Events During the Week of October 12th through October 19th, 2025
Monday, October 13th, 2025
- Plasma Physics (Physics/ECE/NE 922) Seminar
- Title to be announced
- Time: 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
- Place: 2241 Chamberlin Hall
- Speaker: Jan Egedal, UW Madison
Tuesday, October 14th, 2025
- Graduate Program Event
- How to Finish
- Time: 12:30 pm - 1:00 pm
- Place: 5280 Chamberlin
- Speaker: Sharon Kahn, Grad Program Manager
- Abstract: Join for this 30 minute workshop to help you prepare to finish your PhD. All are welcome, but if you are planning to finish in the next 6-9 months, I recommend that you attend!
- Graduate Program Event
- How to Prelim
- Time: 1:00 pm - 1:30 pm
- Place: 5280 Chamberlin
- Speaker: Sharon Kahn, Grad Program Manager
- Abstract: Join for this 30 minute workshop to help you prepare for your Prelim Exam. All are welcome, but if you are planning to prelim in the next 6-9 months, I recommend that you attend!
- Black and Brown in Physics
- BBiP Hispanic Heritage Month Celebration
- Time: 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm
- Place: Chamberlin 5310
- Abstract: The Black and Brown in Physics (BBiP) student organization would like to invite you to our celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month this upcoming Tuesday, Oct 14th at 2 PM in Chamberlin 5310. During the event, we will hear a presentation from our very own Treasurer, Miguel Castelan Tanner on the history and evolution of food in Mexico and over the broader Mesoamerican region. In addition to the talk, we will also be catering lunch from Estacion Inka (Peruvian-Latin restaurant) with different veggie and meat options. We do request that people who are planning to attend in-person join both parts of the event as our speakers put a lot of thought and effort into their presentations.
If you are interested in attending the talk online, you can do so using the following Zoom link:
We hope that you will join us for a wonderful celebration of culture and history! Wednesday, October 15th, 2025
- Department Meeting
- Time: 12:15 pm - 1:15 pm
- Place: B343 Sterling
- Speaker: Kevin Black, UW-Madison
- Host: Kevin Black
Thursday, October 16th, 2025
- Preliminary Exam
- Dielectric Loss in Superconducting Qubits
- Time: 12:30 pm - 2:30 pm
- Place: B343 Sterling
- Speaker: Spencer Weeden, Physics PhD Graduate Student
- Abstract: Superconducting circuits are leading candidates for realizing quantum bits ("qubits"). To build a useful quantum computer, it is necessary to understand and mitigate energy relaxation in these qubits. Currently, energy relaxation is dominated by amorphous oxide layers residing at circuit interfaces. Here we study energy relaxation as a function of qubit frequency and time for various qubit geometries. We compare our experimental results with Monte Carlo simulations, and develop a model that describes energy relaxation due to defects residing at the substrate-air interface and along the Josephson junction leads.
- Host: Robert McDermott
- Astronomy Colloquium
- Witnessing the End of Star Formation in Galaxies, a Post-Starburst Story
- Time: 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
- Place: 4421 Sterling Hall
- Speaker: Prof. Ann Zabludoff, University of Arizona
- Abstract: While astronomers are now detecting very early galaxy formation and tracing galaxy evolution over a Hubble time, we remain baffled by the present-day dichotomy between disky galaxies that are forming stars and spheroidal galaxies that are not. The key is to find galaxies in transition from one class to the other, preferably in the nearby universe where we have access to an abundance of spatially resolved and multi-wavelength data. We have now identified thousands of such "post-starburst galaxies" whose dynamics, stellar populations, star clusters, and morphologies are consistent with recent, dramatic evolution. This evolution often arises from galaxy-galaxy interactions and is connected in complex ways to the galaxy's central, supermassive black hole and newly formed stars. For reasons that we are working to explain, these galaxies are the preferred sites for stellar tidal disruptions by supermassive black holes, a surprising link between sub-pc and kpc scales reminiscent of the black hole-galaxy bulge mass relation. Regardless of the physical mechanism that drives it, the preference for certain host galaxies is a valuable tool for rapidly classifying these rare astrophysical transients, especially in the era of advancing AI and the Vera Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time.
- Host: Nicholas Stone
Friday, October 17th, 2025
- Thesis Defense
- Studies of Higgs Boson Self-interaction via Higgs Boson Pair Production and the Search for New Resonances with Prior-assisted Anomaly Detection in the ATLAS Experiment
- Time: 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
- Place:
- Speaker: Chi Lung Cheng
- Host: Keith Bechtol
- Physics Department Colloquium
- Title to be announced
- Time: 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
- Place: Chamberlin 2241
- Speaker: Bart Ripperda, Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics
- Host: Ke Fang