The Spallation Neutron Source is the world’s most powerful pulsed neutron source. The driver for the neutron source is the ~1 km long, 1.4 MW SNS accelerator, which contains simultaneously the world’s first (and only) superconducting proton linear accelerator, and the world’s highest intensity proton storage ring. This talk will introduce the fundamental concepts of modern acceleration, and review how these techniques are implemented in the SNS accelerator. Additionally, a few of the prevailing beam physics challenges associated with acceleration and storage of very high intensity proton beams at the SNS will be discussed.

Recently there has been a lot of excitement generated by the possibility of realizing and detecting Majorana fermions within the arena of condensed matter physics and its potential implication for topological quantum computing. Although already at the end of the twentieth century emergent Majorana end-states were shown to exist in a theoretical model of a spinless p-wave superconductor (Kitaev) chain, it was only a decade later that proposals to experimentally realize such a model emerged. These were motivated by the discovery of topological insulators that ushered a new era of so-called symmetry-protected topological phases but also stemmed from existent studies of hybrid superconductor-ferromagnet systems that form the basis of another highly active area of superconducting spintronics. At the heart of these proposals are ways to judiciously use spin-orbit coupling in artificially designed hybrid settings containing conventional s-wave superconductors to effectively create topological superconductors. Making sense of the corresponding experiments requires employing and developing complementary theoretical frameworks to fundamentally comprehend the out-of-equilibrium transport behavior in these systems. I will outline the steps we have taken in that direction and the questions that remain to be answered. Refs: K. Sun, N. Shah, Phys. Rev. B 91, 144508 (2015); D. Roy, C. J. Bolech, N. Shah, Phys. Rev. B 86, 094503 (2012); D. Roy, C. J. Bolech, N. Shah, arXiv: 1303. 7036.

Refreshments will be served in CP179 at 3:15

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Dr. Fikile Brushett from the MIT Energy Initiative will be presenting a seminar titled: Realizing Low Cost Electrochemical Energy Storage through Tailored Redox Active Organic Molecules.

Faculty Host: Susan Odom

Kristen will discuss some old and new combinatorial games in this presentation for her qualifying exam.

A reception will follow the talk, in the same location, from 5:30-6:30 pm.

"Unique Electrochemical and Optical Properties of Metal Nanoparticle Assemblies"

Prof. Francis Zamborini, University of Louisville, Department of Chemistry 

http://louisville.edu/chemistry/directory/faculty/zamborini

Thursday, November 5th, 4 pm

Room 203,  Erikson Hall (directions: http://ukcc.uky.edu/cgi-bin/dynamo?maps.391+campus+0050)

host: Prof. Doo Young Kim

This seminar is funded by NSF EPSCoR award 1355438.

http://www.ukalumni.net/s/1052/semi-blank-noimg.aspx?sid=1052&pgid=6720…

You must register to attend this event. Go to the above link to register!

TIME TBD