Events

Problems 5,6: Friday Morning
Problesm 7,8: Friday Afternoon

Crystalline silicon is in many respects an ideal absorber material for photovoltaics, but wafer fabrication is both expensive and energy-intensive. Film crystal-silicon solar cells employ significantly less silicon, but so-called “light trapping” must be used to sufficiently absorb red and infrared photons in order to achieve the U.S. Department of Energy's 13-16% module-efficiency goal for 2020.

Oxide film growth is thought to be an effective way to harness the wide range of physical properties exhibited by transition metal oxides and complex oxides for technological purposes. Epitaxial growth allows the greatest depth of understanding to be gained because of the highly crystalline nature of the films. The most popular epitaxial growth methods are pulsed laser deposition (PLD), molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), magnetron sputtering (MS) and chemical vapor deposition (CVD).

The inclusion of research into a student's education - even at the undergraduate level - is one of the hallmarks of a high quality education. Computational physics encompasses a variety of topics, tools, and modes of thinking that may well enliven, enrich, and expand a physics curriculum that the author views as becoming narrower and more self-absorbed.

Cavity-Enhanced Absorption Spectrometry has proved to be a valuable analytical method for trace gas quantification. We will present an overview of the technology and its application to environmental sensing, fundamental research, and industrial problems. Specific topics will include greenhouse gas monitoring, water isotope determination for hydrological applications, airborne deployments, deep-sea gas measurements, and spectroscopy. Potential future applications will also be discussed.

Should physics departments offer special physics courses for teachers? If so, why? how? Should physics faculty integrate physics and literacy learning in such courses? If so, why? how? Should physics faculty integrate physics and literacy learning in ALL courses? If so, why? how? These issues will be discussed in the context of Physics 111, a course designed for prospective elementary and middle school teachers. Students explore physics and learning in ways that prepare them to engage children in learning science. The emphasis is on questioning, predicting, exploring, and discussing.

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is a method to simulate a
desired probability distribution via constructing a Markov chain whose
stationary distribution is the one we are looking for. Mixing time
describes the rate of convergence of a Markov chain to its stationary
distribution. We will give examples of Gibbs sampling algorithms (also
known as Glauber dynamics). We will explain how strong stationary time
and coupling are used to obtain bounds on mixing time. We will also
discuss new approaches to coupling method and their applications.

In the context of providing an effective capstone experience in experimental process design, with funding from NSF and the Intel Faculty Fellows Program, we have developed two virtual process laboratories, the Virtual Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) laboratory and the Virtual BioReactor laboratory. In a virtual laboratory, simulations based on mathematical models implemented on a computer can replace the physical laboratory. Since real systems do not deterministically adhere to fundamental models, random and systematic process and measurement variation are added to the output.

Electronic structure calculations of materials are increasingly useful nowadays with new algorithms and computational methods, and advances in solid state theory. Many properties of materials can now be determined directly from first-principles calculations, providing new insightful and critical information in physics and materials science. Today’s talk will focus on two topics, Diluted Magnetic Semiconductors (DMS) for spintronics and semiconductor nanostructures for hot carrier solar cells.