I do not know what I may appear to the world but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing
On the seashore and diverting myself and now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier
Shell than ordinary whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered
Before me
Sir Isaac Newton was a physicist
he shared with other physicists an innate curiosity about how things work a
fascination with how the physical universe behaves
the way it does
Presumably you to share this curiosity and fascination
And are about to embark on the final stage in your formal education as a physicist graduate school
My name is Michael Paisley. I'm a solid state experimentalist
The purpose of this presentation is to show you or my colleagues
And I in the Department of Physics at North Carolina State University have to offer
We think that you'll find that we have a broad array of exciting research
opportunities and at the same time offer a solid curriculum in classical and modern physics
Now I can't very well
Show you what we have to offer here on the Outer Banks of the North Carolina coast we'll have to go about 200 kilometers
To the campus of NC State
North Carolina State University
Is one of the nation's major universities large?
complex national and international in scope
Our physics department has a faculty of 35 and a graduate student enrollment of 70
We're located here
Near the center of the NC State campus, which is the academic home to nearly 25,000 students?
Now most of the research done by NC State physicists is done here, and it encompasses a broad range of disciplines
including
Atomic physics
Now in this laboratory we have to go past a few safety interlocks
To find a Cockroft Walton accelerator, that's used in this atomic collisions laboratory
The ions created in this accelerator shoot out through this hole in the wall
And into a target chamber where an optical sensing device is used to determine the charge state of the species
That's actually created in the collision itself
Let's see
This experiment provides a description of an atom and the instant after its created at a charge transfer process
It provides a picture if you will of the creation of an atom
Accelerators provide the backbone of a number of experiments that NC state physicists are interested in
And these range in size from the room filling Cockcroft walton
Then initiates these collisions to the continuous electron beam accelerator facility or sea bath
Now the path of the electrons at CBA will be long
longer than six football fields
When it's completed
Seebeck will be an electron accelerator don't like a racetrack over 600 meters long
And it'll be located just across the Virginia state line
Some of the physicists deeply involved with the experimental results will be coming from see there are theorists like Steve cotton
Our theoretical high energy nuclear program is investigating the production of strange quarks
Using high-energy electrons which will be provided by C bath after it's constructed
We study fields not football fields, but actually nuclear force fields using a theory called quantum chromodynamics
And we perform large-scale
calculations describing the production of quarks when electrons interact with protons
Our predictions when compared to future C bath experiments will answer a number of important questions
including the possible existence of an exotic six quark object called a dye berry on
The smoking gun signature involves detecting a K on which is a meson containing the strange quark
Experimentally this will require a gigantic target chamber room by half the size of this football field
housing enormous spectrometers
Which are actually large magnets these magnets are so long from about 10 to 30 yards
That only about 20% of the produced chaos statistically survived to reach the end of the spectrometer
That's because the cans lifetime is so short that even moving near the speed of light it only travels about four yards before decane
That's about from here to
Here
Other NC State physicists are working on accelerators that are already producing beams
Like this one at the Triangle University nuclear lab or ton here nuclear
Experimentalists like Chris Kuehl study the nature of time itself
They ask whether for microscopic events. There's a difference between time running forward and time running backward
Now in their studies. They use a deuteron beam, which comes down this pipe
And into a deuterium gas cell
Polarize neutrons are produced which passed through the hall me and crystal
The neutrons are counted in the neutron detector located over there
The home iam crystal is cooled to a hundred Miller Calvin by dilution refrigerator
We test the time reversal invariance by rotating the angle of this holmium sample
The rotation is achieved by stepping mode and located at the top of the Christ
The polarized beam used in this experiment comes from this tandem
vandegraaff which was designed and patented by an NC state physicist
Now all of the accelerators used by our faculty aren't in, North Carolina
consider for example this synchrotron at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York in this facility
It's the x-ray and ultraviolet radiation produced by the beam that are the reason for the existence of the accelerator
This is the National synchrotron light source
NC State's du who's here work with Professor Dale Sayers
This facility is a synchrotron dedicated to the use of electromagnetic radiation
called synchrotron radiation
That emerges from the relativistic electrons undergo acceleration
The radiation is an intense nearly white source of x-rays
We use the x-rays in a technique. We developed called extended x-ray absorption fine structure or excess
With excess we probe the local atomic structure of materials such as semiconductors
glasses
catalysts and biological materials
The information we obtain the raw data is complicated
requires considerable analysis to show how subtle features in an x-ray absorption spectrum
Can be used to unlock secrets about atomic structure?
Most of the data analysis involved with this experiment takes place back on the NC State
campus when the data taking part of the experiment is complete
But before we continue with our campus facility. Let's look at one more sink a car
In Gaithersburg, Maryland
This synchrotron is used by a team of NC State atomic physicists in an electron impact photo emission
Experiment John Risley and his colleagues study how an electron goes through an atom or a molecule?
But an electron passes to an atom and gives up light in the extreme ultraviolet region
We measure this light using this apparatus over here in
fact this apparatus was designed and built by graduate students at North Carolina State University
Every few months we bring this machine here to the National Bureau of Standards in Maryland to calibrate the
sensitivity of the detector at different wavelengths using synchrotron radiation
The radiation enters the spectrometer from this beam line
Since it is a very narrow ray. We have to rock our spectrometer about the infant's lip to fully illuminate as grating
This rocking is crucial to our calibration procedure
We use it to calculate the electron impact for emission cross sections and thereby gain a better
understanding of the excitation of atoms and molecules
Down here you can see how this experiment makes its way from Maryland
back home to North Carolina
It's an experiment on wheels
It spends most of its life here on the NC State campus
All of these experiments involve accelerators and all generate an enormous amount of data, which has to be analyzed
usually on a computer
Students here are connected to a network of computers and address a variety of problems ranging from eckesachs
to supernova remnants exploding stars
This is Steve Reynolds a theoretical astrophysicists who makes these pretty pictures
We do radio observations using the National Radio Astronomy Observatory
Very Large Array a radio telescope in New Mexico after a great deal of computer processing
We make images like this one a radio picture of the remnant of a supernova of 1006 a V
the brightest ever observed the earth
What you see?
represents synchrotron radiation
from relativistic electrons and magnetic field produced somehow by the blast wave
We make mathematical models of the non thermal population of electrons and predict what we might observe if our models are correct
This image shows the result of one calculation by studying the differences between an image of the actual remnant
and our model
We can better understand the nature of electron acceleration in these fast chocolates
Thanks a lot Steve
You know to me one of the fascinating aspects of being part of the research program here at state
Is that in one lab some of my colleagues are studying supernova remnants now?
These are objects so incredibly fast one can hardly conceive of them
Well just around the corner
Others are depositing
microscopic specimens atom by atom
This is the solid-state physics lab. I'm Jan's get Sina
Here samples are prepared using a technique. That's called molecular beam epitaxy or MBE
Using MBE one has control in one dimension that of depth of the atomic structure of the sample
Now this ability is sometimes referred to as atomic
architecture
When one is an atomic architect one has to be very careful about cleanliness
Because on an atomic scale it doesn't take very much dirt to contaminate a sample
This particular MBE system was designed and built by NC State physicist
This system uses a laser to
Assist in the production of a structure called a super lattice
Now the laser comes from an adjacent laboratory where it can also be used
As a tool to analyze samples after they're made
for instance when used in a pulsed mode
One can study the response of samples to light 1st of 10 to the minus 12 seconds. That's a picosecond
This reveals information about the electronic structure of the samples
And over here in this cryostat the sample can be cooled and then illuminated
To determine the luminescence and therefore the defect structure in the sample itself
In all of his studies from the preparation of super lattices to the study of time reversal invariance
From the theory of can decay to probing supernova remnants
Understanding is the goal and curiosity is the driving force
Now we haven't talked about all the research programs here at NC State not by a longshot
Others deal with his basic a topic is general relativity and field theory
Some develop materials that could be used in solid state lasers for communications applications
Research in our department spans these extremes and
includes quite a number of programs in between
To show you a more complete picture of the research opportunities we have for graduate students
We offer you this brochure
Graduate physics at North Carolina State University now in it we discuss each one of our research programs in turn
grouping them under such general categories as
Atmospheric physics and astrophysics
Atomic physics
Educational physics
Nuclear physics
Plasma physics
Relativity field theory and theoretical mechanics and solid state in condensed matter physics
And
If the brochure doesn't answer some of your questions about our research programs
Please feel free to call any of the professors whose research programs are described a better yet schedule a visit
Of course we realize that other considerations come into play in choosing a graduate physics program
We thought you might like to see what it's like to be a graduates doing here
We offer a masters and a PhD
For the MS in addition to course and research requirements an oral examination before a committee of three
Professors has to be presented the defense of the thesis a large majority of our masters students complete their degree in two years
The ph.d. Program has no language requirement and no formal course requirements
but by the time one considers the effect of the department's qualifying examination the graduate school requirements and
Departmental policies a core curriculum is fairly closely defined
Perhaps the most important requirement for a PhD is the successful completion of the qualifying exam?
Most students take this exam at the end of their second year in the program
the graduate school at NC State gets into the picture with a minor requirement of for courses
Which are usually taken after the qualifying exam is successfully passed?
The final requirement is the defense of a thesis before a committee of four professors
research leading to a thesis generally takes two to three years after the passing of the qualifier so a
typical program takes four to five years
But all these facts and figures can't tell you what life like a graduate student is like and to do that
We have to go to the source
This is Brian Davidson an NC state student for Massachusetts was working on his ph.d
Hi
I've been a graduate student here for three years, and I'm currently working on my doctorate thesis
My first year at NC State that was a teaching assistant, and that's a department requirement
But now I'm a solid-state theorist working with Gary Locke offski. This is my roommate David sue
When I first came to North Carolina State I was on a fellowship from the microelectronics Center of North Carolina
Our physics department offers a few scholarships, and all those who come here should check into those
Brian and I both have cars. They're really necessary to get around the Rolly in a Research Triangle area
They're also great to have for visiting the beach and the mountains which are a few hours drive in each direction
East and west of here as far as the weather is concerned
I'm from Seattle, and I find that the change in weather is is very large on the other hand
What I like about Raleigh is the summers are nice and warm and the fall time in the spring times are extremely enjoyable
Once in a while. You know wintertime it does snow and I love to get out my skis and run around the hills
Both David, and I have received excellent training here at the Department of Physics at NC State coming to NC State
Was the right choice for both of us it may be worth checking to see if it's the right choice for you
Now that we're almost completed with our program. Let me show you that our department has only just begun
The campus that's been the heart of the NC State community for a hundred years has recently doubled in size
And the plans for the new campus are ambitious and exciting as a research. I've already shown you
The first building on the Centennial Campus has already completed and in it
Physicists are embarking on a new program
They're studying the physics of the material removal glasses
Here micro raman spectroscopy is employed to determine the stress of surfaces like germanium
In a machined year on a single point diamond turning machine
Raman spectroscopy
Is an optical probe of atomic structure I?
Focus into a smallest spot as they can that is there a diffraction limit of light using an argon laser?
NC state physicists can actually map a stress profile
inside a single dual of this machine surface a surface that as far as the eye can tell is perfectly smooth or
optically flat
Microscopic pictures of these surfaces show that on the atomic scale the surface is not flat
These pictures of the machine surfaced by the way are made with a scanning tunneling microscope
the first of these small and deceptively simple devices
run a Nobel Prize for to industrial physicists
With this model bill here. We're able to look at machined surfaces with atomic scale resolution
This new campus is a sign of vitality in a future even more promising than our past
Future generations of graduate students will do their research in buildings yet to be built
We invite you to take a good hard look at our research programs isn't if you want to study something like
time reversal invariance
or
electron impact photo emission or
Supernova remnants or any of the other fields investigated by physicists in our department
And now we've come full-circle
both geographically and conceptually
We've shown you a variety of ways you can satisfy your curiosity
while at the same time becoming a productive and inventive physicist
Forest physicists, we all are as Isaac Newton suggested like children fascinated with how things work
