Gravity and Astrophysics at UMiss

The Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Mississippi invites applications for a post-doctoral research position within the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) group. The initial appointment is for one year, with renewal for a second year contingent on continued funding and satisfactory performance.

The successful applicant will be expected to reside full-time at the LIGO Laboratory in Livingston, Louisiana. He/she will focus on detector characterization and commissioning of the Advanced LIGO (aLIGO) instruments, development of new analysis tools for use in future aLIGO science runs, as well as educational and public outreach activities within the LIGO Science Education Center.

Interested applicants should send a C.V., publication list, and a brief statement of their research interests by email to:

cavaglia@phy.olemiss.edu

or by ordinary mail to:

Dr. Marco Cavaglia
Department of Physics and Astronomy
The University of Mississippi
University, MS 38677-1848 USA
T/F +1(662)915-7642/5045

Applicants should also arrange to have three letters of recommendation sent by e-mail or to the above address. The deadline for applications will be January 14th, 2013 but early applications are encouraged.

The University of Mississippi is an EEO/AA/Title VI/Title IX/Section 504/ADA/ADEA Employer. Applications from women and members of underrepresented minority groups are strongly encouraged.

Join science enthusiasts at Lusa Pastry Café for our next Oxford Science Café. Dr. Greg Tschumper, Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Mississippi, will present “Chemistry without Chemicals: An Introduction to Computational Quantum Chemistry”

Computational quantum chemistry utilizes physics, mathematics, and high performance computing rather than laboratory experiments to study the chemistry of molecules. Quantum mechanics, rather than classical mechanics, is required to correctly describe the behavior of electrons. As such, Newton’s equations of motion are effectively replaced with the electronic Schrödinger equation for atoms and molecules. Solutions to the Schrödinger equation tell us about the electrons in an atom or molecule and, thereby, provide insight into the chemistry, in much the same way that computers can provide solutions to Newton’s equations of motion in order to predict the trajectory of a projectile.

When: Tuesday, November 20, 2012, 6pm - 7pm.

Where: Lusa Pastry Cafe’, 1120 North Lamar Ave, Oxford, MS 38655

Cost: Free!

Oxford Science Café: Monthly conversations about the science we know and the science we don’t know. Everyone is invited, and children are welcome! Like us on Facebook.

The Gravitation, Astrophysics, and Theoretical Physics group at the University of Mississippi will host the Gulf Coast Gravity Meeting on April 19-20, 2013. For more details, please visit the conference website.

The GCGM is a regional meeting that brings together researchers in all areas of gravitational physics from the south-east region of the US. The past two editions were at Louisiana State University (GCGM5, 2009) and Florida Atlantic University (GCGM6, 2011). This is the second GCGM organized by Ole Miss (the first one was GCGM4, 2008).

There is no registration fee. Students are warmly encouraged to participate. The Blue Apple Award, sponsored by the APS Topical Group in Gravitation, will be awarded to the best student presentation. To register, simply send your name, affiliation, talk title and a short abstract as soon as possible to the following email address:

gcgm7 [at] phy [dot] olemiss [dot] edu

The same email address can be used for all inquiries related to the conference. We obtained financial support from the Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) Events Sponsorship Program. Please say explicitly in your email if you are a student or postdoc and if you would like to have travel support; we will divide the available amount (which is quite limited!) between all students who request it, and if funds are still available we may be able to provide partial support also for postdocs. We will post more information on this page as the meeting dates get closer.

We are looking forward to seeing you in Oxford next Spring!

Our recent Physical Review Letters paper and the companion Physical Review D article are nicely covered by Edwin Smith for Ole Miss News.

The article received media coverage from New Scientist, phys.org, Science Daily, the Physics Today blog, the Portuguese newspaper Expresso and the Italian website Gaia News. It was also featured on the front page of the APS website and as an APS Physics Synopsis.

The idea is that ultralight bosons with nonzero mass can produce a “black hole bomb” - a strong instability that would extract energy from the black hole very quickly and spin the hole down. However we do observe spinning black holes in the Universe. These observations can be used to set bounds on the mass of hypothetical massive photons. With this technique we constrained the mass of the photon to be about one hundred times smaller than the previously accepted bound.

Students from Tougaloo college visited the Department of Physics and Astronomy on 9/25/2012. Besides meeting our faculty they took a walk around campus (including a tour of the National Center for Physical Acoustics and of the Center for Manufacturing Excellence) and heard about career opportunities in physics and other STEM disciplines. This visit was supported in part by Emanuele’s NSF CAREER Award.

This is a picture of the whole group, including amazing Dr. Donald Cole (watch this video!), around James Meredith’s statue. This is a special year for Ole Miss: we are commemorating the 50th anniversary of the enrollment of James Meredith with a series of events on Opening the Closed Society.

The building you can see in the back is the Physics Department (Lewis Hall).