On the flanks of the Sierra Negra volcano in Central Mexico, nearly 14,000 feet above sea level, there is a giant field of water tanks. Three hundred water tanks, to be exact, occupying a space that's roughly the size of three football fields. 

UMD alumnus Daniel D'Ippolito, who received his PhD in plasma physics in 1975, died on April 3, 2016, in Erie, Colorado. His AIP obituary can be seen here.

JQI Fellow Gretchen Campbell has been named the new NIST Co-Director of the Joint Quantum Institute, effective April 1, 2016. Campbell joined the JQI in 2009 and is also a UMD Adjunct Associate Professor and APS Fellow. In recent years she has received various accolades for her atomtronics research, including the APS Maria Goeppert-Mayer award. Campbell succeeds JQI Fellow Charles Clark, who has held the position since 2011. JQI Fellow Steven Rolston will continue as the UMD Co-Director. Rolston, on behalf of JQI, would like to thank Clark for his service. "I would particularly like to highlight Charles’ leadership and active engagement with the public in the promotion of quantum physics. The JQI will continue to benefit from his dedication." Rolston continues, "Gretchen is an outstanding research colleague and I look forward to working with her in her new role as Co-Director."

Scientists studying an exotic material have found a potential application for its unusual properties, a discovery that could improve devices found in most digital electronics.

Under the right conditions the material, a compound called samarium hexaboride, is a topological insulator—something that conducts electricity on its surface but not through its interior. The first examples of topological insulators were only recently created in the lab, and their discovery has sparked a great deal of theoretical and experimental interest.

Now, a team of physicists at JQI and the University of California, Irvine, may have found a use for tiny crystals of samarium hexaboride. When pumped with a small but constant electric current and cooled to near absolute zero, the crystals can produce a current that oscillates. The frequency of that oscillation can be tuned by changing the amount of pump current or the crystal size. Read More

Professor Sylvester James Gates participate in a debate on whether the Universe is a simulation.