Masterclasses 2015
Masterclasses will be given by David Awschalom, Alan Guth, Sharon Glotzer and Heinrich Jaeger. All masterclasses are confirmed.
Please note the masterclasses take place on Monday 19 January, 19.30-22.00 hours.
On the Monday evening, prior to Physics@FOM Veldhoven 2015, the programme committee is organising four FOM masterclasses. These offer PhDs and young postdocs a unique opportunity to receive an introduction to their discipline, and several hot topics in this, from top researchers. Just 25 places are available for each masterclass.
You can register for the masterclasses on the meeting registration form. Please make sure that the topic of your thesis and your seniority in the PhD-programme are filled out. If more PhD-students apply than can be accommodated by the masterclass, preference will be given first by topic, then by seniority, then by random selection.
Abstracts of the masterclasses of Physics@FOM Veldhoven 2015 are given below. After the conference, video recordings of the masterclasses will be available in the Archives.
Masterclass 1: Alan Guth
Abstract will follow soon.
Masterclass 2: David Awschalom
'Creating and controlling spins in semiconductors'
Eighty years since Dirac developed the quantum theory of electron spin, contemporary information technology still relies largely on classical electronics: the charge of electrons for computation and magnetic materials for permanent storage. There is a growing interest in exploiting spins in semiconductor nanostructures for the manipulation and storage of information in emergent technologies based upon spintronics and quantum logic. We provide an overview of temporally- and spatially-resolved optoelectronic measurements used to generate, manipulate, and interrogate electron and nuclear spin states in the solid state. In particular, we discuss progress toward scalable quantum systems based on quantum control and coherent coupling between single spins and optical photons for technologies beyond electronics. These demonstrations include advanced materials synthesis techniques, gigahertz-rate coherent manipulation, nondestructive single spin readout, nanofabrication of spin arrays, operation of a single nuclear spin quantum memory and recent material discoveries that represent progress toward the integration of spins and photons for future quantum information processing.
Masterclass 3: Sharon Glotzer
'Soft matter quasicrystals'
Quasiperiodic crystals with long range rotational symmetry but no translational repeat unit have been known in metallic alloys since they were first reported in 1984. Yet only in the past ten years have such complex structures been reported in soft materials, comprised of, e.g., polymers, macromolecules, nanoparticles and colloids. In nearly all of these soft matter systems, quasiperiodicity is entropically stabilized, and any interactions are essentially short range. Interestingly, despite the fact that most metallic quasicrystals exhibit icosahedral symmetry, no icosahedral quasicrystals have been reported for soft matter systems. Instead, primarily 12-fold rotational symmetries are found, with recent, occasional reports of 8-fold, 10-fold, 18-fold, and even 24-fold planar quasicrystals. In this talk, we discuss common features and unifying principles for the self-assembly of soft matter quasicrystals, and we present results for the first icosahedral quasicrystal to be thermodynamically self-assembled in a computer simulation. This icosahedral quasicrystal is robust over a range of parameters, and is obtained from a single particle type interacting via a short-ranged, oscillatory pair potential that may be achievable in systems of colloidal spheres. The icosahedral quasicrystal we report is surrounded in parameter space by clathrates, important for deep sea methane storage, and other new crystal structures never before reported in a one-component system.
Masterclass 4: Heinrich Jaeger
'Granular materials by design'
Granular materials are large amorphous aggregates of discrete, individually solid particles. Despite seemingly simple ingredients, such aggregates exhibit a wide range of complex behaviours that defy categorization as ordinary solids or liquids. This includes non-Newtonian flow behaviour and collective 'jamming' transitions. One of the key issues has long been how to link particle-level properties in a predictive manner to the behaviour of the aggregate as a whole. However, for actually designing a granular material, an inverse problem needs to be solved: for a given desired overall response, the task becomes finding the appropriate particle-level properties. This master class discusses new approaches to tackle the inverse problem by bringing concepts from artificial evolution to materials design. These results have general applicability and open up wide-ranging opportunities for materials optimization and discovery.