March 15- March 21, 2004 THE BOSTON AREA PHYSICS CALENDAR The Boston Area Physics Calendar is published weekly during the academic year by the Department of Physics at Boston University. You may send your announcement by e-mail (bapc-events@cosmos.phy.tufts.edu ) or FAX (617-353-9393). We cannot accept announcements by telephone. Entries should reach us no later than 5:00pm on the Tuesday of the week proceeding the week of the event. ENTRIES RECEIVED AFTER THE DEADLINE WILL NOT BE PUBLISHED. Monday, March 15, 2004 Monday, March 15, 2004, 1:30 pm Massachusetts Institute of Technology Plasma Electrodynamics Group Room 38-268 (enter through Room 38-266) 50 Vassar Street "Relativistic Quasilinear Diffusion in Axisymmetric Geometry" Professor Alain J. Brizard Saint Michael's College, Colchester, Vermont Monday, March 15, 2004, 2:00PM Massachusetts Institute of Technology Nuclear & Particle Theory Seminar Center for Theoretical Physics, Building 6, Third Floor seminar room ``On the fate of Lorentz symmetry in quantum spacetime" Giovanni Amelino-Camelia U Rome/INFN Refreshments will be served Monday, March 15, 2004 @4:15 p.m. Harvard University Department of Physics Colloquium Jefferson 250 "Transport in a Luttinger Liquid Leon Glazman Minnesota University tea will be served in Jefferson 450 at 3:30 pm Monday, March 15, 2004, 4:30 p.m. Brown University ARTHUR O. WILLIAMS LECTURE Barus and Holley 168, Small Wonders: The World of Nano Science" Professor Horst Stormer Columbia University Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies Host: Professor Charles Elbaum *Refreshments served at 4:00 p.m. Tuesday, March 16, 2004 Tuesday, March 16, 2004, 2:00 pm Massachusetts Institute of Technology Plasma Science and Fusion Center - Theory Group Room NW16-213 167 Albany Street "A Guiding-Center Fokker-Planck Collision Operator for Nonuniform Magnetic Fields" Professor Alain J. Brizard Saint Michael's College, Colchester, Vermont Tuesday, March 16, 2004, 2:30pm Tufts University Joint Tufts/CFA/MIT Cosmology Seminar Robinson 250 "Baryon Asymmetry, Dark Matter and Quantum Chromodynamics" Ariel Zhitnitsky University of British Columbia, Vancouver Refreshments served at 2:00pm in Knipp Library, Room 251 Tuesday, March 16, 2004, 4:00pm Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT Astrophysics Colloquia MIT Center for Space Research ,70 Vassar St, Cambridge, MA Recent Results from the Spitzer Space Telescope: A New View of the Infrared Universe Dr. Giovanni Fazio Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics *Refreshments are served at 3:45pm Tuesday, March 16, 2004, 4:00pm Brandeis University Martin Weiner Lecture Series, Physics Colloquium Physics Building, Abelson 131 "From microswitches to crawling snails: novel applications of thin films" Professor Anette Hosoi Massachusetts Institute of Technology Refreshments in Room 333 at 3:30pm Tuesday, March 16, 2004, 4:30 p.m.* Harvard/MIT Center for UltraCold Atoms MIT 26-214 Dr. Margaret Murnane JILA Title: "Multiphoton EUV Photonics: Attosecond Science and Applications" *Refreshments served at 4:00 p.m. Tuesday, March 16, 2004, 4:00pm Brandeis University Martin Weiner Lecture Series, Physics Colloquium Physics Building, Abelson 131 "From microswitches to crawling snails: novel applications of thin films" Professor Anette Hosoi Massachusetts Institute of Technology Refreshments in Room 333 at 3:30pm Monday, March 15th @4:15PM (refreshments at 4PM) MIT Nuclear and Particle Physics Colloquium (NPPC) Kolker Room , 26-414 MARC VANDERHAEGHEN William and Mary, and Jefferson Lab Two-photon Exchange Physics in Elastic Electron-proton Scattering "In recent years precision polarization measurements of elastic electron-proton scattering at large momentum transfers have yielded a ratio for the proton's electron to magnetic form factors which is at variance with the traditional Rosenbluth method, using unpolarized measurements. In this talk, we link this difference to two-photon exchange processes in elastic electron-proton scattering. This two-photon exchange correction at large momentum transfer is estimated through the scattering off a parton in the proton, and the process is related to the generalized parton distributions which also enter in other wide angle scattering processes. We shall show that these two-photon exchange corrections are able to quantitatively resolve the discrepancy between Rosenbluth and polarization data. Furthermore, a prospect will be given how to directly access this two-photon physics by using single spin asymmetries." Wednesday, March 17, 2004 Wednesday, March 17, 2004, 12 noon Brandeis University Condensed Matter Seminar Physics Building, Room 333 "Speed and Propagation of Diffusive Signals in Spatially Inhomogeneous Membranes" Dr. Douglas Martin Wednesday, March 17, 2004, 2:30 p.m. Harvard University Colloquium and NSEC Lecture Jefferson Lab, Rm. 250 "Spin Qubits in GaAs Nanostructures" Daniel Loss Basel Wednesday, March 17, 2004, 2:30PM (Note new time) Massachusetts Institute of Technology String/Gravity Theory Seminar Center for Theoretical Physics, Building 6, Third Floor seminar room ``Corrections to Volume Moduli and Inflation in String Theory" Boris Kors MIT Refreshments will be served Wednesday, 17 March 2004, 2:30PM* Brown University *Theoretical Seminar: B&H 555 To be announced * Prof. Massimo Porrati (New York U) Wednesday, March 17, 2004 3:00 PM MIT Room #36-156 " Theory of Chemical Reaction Rates" Professor William H. Miller University of California, Berkeley Thursday, March 18, 2004 Thursday, March 18th, 2004, 12pm Harvard University Department of Physics The Condensed Matter Theory Seminar Lyman 425 "Drag Reduction by Polymers in Turbulence" Prof. Itamar Procaccia Dept. of Chemical Physics, The Weizmann Institute of Science Thursday, March 18th, 2004, 1pm Harvard University The Condensed Matter Theory Seminar Department of Physics Cruft 319 "Drag reduction by Polymers in Turbulence" Prof. Itamar Procaccia Dept. of Chemical Physics, The Weizmann Institute of Science Thursday, March 18, 2004, 4:00 p.m. Brown University Condensed Matter Seminars Barus and Holley 190 "Structure and Dynamics of a Polymeric Sponge Phase" Professor Simon Mochrie Yale University Host: Professor Jay Tang Thursday, March 18, 2004, 4:00 pm Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Phillips Auditorium 60 Garden Street, Cambridge "Characterizing Extrasolar Planets" Sara Seager (Department of Terrestrial Magnetism) and "TBD" David Charbonneau (Caltech) * tea and cookies at 3:30 p.m. * Thursday, March 18, 2004, 4:15 p.m. Harvard University Duality Seminar Jefferson 453 "Tachyon effective action" Josef Klusen Masaryk University, Czech Republic Refreshments served in the High Energy Theory coffee area, 4th floor Jefferson, at 3:45 Thursday, March 18, 2004, 4:15 pm Clark University, Department of Physics, Colloquium Room N-105, Sackler Science Center "Overcoming entropic barriers in Monte Carlo simulations" Simon Trebst ETH Zurich Thursday, March 18, 4:15pm Massachusetts Institute of Technology Physics Colloquium Series Building 10-250 New Frontiers with Ultracold Gases Wolfgang Ketterle Massachusetts Institute of Technology Refreshments at 3:45pm, Building 4-339 Friday, March 19, 2004 Friday, March 19, 2:00 pm Clark University, Department of Physics, Colloquium Room N-105, Sackler Science Center "Wide and universal shear zones in granular materials" Denis Fenistein Leiden University Friday, March 19th, 4pm HARVARD UNIVERSITY Condensed Matter and Applied Physics Colloquium Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences Pierce 209 "Single-shot read-out of a single electron spin" Lieven Vandersypen Assistant Professor , Delft University of Technology