Physics Department News

Physicists have directly imaged Landau Levels – the quantum levels that determine electron behaviour in a strong magnetic field – for the first time since they were theoretically conceived of by Nobel prize winner Lev Landau in 1930.

Robin Ball's research, as part of a UK/US team, into the behaviour of "individual fibers as elastic filaments with random intrinsic curvatures", aka a pony tail, resulted in an equation. This pony tail equation has now been honoured with the 2012 Ig Nobel prize in physics. Congratulations!

For more of the science, see the paper at Raymond E. Goldstein, Patrick B. Warren, Robin C. Ball, "Shape of a Ponytail and the Statistical Physics of Hair Fiber Bundles", Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 078101 (2012).

Between 2-7 September 2012, Warwick has successfully hosted the Advanced Summer School in Solar Physics. The School was sponsored by STFC and organised by Dr Erwin Verwichte. 26 PhD students and early-career postdocs from the UK and abroad benefited from a series of lectures in all areas of Solar and Heliospheric Physics, taught by leading lecturers in the field. These included the local expertise of Dr Chris Brady, Dr Claire Foullon, Prof Valery Nakariakov and Dr Erwin Verwichte from the Centre for Fusion, Space and Astrophysics (CFSA) in Physics. A special thanks goes to Ms Taherah Nureen, who was the School's secretary. The School's website contains lecture handouts and photos from the event: http://www.warwick.ac.uk/asssp12.

We've heard a lot in the news lately about the elusive Higgs boson particle. But what is it exactly, and what impact is its discovery likely to have on ordinary people? University of Warwick particle physicist Daniel Scully offers a short guide to the Higgs boson and reflects on why this could be one of the biggest scientific discoveries of his lifetime.

Click here to watch the video