Events

This talk will begin with a primer on solar cell basics including how one deduces the maximum energy conversion efficiency that is possible for an ideal (single junction) solar cell. I will then compare crystalline silicon solar cell technology with the leading thin film based technologies. Finally, I will examine one particular method that my research group has found to be useful for characterizing the electronic properties of thin-film semiconducting materials.

Magnonic crystals attract special attention in view of their applicability for both fundamental research on linear and nonlinear wave dynamics in artificial media, and for signal processing in the microwave frequency range. We have concentrated our efforts on the experimental and theoretical investigation of one-dimensional magnonic crystals which can be realized as a spin-wave waveguide whose properties change periodically in space along the spin-wave propagation direction.

This seminar is offered for 1 credit as Introduction to Research, PH607, Section 4, CRN 24127. It is scheduled in Winter term only! New graduate students and graduate students who have not joined a research group should register for credit. Drop-ins by other interested parties are welcome.

Dark matter is widely anticipated to be composed of
particles beyond the Standard Model. I will discuss the
astrophysical evidence, experimental and observational constraints,
and some theoretical ideas on what dark matter could be.

We develop a quantitative description of giant asymmetry in reflectance, recently observed in semicontinuous silver films. A developed scaling-theory-based technique adequately explains the spectral properties of semicontinuous composites, as well as provides insight into the origin of an experimentally observed absorbance anomaly in the vicinity of percolation threshold.

This seminar is offered for 1 credit as Introduction to Research, PH607, Section 4, CRN 24127. It is scheduled in Winter term only! New graduate students and graduate students who have not joined a research group should register for credit. Drop-ins by other interested parties are welcome.

Heisenberg’s Uncertainty principle and tree growth? Planck’s law and global warming? Ergodic hypothesis and meteorological towers? Odd pairs? The discipline of Environmental Physics takes fundamental laws and principles well-known and studied in physics and places them in the context of what’s surrounds us – our environment. Their application allows us to answer a broad spectrum of questions ranging from the basic energy and mass exchange between the atmosphere and the vegetation to highly complex interactions between landuse change and the predicted Earth’s climate.

This seminar is offered for 1 credit as Introduction to Research, PH607, Section 4, CRN 24127. It is scheduled in Winter term only! New graduate students and graduate students who have not joined a research group should register for credit. Drop-ins by other interested parties are welcome.

Multilayer reflective boundaries used to guide and resonate light impart reflective phase shifts that depend on both angle of incidence and polarization. In cavities, these phase shifts can have a large effect on the spatial and polarization patterns of the eigenmodes, creating completely new structures. Here I discuss two new families of modes found in simple dome-shaped cavities. Both families owe their existence to derivatives of the boundary phase shift with respect to incident angle.

Tremendous progress has been made recently in the development of
magnetic Heusler compounds specifically designed as materials for
spintronic applications [1]. While problems in the field of
spintronics remain, the use of half-metallic Heusler compounds
provides a prospect for novel solutions.
Heusler compounds can be made with high spin polarization and high
Curie temperature as well as high spin injection efficiency, either
very low or high damping, tunable magnetic moment (low and high
magnetic moments can be realized), and tunable anisotropy. There is,

This seminar is offered for 1 credit as Introduction to Research, PH607, Section 4, CRN 24127. It is scheduled in Winter term only! New graduate students and graduate students who have not joined a research group should register for credit. Drop-ins by other interested parties are welcome.

The rapid melting of the Pine Island Glacier (PIG) has been attributed to ocean melting. Specifically, this ocean melting is attributed to currents and tides pumping Circumpolar Deep Water (CDW) into the ice shelf cavity. To illuminate the role of tides in the melting of the PIG and the circulation and mixing at the ice shelf front, a time series of yo-yo CTD (Conductivity, Temperature, and Depth) data collected in the PIG outflow region was analyzed. The water column in the region consisted of two primary layers, a meltwater layer exiting the ice shelf cavity over a layer of CDW.

Everyone is welcome to attend the first annual physics department open house.

The first hour from 4-5pm will be a colloquium in wngr 153 led by a group of faculty members, addressing: What a physics major entails, What kind of jobs a physics degree prepares you for, Undergraduate research opportunities available within the physics department, Current ‘hot topics’ in physics being researched by OSU physics faculty and students.

Bill Cowell is a PhD candidate in John Wager's group in Electrical Engineering. His talk will focus on tunneling devices built at OSU that use amorphous metal technology to achieve ultra-thin tunnel barriers.

http://eecs.oregonstate.edu/matdev/students.html

This seminar is offered for 1 credit as Introduction to Research, PH607, Section 4, CRN 24127. It is scheduled in Winter term only! New graduate students and graduate students who have not joined a research group should register for credit. Drop-ins by other interested parties are welcome.