screenshot of Bulletin of APS March Meeting

Watch my talk at the March Meeting Thursday 9:12 am central time

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Tomorrow (Thursday 3/18) I’m giving my talk at the March Meeting!

R20.00005: Field-induced freezing in the unfrustrated Ising antiferromagnet
Thursday, March 18, 9:12 AM–9:24 AM CDT
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Abstract:

We study instantaneous quenches from infinite temperature to well below Tc in the two-dimensional (2D) square lattice Ising antiferromagnet in the presence of a longitudinal external magnetic field. Under single-spin-flip Metropolis algorithm Monte Carlo dynamics, this protocol produces a pair of metastable magnetization plateaus that prevent the system from reaching the equilibrium ground state except for some special values of the field. This occurs despite the absence of intrinsic disorder or frustration. We explain the plateaus in terms of local spin configurations that are stable under the dynamics. Although the details of the plateaus depend on the update scheme, the underlying principle governing the breakdown of ergodicity is quite general and provides a broader paradigm for understanding failures of ergodicity in Monte Carlo dynamics. See also: Iaizzi, Phys. Rev. E 102 032112 (2020), doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.102.032112

*Note: The views expressed here are the speaker’s, and do not necessarily represent the positions or policies of the AAAS STPF Program, the US Dept. of Energy, or the US Government.

Follow this finely crafted link to a dedicated page with more information about this work.

Life changing tips for screen sharing with Keynote/Zoom

I just stumbled across these on the internet and they are both great. These are for Keynote (on macs) but there are probably equivalent settings on Powerpoint.

1. If you want to be able to switch apps while in presentation mode (e.g. to see the Zoom window). Look at this guide on the Zoom documentation. There is also a setting where you can make your cursor visible at all times so you can use it to point at things on your slides.

2. If you want to play your slideshow in a window (so it doesn’t take up the whole screen). Go into this mode first, then share the keynote window from Zoom. (Downside: you won’t be able to see your “presenter view” from keynote, just the slides at they appear to others.

Particle physics experiments are millions of time more powerful than they were 40 years ago

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I am currently reading Beamtimes and Lifetimes, Sharon Traweek’s excellent anthropological study of the culture at particle physics laboratories in the 1970s when I stumbled upon a remarkable fact. The event rate of particle colliders has increased by a factor of 10 million between the 70s and 2016.

According to this 1976 SLAC report [1], the Large Aperture Solenoid Spectrometer (LASS) could record 100 events every second. That certainly sounds like a lot, but by contrast, by 2016 the LHC was producing 1 billion proton collisions per second [2]. That is 10 million times the rate as ~40 years ago (and at much higher energy) [3]. That is remarkable!

[1] P.F. Kunz, The LASS hardware processor, SLAC-PUB-1723 (March 1976)
[2] S. Charley, LHC smashes old collision records, Symmetry Magazine (September 2016)
[3] The caveat here is that these rates probably shouldn’t be compared apples-to-apples like this, since the LHC doesn’t record 1 billion events per second, and there are other complicated factors.

Check out these FECS sessions at the March Meeting!

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The APS virtual March meeting is just around the corner! Although we are not meeting in person, FECS will spare no effort on ensuring a meeting that is as successful as before. We are hosting the following three invited sessions to highlight the contributions from early career scientists in science, industry, and international collaboration: 

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How to merge ICS files for bulk import of calendar events

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Have you ever wanted to add a bunch of events to your calendar all at once? If you have a bunch of individual calendar invite files (.ics), there’s no way to select a bunch of them an import them in one go (at least not in the Apple or Google calendars). But by poking around in the terminal, I figured out a way to do it!

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This week: the APS Annual Leadership Meeting (free registration)

The APS Annual Leadership Meeting will be taking place this week on Thursday 2/4 and Saturday 2/6. This is usually an in-person meeting in DC, so registration is usually limited to the leadership of APS Units, but this year it’s virtual and they have extended registration to all APS members for free (it might be free to nonmembers, but I am not sure).

I attended last year and it was an extremely valuable look at the work that APS does to advance physics, from organizing conferences to interacting with the congress and federal agencies to advance policies to strengthen scientific research. That includes obvious things, like most science funding, and less obvious things, like ensuring an adequate supply of liquid helium.

Register now for free!

New section of my website: Resources

I have to admit, a draft of my new Resources page has been sitting around for more than year. I realized last week that it just needed a little bit of work to clean it up. It’s definitely a work in progress, but I think there are some useful links in there. The main sections right now are on mental health, diversity and accessibility, but I will be adding more content over time.

If you spot any problems or dead links, please let me know. And if you have any ideas of links or resources that I can add, that’s great too!

FECS APS March Meeting Mini Grants

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Application deadline: January 15, 2021 11:59pm EST
Apply now!

The 2021 March Meeting will be held completely online. In order to support early career physicists, FECS is running a one-time “mini grant” program to cover the cost of registration (up to $165). Note: in order to receive that low rate, you must register for the meeting by the early bird deadline of January 25, 2021.

To be considered, applicants must be recent PhD recipients (past 5 years), present a poster or talk at the meeting, and be current members of the APS Forum for Early Career Scientists (free to join, link below). Women, underrepresented minorities and candidates who can clearly demonstrate a need for funding are especially encouraged to apply. Applications are due January 15, 2021 11:59pm EST. If you have any questions, please contact me.

To join FECS, follow this link and sign into your APS account.

Apply now!

P.S. We will also be offering grants for the April meeting. More information will be posted on Engage soon.

FECS election results and new Executive Committee members

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One January 1, I started my term as Chair-Elect for the APS Forum for Early Career Scientists (FECS). This is a three-year position; I will serve as Chair-Elect, Chair and then Past Chair in 2021, 2022 and 2023 respectively. I have already served on the Executive Committee for the past two years as a Member-at-Large, and I am excited to continue serving this community. On behalf of FECS, I will also be serving as an Ex-Officio member of the APS Committee on Careers and Professional Development (CCPD) and I’m looking forward to shaping the crucial career programming that APS offers its members.

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