School of Humanities and Sciences


Showing 61-69 of 69 Results

  • Lauren Tompkins

    Lauren Tompkins

    Associate Professor of Physics

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsProfessor Tompkins’s research focuses on understanding the relationships which govern matter’s most fundamental constituents. As a member of the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), she utilizes the world’s highest energy person-made particle collisions in order to understand the mechanism that gives particles mass, whether or not our current model of elementary particle interactions is a complete description of nature, and if dark matter can be produced and studied in colliders.

    In order to search for the exceedingly rare interactions which may provide insight to these questions, the LHC will produce a blistering rate of 50 to 80 proton-proton collisions every 25 nanoseconds in 2015 and beyond. Professor Tompkins works on the design and implementation of custom electronics which will improve the ATLAS experiment’s ability to pick out the collisions which produce the Higgs bosons, dark matter particles and other rare events out of the deluge of ordinary interactions. Her group focuses on particles called heavy flavor fermions, the most massive particles not responsible for mediating interactions. Because they are so heavy, they may have a special connection to the origin of mass or physics beyond our current models of particle interactions.

    She is additionally a member of the Light Dark Matter Experiment (LDMX), a proposed experiment to produce and detect dark matter in the laboratory utilizing an accelerated beam of electrons.

  • John Turneaure

    John Turneaure

    Professor (Research) of Physics, Emeritus

    BioJohn received his PhD in physics from Stanford University. He later became a research associate in W.W. Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory. Following, he acted as an assistant professor of physics, senior research associate, and professor. Research interests include experimental and observational astrophysics and cosmology.

  • Robert Wagoner

    Robert Wagoner

    Professor of Physics, Emeritus

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsProbes (accretion disks, ...) of black holes, sources and detectors of gravitational radiation, theories of gravitation, anthropic cosmological principle.

  • Carl Wieman

    Carl Wieman

    Cheriton Family Professor and Professor of Physics and of Education, Emeritus

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsThe Wieman group’s research generally focuses on the nature of expertise in science and engineering, particularly physics, and how that expertise is best learned, measured, and taught. This involves a range of approaches, including individual cognitive interviews, laboratory experiments, and classroom interventions with controls for comparisons. We are also looking at how different classroom practices impact the attitudes and learning of different demographic groups.

  • Mason Yearian

    Mason Yearian

    Professor of Physics, Emeritus

    BioMason received his PhD in physics at Stanford University. Later, he served as an assistant professor, associate professor, and professor at Stanford. Past research includes developing detectors for X-ray and gamma ray astronomy, and work on the GRO/EGRET experiments. Mason also developed a computer-based curriculum for teaching introductory physics courses in high schools and universities.

  • Richard Zare

    Richard Zare

    Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor of Natural Science and Professor, by courtesy, of Physics
    On Leave from 10/01/2024 To 12/31/2024

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy research group is exploring a variety of topics that range from the basic understanding of chemical reaction dynamics to the nature of the chemical contents of single cells.

    Under thermal conditions nature seems to hide the details of how elementary reactions occur through a series of averages over reagent velocity, internal energy, impact parameter, and orientation. To discover the effects of these variables on reactivity, it is necessary to carry out studies of chemical reactions far from equilibrium in which the states of the reactants are more sharply restricted and can be varied in a controlled manner. My research group is attempting to meet this tough experimental challenge through a number of laser techniques that prepare reactants in specific quantum states and probe the quantum state distributions of the resulting products. It is our belief that such state-to-state information gives the deepest insight into the forces that operate in the breaking of old bonds and the making of new ones.

    Space does not permit a full description of these projects, and I earnestly invite correspondence. The following examples are representative:

    The simplest of all neutral bimolecular reactions is the exchange reaction H H2 -> H2 H. We are studying this system and various isotopic cousins using a tunable UV laser pulse to photodissociate HBr (DBr) and hence create fast H (D) atoms of known translational energy in the presence of H2 and/or D2 and using a laser multiphoton ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometer to detect the nascent molecular products in a quantum-state-specific manner by means of an imaging technique. It is expected that these product state distributions will provide a key test of the adequacy of various advanced theoretical schemes for modeling this reaction.

    Analytical efforts involve the use of capillary zone electrophoresis, two-step laser desorption laser multiphoton ionization mass spectrometry, cavity ring-down spectroscopy, and Hadamard transform time-of-flight mass spectrometry. We believe these methods can revolutionize trace analysis, particularly of biomolecules in cells.

  • Alfred Zong

    Alfred Zong

    Assistant Professor of Physics and Applied Physics

    BioI am an assistant professor in the Departments of Physics and of Applied Physics, and my group focuses on the study of light-induced non-equilibrium phenomena in quantum materials. To capture the ultrafast dynamics on the nanoscale, we develop a variety of techniques such as ultrafast electron diffraction and microscopy, attosecond transient absorption spectroscopy, and coherent diffraction imaging. These time-resolved probes are integrated with a complex sample environment such as in-situ strain and electrostatic gating in order to design, discover, and understand non-equilibrium phases of quantum materials.

    We are seeking motivated undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs to join the group. Please email me directly to discuss opportunities.

    For more details, check out the group website at https://zonglab.stanford.edu/