the implications of the Standard Model of particle physics in the formation of the basic building blocks of nature. This model describes three of the four fundamental forces of nature. The opaquest of these is the strong nuclear force which is responsible for the formation of all atomic nuclei. We know that this force is fundamentally described in terms of the theory of quarks and gluons, which is known as quantum chromodynamics (QCD). My research focuses on the development and implementation of novel mathematical and computational techniques to study the emergence of nuclear phenomena directly from QCD. In this talk, I review some of the key ideas driving the field of nuclear physics.

Core-collapse supernovae and neutron-star mergers produce copious amount of neutrinos, which impact evolution of these astrophysical sites as well as the element synthesis they may host. Collective oscillations of these neutrinos represent emergent nonlinear flavor evolution phenomena instigated by neutrino-neutrino interactions in astrophysical environments with sufficiently high neutrino densities. In this talk, after a brief introduction, it will be shown that neutrinos exhibit interesting entanglement behavior in simplified models of those oscillations. Also attempts to study this behavior using classical and quantum computers will be described.

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Since the times of Henry Cavendish and John Mitchell, the strength of gravity has been measured by comparing it to the reaction of a calibrated mechanical spring. While in the last 60 years planetary measurements (with natural and artificial bodies) have provided remarkable accuracy at large distance, measurements in the lab have continued to rely various incarnations of the good old mechanical springs, in many cases resulting in superb experiments and results.

In this talk, I will explore a number of drastically different techniques recently developed specifically to tackle the short distance regime, where many theories suggest something exotic may be happening. This will be a trip into AMO, high resolution nuclear spectroscopy, and neutron scattering. While science results are gradually appearing, I hope to convince the audience that, as is often the case with new techniques, a new and exciting array of questions and applications are also emerging!

Join us for UT Physics Honors Day as we recognize outstanding students, faculty, and staff.