Sir Michael Berry, distinguished British physicist, renowned for his groundbreaking contributions to the field of quantum mechanics and wave phenomena has visited New Zealand as a James and Jean Davis Prestigious Visitor of the University of Otago.
Professor Berry’s work has had profound implications in various disciplines, including optics and condensed matter physics. He is perhaps best known for formulating the Berry phase, a fundamental concept in quantum mechanics that describes how the phase of a quantum state evolves when the system is adiabatically transported around a closed path in parameter space. This concept has not only enriched theoretical physics but has also found applications in areas such as molecular dynamics, quantum computing, and materials science.
Categories
Geometric Phases Old and New
Categories
Professor Michael Berry
Categories
Dr AnnMarie Oien
Evolution of a Physicist’s career: an example
1pm Tuesday 13th August 2024, Room G400, Science III
Dr AnnMarie Oien, 1996 graduate from Otago Physics, will cover her career arc and how a PhD in Atomic and Laser Physics eventually led her to retiring in the USA as a Technical Fellow in Agile Systems Engineering in the aerospace industry. However deeply our interests start in the world of physics, opportunities and adjacent curiosities crop up leading to new jobs and fields, all enabled by the meta-skills we first acquired in our physics degree.
About the speaker:
Dr AnnMarie Oien now lives in Colorado with husband Mark Phillips, and is a proud tennis captain, expert skier, occasional singer and pianist, and poor golfer.
Dr Oien is a good friend of the Department of Physics and a great supporter of the University of Otago, having served as the vice-president of the Alumni of University of Otago in America, Inc. She created the Oien Prizes in Physics and Energy, which are our most prestigious prizes for senior undergraduates.
Categories
Solar Tsunamis ravage earth
An extremely large “G5” geomagnetic storm occurred on Saturday 11 May 2024, leading to widespread aurora seen all over the country and all over the globe.
Extreme space weather can strike at any time, and New Zealand has to be ready. Professor Craig Rodger leads an international team of scientists working on making New Zealand’s energy infrastructure able to withstand large space weather events like Saturday’s geomagnetic storm. The Solar Tsunamis Endeavour Programme led out of the University of Otago Physics Department helped Transpower design their space weather response plan which was enacted for the first time during this event.
Professor Xiahong Feng
Dartmouth College
Global climate is influenced by the Arctic hydrologic cycle, which is, in part, regulated by sea ice through its control on evaporation and precipitation. However, the quantitative link between precipitation and sea ice extent is poorly constrained. This talk presents observational evidence for the response of precipitation to sea ice reduction and assesses the sensitivity of the response. Changes in the proportion of moisture sourced from the Arctic with sea ice change in the Canadian Arctic and Greenland Sea regions over the past two decades are inferred from annually averaged deuterium excess (d-excess) measurements from six sites. Other influences on the Arctic hydrologic cycle, such as the strength of meridional transport, are assessed using the North Atlantic Oscillation index. We find that the independent, direct effect of sea ice on the increase of the percentage of Arctic sourced moisture (or Arctic moisture proportion, AMP) is 18.2 ± 4.6% and 10.8 ± 3.6%/100,000 km2 sea ice lost for each region, respectively, corresponding to increases of 10.9 ± 2.8% and 2.7 ± 1.1%/1 °C of warming in the vapor source regions. The moisture source changes likely result in increases of precipitation and changes in energy balance, creating significant uncertainty for climate predictions.