Ancient Egyptians transported pyramid stones over wet sand - dry sand experiment FOM archive 2026-09-19 | Ancient Egyptians transported pyramid stones over wet sand - dry sand experiment
Physics@Veldhoven 2017 – Masterclass Jo van den Brand FOM archive 2017-04-03 | Prior to Physics@Veldhoven 2017, the programme committee organised four masterclasses. These classes offer PhDs and young postdocs a unique opportunity to receive an introduction to their discipline from top researchers.Masterclass abstract: Beginning the Exploration of the Universe with Gravitational Waves The recent observation of gravitational waves from the merger of binary black holes opens a new way to learn about the universe, as well as to test general relativity in the limit of strong gravitational interactions – the dynamics of massive bodies traveling at relativistic speeds in a highly curved space-time. The lecture will describe some of the difficult history of gravitational waves proposed exactly a hundred years ago. The concepts used in the instruments and the methods for data analysis that enable the measurement of gravitational wave strains of 10-21 and smaller will be presented. The results derived from the measured waveforms, their relation to the Einstein field equations and the astrophysical implications are discussed. The talk will end with our vision for the future of gravitational wave astronomy.About the conference: Physics@Veldhoven is a large congress that provides a topical overview of physics in the Netherlands. It is organised by NWO, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research , and takes place each year in January. Traditionally, young researchers are given the chance to present themselves and their work alongside renowned names from the Dutch and international physics community. The programme covers Light and matter, Atomic, molecular and optical physics, Nanoscience and nanotechnology, Statistical physics and Soft condensed matter, Surfaces and interfaces, Physics of fluids, Subatomic physics, Plasma and fusion physics, and Strongly correlated systems.
Physics@Veldhoven 2017 - Masterclass Martin Wegener FOM archive 2017-04-03 | Prior to Physics@Veldhoven 2017, the programme committee organised four masterclasses. These classes offer PhDs and young postdocs a unique opportunity to receive an introduction to their discipline from top researchers.Masterclass abstract: Experiments on Cloaking in Optics, Thermodynamics and MechanicsFor centuries, the idea of cloaking was mere science fiction or fantasy. In 2006, Ulf Leonhard and a team around John Pendry independently suggested a design tool now known as 'transformation optics'. Based on the Maxwell equations for continua, it maps spatial coordinate transformations onto generally inhomogeneous and anisotropic material distributions. These distributions can be realized by using metamaterials. This basic idea can be translated to many other areas of physics because the underlying generalized Laplace equations reflecting conservation laws are closely similar or even mathematically equivalent.Meanwhile, many corresponding experiments have successfully been demonstrated in optics, electrical transport, magneto-statics, heat transport, diffusion, and mechanics. Even applications like cloaked microwave antennas, cloaked contacts on solar cells to increase their energy conversion efficiency, homogenization of diffusive light emission from OLEDs, compensation structures for feedthroughs in mechanical support structures, and cloaks for protection against seismic surface waves (i.e. earthquakes) have been discussed.In this masterclass, I will give an introduction into the field of cloaking using metamaterials, provide an overview, and describe the current state-of-the-art. Apart from mapping spatial coordinate transformations onto material distributions, spatial transformations can alternatively also be mapped onto boundaries, free-form surfaces, or can directly be applied onto discrete lattices.Finally, precursors of cloaking, namely core-shell structures (or 'coated grains') acting as 'neutral inclusions', have already been published by E.H. Kerner in 1956 and have been reviewed in the textbook The Theory of Composites by Graeme W. Milton. Furthermore, I will also describe the connection of cloaking to the tomography problem posed by Alberto Calderon in 1980. In 2003, Allan Greenleaf, Matti Lassas, and Gunther Uhlmann proved mathematically that the tomography problem does not have a unique solution. This means that (infinitely) many different configurations lead to the identical tomographic input data. Thus, the inversion is unavoidably not unique. This work can be seen as a precursor or even as a generalization of cloaking. About the conference: Physics@Veldhoven is a large congress that provides a topical overview of physics in the Netherlands. It is organised by NWO, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research , and takes place each year in January. Traditionally, young researchers are given the chance to present themselves and their work alongside renowned names from the Dutch and international physics community. The programme covers Light and matter, Atomic, molecular and optical physics, Nanoscience and nanotechnology, Statistical physics and Soft condensed matter, Surfaces and interfaces, Physics of fluids, Subatomic physics, Plasma and fusion physics, and Strongly correlated systems.
Physics@Veldhoven 2017, Martin Wegener – Metamaterials beyond optics FOM archive 2017-03-23 | Martin Wegener works on metamaterials: materials that have been designed by people. Metamaterials are constructed smartly from other different materials and they therefore have unusual properties that their separate ingredients do not have. A possible application of metamaterials is an invisibility cloak. However there are also less well-known, non-optical metamaterials. Wegener discusses several groundbreaking experiments.Abstract by Martin Wegener: Metamaterials are rationally designed composites, the effective properties of which can go quantitatively and qualitatively beyond (= “meta”) those of their ingredients. Metamaterials with negative refractive indices and optical invisibility cloaking have been striking early demonstrations. However, the field is much broader today, encompassing many areas and aspects of physics beyond just optics.In this talk, I start by discussing the Calderon tomography problem to introduce the mathematics behind cloaking and to highlight its general relevance. I then review experiments ranging from thermodynamics (i.e., heat conduction and diffusion) to mechanics.About the conference: Physics@Veldhoven is a large congress that provides a topical overview of physics in the Netherlands. It is organised by NWO, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research , and takes place each year in January. Traditionally, young researchers are given the chance to present themselves and their work alongside renowned names from the Dutch and international physics community. The programme covers Light and matter, Atomic, molecular and optical physics, Nanoscience and nanotechnology, Statistical physics and Soft condensed matter, Surfaces and interfaces, Physics of fluids, Subatomic physics, Plasma and fusion physics, and Strongly correlated systems.
Physics@Veldhoven 2017, Poster Prize ceremony and closing remarks FOM archive 2017-03-23 | Physics@Veldhoven is a large congress that provides a topical overview of physics in the Netherlands. It is organised by NWO the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, and takes place each year in January. Traditionally, young researchers are given the chance to present themselves and their work alongside renowned names from the Dutch and international physics community. The programme covers Light and matter, Atomic, molecular and optical physics, Nanoscience and nanotechnology, Statistical physics and Soft condensed matter, Surfaces and interfaces, Physics of fluids, Subatomic physics, Plasma and fusion physics, and Strongly correlated systems. At Physics@Veldhoven 2017, the Physics@Veldhoven Poster Prize 2017 was awarded to Cunfeng Cheng.
Physics@Veldhoven 2017 – Masterclass Elisabeth Bouchaud FOM archive 2017-03-22 | Prior to Physics@Veldhoven 2017, the programme committee organised four masterclasses. These classes offer PhDs and young postdocs a unique opportunity to receive an introduction to their discipline from top researchers.Masterclass abstract: Fracture of heterogeneous mediaTo establish a quantitative interrelation between the microstructure of a material and its mechanical properties has been a long term goal in materials science, since the macroscale mechanical response is controlled, to a large extent, by the structure at a relatively fine scale. Although considerable progress has been made in the prediction of elastic moduli, little is yet understood when it comes to the stress or the elongation to failure, or to the fracture toughness (ability to resist the propagation of a pre-existing crack). The difficulty resides in the fact that, close to the crack tip, the heterogeneous material cannot be simply replaced by an 'effective equivalent' homogeneous material, mainly for two reasons: (i) there are very strong stress and strain gradients in the vicinity of a crack tip, which makes it very difficult to perform averages and (ii) the most brittle components of the heterogeneous medium are likely to break first, hence the statistics is controlled by rare events, which makes the problem both conceptually and experimentally challenging.In order to circumvent these intrinsic difficulties, we have tried to establish 'simple' models able to predict, a minima, two consequences of disorder: the roughness of fracture surfaces, and the intermittency of crack propagation. Experiments indeed show that fracture surfaces are self-affine, scale-invariant structures, characterized by Hurst (or roughness) exponents. Crack dynamics also involves power-law distributions (local velocities, waiting times etc.). Considering that crack fronts are slightly distorted by the presence of microstructural obstacles with contrasted toughness, we have suggested models which consider the propagation of an elastic line through an array of randomly distributed obstacles. These models depict in fact the vicinity of a dynamic phase transition, the so-called depinning transition.It will be shown that these models are actually applicable in the linear elastic case, i.e. at large enough length scales. At smaller scales, i.e. at scales where, due to the presence of dissipative processes such as plasticity, microcracking etc., a departure from linear elasticity is observed, no such model is available. However, experiments performed on very different materials in very different conditions, show that this small scale behaviour also constitutes a universality class. Recent experiments and simulations may open the way to further modelling in this complex regime.About the conference: Physics@Veldhoven is a large congress that provides a topical overview of physics in the Netherlands. It is organised by NWO, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research , and takes place each year in January. Traditionally, young researchers are given the chance to present themselves and their work alongside renowned names from the Dutch and international physics community. The programme covers Light and matter, Atomic, molecular and optical physics, Nanoscience and nanotechnology, Statistical physics and Soft condensed matter, Surfaces and interfaces, Physics of fluids, Subatomic physics, Plasma and fusion physics, and Strongly correlated systems.
Physics@Veldhoven 2017 – Masterclass Margaret Murnane FOM archive 2017-03-21 | Prior to Physics@Veldhoven 2017, the programme committee organised four masterclasses. These classes offer PhDs and young postdocs a unique opportunity to receive an introduction to their discipline from top researchers.Masterclass abstract: Science at the timescale of the electron: coherent X-ray beams from tabletop femtosecond lasersEver since the invention of the laser over 50 years ago, scientists have been striving to create an x-ray version of the laser. Advances in extreme nonlinear optics now make it possible to efficiently upshift tabletop femtosecond lasers into the ultraviolet (EUV) and soft X-ray regions of the spectrum, to wavelengths as short as 8 Å. This unique high harmonic (HHG) light source is ideally suited for host of applications in imaging and in understanding how advanced materials function. A host of applications in nanoscience and nanotechnology have now been demonstrated, including full-field microscopes with sub-wavelength spatial resolution in the soft X-ray region for the first time, quantifying how nanoscale energy flow differs from bulk, measuring how fast a material can change its electronic or magnetic state, probing how spin currents can control and enhance magnetization in ultrathin films, and visualizing the dynamic band structure of material and electron-electron interactions on sub-femtosecond timescales.About the conference: Physics@Veldhoven is a large congress that provides a topical overview of physics in the Netherlands. It is organised by NWO, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research , and takes place each year in January. Traditionally, young researchers are given the chance to present themselves and their work alongside renowned names from the Dutch and international physics community. The programme covers Light and matter, Atomic, molecular and optical physics, Nanoscience and nanotechnology, Statistical physics and Soft condensed matter, Surfaces and interfaces, Physics of fluids, Subatomic physics, Plasma and fusion physics, and Strongly correlated systems.
Physics@Veldhoven 2017, Margaret Murnane – Tabletop X-ray lasers FOM archive 2017-03-21 | Margaret Murnane's lecture is about tabletop X-ray lasers. Ever since the invention of the laser, 50 years ago, researchers have also tried to develop lasers for X-rays. The aim is to better concentrate and direct X-rays in the same way as a normal laser does that with visible light. Murnane describes how the search for a practical tabletop X-ray laser has proceeded and how physicists have learned to manipulate nature at the quantum level during this quest. Abstract by Margaret Murnane: Ever since the invention of the laser over 50 years ago, scientists have been striving to create an x-ray version of the laser. The x-ray sources we currently use in medicine, security screening, and science are in essence the same x-ray light bulb source that Röntgen discovered in 1895. In the same way that visible lasers can concentrate light energy far better than a light bulb, a directed beam of x-rays would have many useful applications in science and technology. The problem was that until recently, we needed ridiculously high power levels to make an x-ray laser. The first successful x-ray laser experiments were, in fact, powered by nuclear detonations as part of the “star wars” program in the 1980s. To make a practical, tabletop-scale, x-ray laser source required taking a very different approach that involves transforming a beam of light from a visible laser into a beam of x-rays. The story behind how this happened is surprising and beautiful, highlighting how powerful our ability is to manipulate nature at a quantum level. Along the way, we also learned to generate the shortest strobe light in existence - fast enough to capture even the fleeting dance of electrons in the nanoworld. This new capability shows promise for next-generation electronics, data and energy storage devices, and future medical diagnostics. About the conference: Physics@Veldhoven is a large congress that provides a topical overview of physics in the Netherlands. It is organised by NWO, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research , and takes place each year in January. Traditionally, young researchers are given the chance to present themselves and their work alongside renowned names from the Dutch and international physics community. The programme covers Light and matter, Atomic, molecular and optical physics, Nanoscience and nanotechnology, Statistical physics and Soft condensed matter, Surfaces and interfaces, Physics of fluids, Subatomic physics, Plasma and fusion physics, and Strongly correlated systems.
Physics@Veldhoven 2017, Jo van den Brand – Gravitational waves FOM archive 2017-03-21 | On 11 February the scientific world was turned upside down: on that day researchers announced that they had measured gravitational waves the first time. The Tuesday evening lecture at Physics@Veldhoven 2017 was about this groundbreaking discovery. Gravitational waves are ripples of space-time, which (in the case of this measurement) have been caused by two black holes that rotated around each other and eventually merged.About the conference: Physics@Veldhoven is a large congress that provides a topical overview of physics in the Netherlands. It is organised by NWO, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research , and takes place each year in January. Traditionally, young researchers are given the chance to present themselves and their work alongside renowned names from the Dutch and international physics community. The programme covers Light and matter, Atomic, molecular and optical physics, Nanoscience and nanotechnology, Statistical physics and Soft condensed matter, Surfaces and interfaces, Physics of fluids, Subatomic physics, Plasma and fusion physics, and Strongly correlated systems.
Physics@Veldhoven 2017, Erik Verlinde – Emergent gravity and the dark universe FOM archive 2017-03-17 | November 2016, Erik Verlinde shared his alternative theory about gravity. Verlinde presents gravity as an emergent phenomenon. This means that at the very smallest scale gravity does not exist. It is a consequence of the distribution of information in the universe, which manifests at a larger scale.Abstract by Erik Verlinde: Logically speaking the observed deviations from the laws of gravity of Newton and Einstein in galaxies and clusters can be either due to the presence of unseen dark matter particles or due to a change in the way gravity works in these situations. Until recently there appeared to be no reason to doubt that general relativity correctly describes gravity in all circumstances. In the last few year insights from black hole physics and string theory have led to important theoretical advances in our understanding of gravity. A new theoretical framework is being developed in which the gravitational laws are derived as emerging from changes in the quantum entanglement of the microscopic information that is underlying space-time. I will make clear that this new theory of emergent gravity provides a conceptual explanation for why general relativity receives modifications in galaxies and clusters. I will present a quantitative estimate of these modifications and show that these agree with the observed phenomena currently attributed to dark matter.About the conference: Physics@Veldhoven is a large congress that provides a topical overview of physics in the Netherlands. It is organised by NWO, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research , and takes place each year in January. Traditionally, young researchers are given the chance to present themselves and their work alongside renowned names from the Dutch and international physics community. The programme covers Light and matter, Atomic, molecular and optical physics, Nanoscience and nanotechnology, Statistical physics and Soft condensed matter, Surfaces and interfaces, Physics of fluids, Subatomic physics, Plasma and fusion physics, and Strongly correlated systems.
Physics@Veldhoven 2017, Opening FOM archive 2017-03-17 | Physics@Veldhoven is a large congress that provides a topical overview of physics in the Netherlands. It is organised by NWO, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research , and takes place each year in January. Traditionally, young researchers are given the chance to present themselves and their work alongside renowned names from the Dutch and international physics community. The programme covers Light and matter, Atomic, molecular and optical physics, Nanoscience and nanotechnology, Statistical physics and Soft condensed matter, Surfaces and interfaces, Physics of fluids, Subatomic physics, Plasma and fusion physics, and Strongly correlated systems. The opening speech was delivered by Ineke Braakman, Chair NWO Domain Science.For more information about the congress, please seehttps://www.fom.nl/agenda/physicsatveldhoven/information/
Physics@Veldhoven 2017, prizes ceremony FOM archive 2017-03-17 | Physics@Veldhoven is a large congress that provides a topical overview of physics in the Netherlands. It is organised by NWO, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, and takes place each year in January. Traditionally, young researchers are given the chance to present themselves and their work alongside renowned names from the Dutch and international physics community. The programme covers Light and matter, Atomic, molecular and optical physics, Nanoscience and nanotechnology, Statistical physics and Soft condensed matter, Surfaces and interfaces, Physics of fluids, Subatomic physics, Plasma and fusion physics, and Strongly correlated systems. At Physics@Veldhoven 2017, NWO Chair Stan Gielen awarded the FOM prizes 2016 to three top scientists. Julija Bagdonaitė received the FOM Physics Thesis Award, Slava Medvedev received the FOM Valorisation Chapter Prize and the FOM Valorisation Prize was received by Ekkes Brück.For more information about the congress, please see:https://www.fom.nl/agenda/physicsatveldhoven/information/For more information about the NWO Prizes, please see:https://www.fom.nl/en/nwo-domain-science/scientific-prizes/general-information/
Physics@Veldhoven 2017, Impression FOM archive 2017-03-17 | Physics@Veldhoven is a large congress that provides a topical overview of physics in the Netherlands. It is organised by NWO, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research , and takes place each year in January. Traditionally, young researchers are given the chance to present themselves and their work alongside renowned names from the Dutch and international physics community. The programme covers Light and matter, Atomic, molecular and optical physics, Nanoscience and nanotechnology, Statistical physics and Soft condensed matter, Surfaces and interfaces, Physics of fluids, Subatomic physics, Plasma and fusion physics, and Strongly correlated systems.
Computational Sciences for Future Energy 2016, impression FOM archive 2016-11-03 | The conference ‘Computational Sciences for Future Energy 2016’ took place on 11 October 2016 in Utrecht, The Netherlands.The conference brought together the Dutch research community in computational science for energy applications.
Computational Sciences for Energy Research PhD programme FOM archive 2016-10-13 | In 2012, Shell, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) started the CSER PhD programme. As part of this programme, 75 PhD students from India will conduct research in the field of computational sciences in the Netherlands. The programme 'Computational Sciences for Energy Research' (CSER) is a public-private partnership initiative of Shell, NWO and FOM. The aim of the programme is to make a sustainable science-wide investment in computational sciences in the Netherlands. Within the CSER initiative, Shell is funding 75 PhD places in the Netherlands for computational sciences. NWO and FOM are investing in the Dutch knowledge infrastructure via CSER. A tenure-track programme is part of that investment, just like the research programmes 'CO2-neutral fuels' and 'Uncertainty reduction in smart energy systems'.Various NWO divisions are involved in the CSER initiative: FOM, Physical Sciences, Chemical Sciences, Social Sciences, Earth and Life Sciences and Technology Foundation STW. This collaboration across a range of computational science disciplines is uniquely positioned to give a long-term boost to the field of CSER. The combined Shell-NWO/FOM initiative will also lead to a further strengthening of the relation between Dutch and Indian research communities. An important driver for Shell to invest in this initiative is to use the programme as a recruitment pool for computational scientists for its technology centre in Bangalore, India.
Physics@FOM Veldhoven 2016, Impression FOM archive 2016-03-04 | Physics@FOM Veldhoven is a large congress that provides a topical overview of physics in the Netherlands. It is organised by the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) and takes place each year in January. Traditionally, young researchers are given the chance to present themselves and their work alongside renowned names from the Dutch and international physics community. The programme covers Light and matter, Atomic, molecular and optical physics, Nanoscience and nanotechnology, Statistical physics and Soft condensed matter, Surfaces and interfaces, Physics of fluids, Subatomic physics, Plasma and fusion physics, and Strongly correlated systems. http://www.fom.nl/veldhoven
Physics@FOM Veldhoven 2016 - Masterclass Tilman Esslinger FOM archive 2016-02-22 | Prior to Physics@FOM 2016, the programme committee organised four masterclasses. These classes offer PhDs and young postdocs a unique opportunity to receive an introduction to their discipline from top researchers.Quantum simulation with quantum gasesQuantum simulations provide a means to study fundamental concepts in quantum physics that may be hard to capture by other means. Key models of quantum many-body physics, which were often invented to describe electronic and magnetic properties of materials, are realized using the highly controlled setting of atomic quantum gases. In this lecture Esslinger provides an introduction to quantum simulation with quantum gases and discusses examples, including Hubbard models, quantum magnetism, artificial graphene and topological insulators.About the conference: Physics@FOM Veldhoven is a large congress that provides a topical overview of physics in the Netherlands. It is organised by the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) and takes place each year in January. Traditionally, young researchers are given the chance to present themselves and their work alongside renowned names from the Dutch and international physics community. The programme covers Light and matter, Atomic, molecular and optical physics, Nanoscience and nanotechnology, Statistical physics and Soft condensed matter, Surfaces and interfaces, Physics of fluids, Subatomic physics, Plasma and fusion physics, and Strongly correlated systems.http://www.fom.nl/veldhoven
Physics@FOM Veldhoven 2016 - Masterclass Laura Baudis FOM archive 2016-02-22 | Prior to Physics@FOM Veldhoven 2016, the programme committee organised four masterclasses. These classes offer PhDs and young postdocs a unique opportunity to receive an introduction to their discipline from top researchers.The state-of-the-art in the search for dark matter One of the major challenges of modern physics is to decipher the nature of dark matter. Astrophysical observations provide ample evidence for the existence of an invisible and dominant mass component in the observable universe, from the scales of galaxies up to the largest cosmological scales. The dark matter could be made of new, yet undiscovered elementary particles, with allowed masses and interaction strengths with normal matter spanning an enormous range. Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), which froze out of thermal equilibrium with a relic density matching the observations, represent a well-motivated, generic classes of dark matter candidates. They could be directly observed via scatters off atomic nuclei in underground, ultralow-background detectors, or indirectly, via secondary radiation produced when they pair annihilate. They could also be generated at particle colliders such as the LHC, where associated particles produced in the same process are to be detected. After a brief motivation and an introduction to the phenomenology of particle dark matter detection, Baudis will discuss the most promising experimental techniques to search for WIMPs, addressing their current and future science reach, as well as their complementarity.About the conference: Physics@FOM Veldhoven is a large congress that provides a topical overview of physics in the Netherlands. It is organised by the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) and takes place each year in January. Traditionally, young researchers are given the chance to present themselves and their work alongside renowned names from the Dutch and international physics community. The programme covers Light and matter, Atomic, molecular and optical physics, Nanoscience and nanotechnology, Statistical physics and Soft condensed matter, Surfaces and interfaces, Physics of fluids, Subatomic physics, Plasma and fusion physics, and Strongly correlated systems.http://www.fom.nl/veldhoven
Physics@FOM Veldhoven 2016, FOM Prizes ceremony FOM archive 2016-02-12 | Physics@FOM Veldhoven is a large congress that provides a topical overview of physics in the Netherlands. It is organised by the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) and takes place each year in January. Traditionally, young researchers are given the chance to present themselves and their work alongside renowned names from the Dutch and international physics community. The programme covers Light and matter, Atomic, molecular and optical physics, Nanoscience and nanotechnology, Statistical physics and Soft condensed matter, Surfaces and interfaces, Physics of fluids, Subatomic physics, Plasma and fusion physics, and Strongly correlated systems. At Physics@FOM 2016, the Minister of Education, Culture and Science, Jet Bussemaker, awarded the FOM prizes to four top scientists. Anouk Rijs received the Minerva Prize. Said Rodriguez received the FOM Physics Thesis Prize. And the FOM Valorisation Chapter Prize and the FOM Valorisation Prize for application-oriented research went to Gabriele Bulgarini and Jo van den Brand respectively.For more information about the congress, please see:http://www.fom.nl/veldhoven For more information about the FOM Prizes, please see:http://www.fom.nl/prizes
Physics@FOM Veldhoven 2016, Poster Prize ceremony FOM archive 2016-02-12 | Diego Cohen-Maldonado is the winner of the Physics@FOM Poster Prize 2016.Physics@FOM Veldhoven is a large congress that provides a topical overview of physics in the Netherlands. It is organised by the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) and takes place each year in January. Traditionally, young researchers are given the chance to present themselves and their work alongside renowned names from the Dutch and international physics community. The programme covers Light and matter, Atomic, molecular and optical physics, Nanoscience and nanotechnology, Statistical physics and Soft condensed matter, Surfaces and interfaces, Physics of fluids, Subatomic physics, Plasma and fusion physics, and Strongly correlated systems. In 2016 there were about 400 poster presentations.http://www.fom.nl/veldhoven
Physics@FOM Veldhoven 2016 - Masterclass Dirk van der Marel FOM archive 2016-02-12 | Prior to Physics@FOM 2016, the programme committee organised four masterclasses. These classes offer PhDs and young postdocs a unique opportunity to receive an introduction to their discipline from top researchers.Materials with novel electronic properties, an optical perspective.Different materials have different properties. Even in the same material it is often possible to switch between states of matter with completely different behaviours, by applying external fields or radiation, by putting pressure on the sample, or by varying the temperature. This way one can switch a sample from insulator to metal, superconductor, or magnet, by tuning some field or temperature. Optical spectra and various other types of response are fundamentally related to the collective behaviour of electrons, more precisely to their correlation-functions in a solid. Some materials literally become more blueish, when we switch them into the superconducting state. In turn, we can learn a lot about the way electrons organize themselves in a solid from analysis of their specta, and the way these change when we tune the state of matter of a sample. About the conference: Physics@FOM Veldhoven is a large congress that provides a topical overview of physics in the Netherlands. It is organised by the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) and takes place each year in January. Traditionally, young researchers are given the chance to present themselves and their work alongside renowned names from the Dutch and international physics community. The programme covers Light and matter, Atomic, molecular and optical physics, Nanoscience and nanotechnology, Statistical physics and Soft condensed matter, Surfaces and interfaces, Physics of fluids, Subatomic physics, Plasma and fusion physics, and Strongly correlated systems.http://www.fom.nl/veldhoven
Physics@FOM Veldhoven 2016 - Masterclass Peter Littlewood FOM archive 2016-02-12 | Prior to Physics@FOM 2016, the programme committee organised four masterclasses. These classes offer PhDs and young postdocs a unique opportunity to receive an introduction to their discipline from top researchers.Synchrony: Superconductors, superfluids and firefliesThe ground state of a system of non-interacting bosons is described by the bose distribution, and it was Einstein who realized that in dimensions larger than two, a macroscopic population should build up at a low enough temperature. We call this Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC). Formally separate from condensation as an instance of statistical physics, the presence of weak interactions between the bosons will usually cause the ground state to become phase coherent, and therefore superfluid. This phenomenon, which seems so intrinsically quantum, has in fact a very close analogy to the synchronization of classical nonlinear oscillators. Synchrony is a remarkable phenomenon that affects the quantum world from elemental broken symmetries of particle physics to low temperature physics, and in the natural world can explain such phenomena as the behaviour of fireflies, and our finely tuned ability to hear accurate pitch.About the conference: Physics@FOM Veldhoven is a large congress that provides a topical overview of physics in the Netherlands. It is organised by the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) and takes place each year in January. Traditionally, young researchers are given the chance to present themselves and their work alongside renowned names from the Dutch and international physics community. The programme covers Light and matter, Atomic, molecular and optical physics, Nanoscience and nanotechnology, Statistical physics and Soft condensed matter, Surfaces and interfaces, Physics of fluids, Subatomic physics, Plasma and fusion physics, and Strongly correlated systems.http://www.fom.nl/veldhoven
Physics@FOM Veldhoven 2016, Laura Baudis - The state-of-the-art in the search for dark matter FOM archive 2016-02-12 | The state-of-the-art in the search for dark matterOne of the major challenges of modern physics is to decipher the nature of dark matter. Astrophysical observations provide ample evidence for the existence of an invisible and dominant mass component in the observable universe, from the scales of galaxies up to the largest cosmological scales. The dark matter could be made of new, yet undiscovered elementary particles, with allowed masses and interaction strengths with normal matter spanning an enormous range. Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), which froze out of thermal equilibrium with a relic density matching the observations, represent a well-motivated, generic classes of dark matter candidates. They could be directly observed via scatters off atomic nuclei in underground, ultra low-background detectors, or indirectly, via secondary radiation produced when they pair annihilate. They could also be generated at particle colliders such as the LHC, where associated particles produced in the same process are to be detected. After a brief motivation and an introduction to the phenomenology of particle dark matter detection, Baudis discusses the most promising experimental techniques to search for WIMPs, addressing their current and future science reach, as well as their complementarity.About the conference: Physics@FOM Veldhoven is a large congress that provides a topical overview of physics in the Netherlands. It is organised by the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) and takes place each year in January. Traditionally, young researchers are given the chance to present themselves and their work alongside renowned names from the Dutch and international physics community. The programme covers Light and matter, Atomic, molecular and optical physics, Nanoscience and nanotechnology, Statistical physics and Soft condensed matter, Surfaces and interfaces, Physics of fluids, Subatomic physics, Plasma and fusion physics, and Strongly correlated systems.http://www.fom.nl/veldhoven
Physics@FOM Veldhoven 2016, Peter Littlewood - Polariton condensation FOM archive 2016-02-09 | Polariton condensation Macroscopic phase coherence is one of the most remarkable manifestations of quantum mechanics, yet it seems to be the inevitable ground state of interacting many-body systems. In the last two decades, the familiar examples of superfluid helium and conventional superconductors have been joined by exotic and high temperature superconductors, ultra-cold atomic gases, both bosonic and fermionic, and recently systems of excitons, magnons, and exciton-photon superpositions called polaritons, the subject of this talk.Engineering of optical microcavities make use of the mixing of electronic excitations with photons to create a composite boson called a polariton that has a very light mass, and recent experiments provide good evidence for a high-temperature Bose condensate. Polariton systems also offer an opportunity to use optical pumping to study quantum dynamics of a many body system outside equilibrium, in a new kind of cold atom laboratory.About the conference: Physics@FOM Veldhoven is a large congress that provides a topical overview of physics in the Netherlands. It is organised by the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) and takes place each year in January. Traditionally, young researchers are given the chance to present themselves and their work alongside renowned names from the Dutch and international physics community. The programme covers Light and matter, Atomic, molecular and optical physics, Nanoscience and nanotechnology, Statistical physics and Soft condensed matter, Surfaces and interfaces, Physics of fluids, Subatomic physics, Plasma and fusion physics, and Strongly correlated systems. http://www.fom.nl/veldhoven
Physics@FOM Veldhoven 2016, Anton Zeilinger - Quantum teleportation and entanglement FOM archive 2016-02-09 | Quantum teleportation, entanglement, and Einstein’s question, “What is light?”It is well known that Einstein received the Nobel Prize for the groundbreaking idea of 1905, his annus mirabilis, that light consists of particles, today called photons. In 1935, he discovered together with Podolsky and Rosen that two quantum systems can be connected stronger than in classical physics. For that situation the Austrian Nobel Prize winner Erwin Schrödinger coined the name “entanglement” and called it “the essential feature of quantum mechanics” while Einstein, dismissed it as “spooky action at a distance”.Technical progress in creating and handling entangled photon states not only led to experimental realization of such entangled states but also the discovery of novel phenomena, including, for example, multi-particle entanglement and quantum teleportation. These are not just intellectual curiosities, but they lay the foundations for a new information technology, with concepts such as quantum communication, quantum cryptography and quantum computation.In the talk, Zeilinger presents some of the most recent experimental results, particularly on long-distance quantum communication and on the implementation of quantum states in higher-dimensional Hilbert spaces. He also discusses future possible applications in quantum information systems. These will, for example, include experiments using satellite-based quantum communication on a worldwide scale.Towards the end of his life Einstein commented that despite years of conscious brooding, he did not come closer to answering the question “What is light?” It would be fascinating to know his position about these recent developments.About the conference: Physics@FOM Veldhoven is a large congress that provides a topical overview of physics in the Netherlands. It is organised by the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) and takes place each year in January. Traditionally, young researchers are given the chance to present themselves and their work alongside renowned names from the Dutch and international physics community. The programme covers Light and matter, Atomic, molecular and optical physics, Nanoscience and nanotechnology, Statistical physics and Soft condensed matter, Surfaces and interfaces, Physics of fluids, Subatomic physics, Plasma and fusion physics, and Strongly correlated systems. http://www.fom.nl/veldhoven
Physics@FOM Veldhoven 2016, Opening FOM archive 2016-02-09 | About the conference: Physics@FOM Veldhoven is a large congress that provides a topical overview of physics in the Netherlands. It is organised by the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) and takes place each year in January. Traditionally, young researchers are given the chance to present themselves and their work alongside renowned names from the Dutch and international physics community. The programme covers Light and matter, Atomic, molecular and optical physics, Nanoscience and nanotechnology, Statistical physics and Soft condensed matter, Surfaces and interfaces, Physics of fluids, Subatomic physics, Plasma and fusion physics, and Strongly correlated systems. http://www.fom.nl/veldhoven
Holiday wishes FOM archive 2015-12-21 | Christa Hooijer, Director FOM (a.i.) wishes all FOM employees a merry christmas and a happy 2016!
Pillar deposition movie FOM archive 2015-06-11 | Het opstapelen van microdruppels leidt tot een pilaarvorm. NIEUWSBERICHT----------------------------FOM-onderzoekers printen 3D met metalen FOM-onderzoekers aan de Universiteit Twente hebben een manier gevonden om 3D te printen met metalen. Zij gebruikten hiervoor goud en koper, dat zij met laserlicht lieten smelten tot microdruppels. Hun werk is gepubliceerd in Advanced Materials. 3D-printen is nog steeds volop in opmars. Het wordt soms zelfs de nieuwe hoeksteen van de maakindustrie genoemd. Toch is er nog een grote slag te slaan in de 3D-printtechnieken. Momenteel worden er bijvoorbeeld vrijwel alleen plastics gebruikt om te 3D-printen. Dat is jammer, want metalen zijn een stuk steviger. Daarnaast kunnen metalen goed warmte en elektriciteit geleiden, waardoor met deze materialen geheel nieuwe onderdelen en devices uit de 3D-printer kunnen rollen, zoals kleine koelers of verbindingen tussen gestapelde chips in smartphones. Het probleem is dat metalen een hoog smeltpunt hebben. Zelfs met geavanceerde apparatuur is het smelten en gecontroleerd deponeren van deze materialen daarom zeer uitdagend. Vooral voor kleine structuren (van 100 nanometer tot 10 micrometer) bestonden er nog geen goede oplossingen voor dit probleem. Onderzoekers van FOM en de Universiteit Twente hebben nu een belangrijke stap gezet richting de oplossing. Zij gebruikten laserlicht om koper en goud te smelten tot microdruppels en deze gecontroleerd neer te leggen. Hierbij wordt een gepulste laser op een metaallaagje gefocust, dat vervolgens smelt en vervormt tot een druppel. De onderzoekers plaatsen de druppel vervolgens op een grondlaag. Door dit herhaaldelijk te doen kan er worden geprint. De onderzoekers stapelden bijvoorbeeld duizenden druppels tot micropilaren met een hoogte van 2 millimeter en een diameter van 5 micrometer. Ook printen zij verticale elektrodes in een holte, en maakten zij lijnen van koper. Door de locatie van de druppelinslag slim te kiezen, kunnen er in feite willekeurige vormen worden geprint. Hoge energieVoor deze techniek moesten de onderzoekers een verrassend sterke laser gebruiken. De energie van het laserlicht verhoogt de snelheid van de druppels, waardoor deze bij neerkomst op de ondergrond vervormen tot een schijf of pannenkoekvorm, en vervolgens zo stollen. Bij eerdere pogingen gebruikten fysici vaak lage laserenergieën. Hiermee kunnen de apparaten wel kleinere druppels printen, maar de stolling is altijd bolvormig, wat een nadelige invloed heeft op de stevigheid van de geprinte structuur. In hun artikel leggen de onderzoekers uit welke snelheid nodig is om de gewenste druppelvorm te bereiken. Zij hadden deze snelheid eerder al theoretisch voorspeld, voor verschillende laserenergieën en metalen. Dit betekent dat de resultaten nu ook kunnen worden vertaald naar andere materialen. Een probleem is nog dat de hoge laserenergie ook leidt tot druppels die naast de gewenste locatie op de grondlaag landen. Dat is momenteel nog niet te voorkomen. In toekomstig werk zal het team dit effect onderzoeken, om daarmee schoon printen met metalen, gels, pasta’s, of extreem dikke vloeistoffen mogelijk te maken.
What physicists do with light: Kobus Kuipers FOM archive 2015-04-08 | In the FOM Annual Report 2014 physicists tell us about their research into light. You can read the interviews here (in Dutch):http://www.fom.nl/live/overfom/jaarverslagen/artikel.pag?objectnumber=292431&referpagina=14197Who?Kobus Kuipers leads the Center for Nanophotonics at FOM institute AMOLF. He has previously worked at the MESA+ institute for nanotechnology (University of Twente). Kuipers is professor at the Utrecht University and international partner investigator of the Australian Research Center CUDOS. In 2015, he was appointed chair of the International Year of Light in the Netherlands.Nanophotonics In recent years nanophotonics has become a vibrant field of research, as scientists and engineers master the flow of light at length scales far below the optical wavelength, largely surpassing the classical limits imposed by diffraction. Using metallic and dielectric nanostructures precisely sculpted into 2D and 3D nano-architectures, light can be scattered, refracted, confined, filtered, and processed in fascinating new ways. This is impossible to achieve with natural materials and in conventional geometries. Control over light at the nanoscale has not only unveiled a plethora of new phenomena, but has also led to a variety of important applications. FOM institute AMOLF has been active in this new research field from its very beginning, and has helped shape it over the years. Currently, over fifty PhD students, postdocs and master students are active in AMOLF’s Center for Nanophotonics, working on a broad range of nanophotonics topics.Transcript:'I am Kobus Kuipers, a nano-photonic researcher. I want to capture and mould lightwith nanostructures.My fascination with light and where it started.. The honest answer is, I don't really know, but apparently at the age of seven I wondered whether I could capture light in a bottle by putting mirrors on the inside of the bottle and then one on top. I let light shine in then closed it to see what happened. To be honest, I can't remember that. I don't know if my parents made it up or if it was true.What happened concretely is that we have a very special microscope, with which we can shine lightat very short wavelengths and make it visible. Normal optical microscopes are limited bythe wavelength of light, so you can't see details smaller than 500 nanometres. Our microscope can see things much smaller than that.So we study how light moves through structures. We can make that visible. Every now and then we find something that is new. Something people haven't thought about before and we see a certain light phenomenon in a tiny nanostructure. We first ask if it's real and then we discover it is. Andthen we ask how it's possible. if that's the case, what are the subsequent questions. Can we use it? Or can we make light to do even crazier things? Then the research continues.We also cooperate with industry. The nice thing about nano-photonics is, we don't know everything, but it's fairly clear about several elements that they will be useful. For example in more efficient light sources; better solar cells. The most exciting thing about the discipline is that you both can still be fundamentally surprisedin your lab but also you can quickly ask if something is useful, for a better bio-sensor or whatever.The Year of Light is an initiative of the European Physical Society. That started lobbying and via, first, support from UNESCO for the year, it was eventually endorsed by the United Nations. What I hope of the Year of Light is that people move on from admiration and fascination for a light phenomenon, and that we can use it somehow to show people how useful light can be and how technically relevant it is in today's society. The whole Internet works with light. Light can be a solution to our energy problems. There are all kinds of ways that light is useful and somehow we have to use that to generate more interest in light technology and ideally in light science.'
What physicists do with light: Dorothea Samtleben FOM archive 2015-04-08 | In the FOM Annual Report 2014 physicists tell us about their research into light. You can read the interviews here (in Dutch):http://www.fom.nl/live/overfom/jaarverslagen/artikel.pag?objectnumber=292431&referpagina=14197Who?Dorothea Samtleben completed her PhD in particle physics in Hamburg, Germany. She subsequently worked as a postdoctoral researcher in Chicago and Bonn. Since 2010 she works as a guest researcher at the National Institute for Subatomic Physics Nikhef. She teaches quantum physics and optics at the Leiden University.Transcript:'I am Dorothea Sambtleben, data physicist. I want to use light to show signals from particles in space. We are astronomers really, so we work as physicists in astronomy. We don't use light to get information from the universe, but we use particles. And we call them neutrinos. They have specific characteristics that make then useful for this research. And we think that we can get more information from the distant universe than looking at light as astronomers do.In a supernova, much energy is in the form of neutrinos. Many other particles are scatteredthroughout the universe. If they're charged, you don't know where they're from. Photons are there too but extinguished. They won't penetrate a dense explosion with lots of material. But with neutrinos you get more information from a distance, and also information from very dense material.With KM3NET we hope, in the end, to start studying the field of neutrino astronomy.What I hope to achieve with light in my research is to make particles visible you wouldn't otherwise see. We'll put our detector where it is very dark, at the bottom of the Mediterranean. We'll look for photons using very light-sensitive detectors. Then we can visualise several photons and in that way show where particles went. In that way we can learn a lot about the universe, about the cosmic sources of neutrinos, which are possible in this universe.'
What physicists do with light: Aneta Stodolna FOM archive 2015-04-08 | In the FOM Annual Report 2014 physicists tell us about their research into light. You can read the interviews here (in Dutch):http://www.fom.nl/live/overfom/jaarverslagen/artikel.pag?objectnumber=292431&referpagina=14197Who?Aneta Stodolna graduated from the Gdańsk University of Technology (Poland) and completed her PhD at FOM institute AMOLF. The Physics World magazine considered her PhD research to be one of the ten most important breakthroughs in 2013. Stodolna was the first to make an image of an electron inside a hydrogen atom. Since November 2014, she works as a postdoctoral researcher at the new Advanced Research Center ARCNL.Transcript:'My name is Aneta Stodolna. I am an experimental physicist. I use light to generate a different light to make microchips. I always found lasers very intriguing. They are quite complicated machines. However they also require a lot of precision, in what I'm doing. There's a reward working with lasers because you order everything precisely, and then you get really great light out of it. You can control it and change it. With this light you can do really exciting science.At this moment we're in a new laboratory for our brand-new institute called ARCNL, Advanced Research Centre for NanoLithography. I am a post-doc in a group called Extreme Ultraviolet Light Generation and Imaging. As you can see, we've just moved in. This laboratory is officially open since November 2014. So we are at the stage of building and ordering much equipment. And at the moment I'm sitting on a box in which there is a microscope.What we are planning to do in my group is to build a state-of-the-art laser system, which we will use to generate extreme ultraviolet light from tin atoms. So at the moment, this already exists in industry. However there is a lot of room for improvement. We want to make this extreme ultraviolet light generation as efficient as possible. We want to do it in a controlled way.The advantage is we are doing something for society, so as a physicist who did fundamental research.. I never liked people asking "How can we apply this research? How can society benefit from it?" I never had an answer to that question. But now working at ARCNL, I have an answer, saying: "We are doing research for nanolithography. Everyone has a mobile phone or computer, so is benefiting from our research."'
What physicists do with light: Michel Orrit FOM archive 2015-04-08 | In the FOM Annual Report 2014 physicists tell us about their research into light. You can read the interviews here (in Dutch):http://www.fom.nl/live/overfom/jaarverslagen/artikel.pag?objectnumber=292431&referpagina=14197Who?Michel Orrit is known internationally as a pioneer in the research area of single molecule physics. He has worked at the universities in Bordeaux and Göttingen. Since 2001 he works at Leiden University, where he leads the Single Molecule Optics research group.Transcript:'My name is Michel Orrit. I'm a chemical physicist. From me, light is the mediumthat lets me observe single molecules.In the early 1990s we showed it was optically possible to observe one single molecule. Before that was not considered feasible. Most colleagues I spoke to told me I was wasting my time and should do something else. "Don't try and see one molecule." Yet it turned out to be possible and not.. It's not only possible but also easy. Basically, for us, light is a medium to study molecules and find out what they do. How they move andabout their surroundings. At the same time, with light we can change the temperature. We can also manipulate them, we can hold them with a bundle of light. We can move them and turn them. We can track their movements.What we're trying to do now is o make the method more general. That's not only with good staining, using good fluorescent molecules, but also with less fluorescent ones you can observe a single molecule. Even in a cell. For instance by using nano-antennas, for instance gold nanoparticles,nanorods.. With that you can observe the fluorescence of cell molecules that do not fluoresce, and which would be much too dark in a standard single molecule experiment. But with the help of nano-antennas, it might just be possible.It's one of the challenges we are trying to realise at present. The past shows that difficult experiments getting easier as equipment gets better. So that's in computers and in.. in thought. In the way you conceive your experiments and then perform them. The experiments we do now have nothing in common with what people did 10 years ago. Nor with what they did 20 years ago. It's all changed. The amount is smaller and the control is much better. It's very difficult to do new experiments at present. But I hope that in the next 10 years it will get a lot easier. Just as singlemolecule detection got easier in 20 years. It's a standard method now.'
What physicists do with light: Diana Grishina and Femi Ojambati FOM archive 2015-04-08 | In the FOM Annual Report 2014 physicists tell us about their research into light. You can read the interviews here (in Dutch):http://www.fom.nl/live/overfom/jaarverslagen/artikel.pag?objectnumber=292431&referpagina=14197Who?Diana Grishina and Femi Ojambati are junior scientists in the Complex Photonic Systems research group at the MESA+ institute for nanotechnology (University of Twente). Grishina graduated from the Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia. Ojambati completed his bachelor degree at the Federal University Of Technology Minna, Nigeria, and his master degree at the Friedrich-Schiller-University of Jena, Germany.Transcript'I am Femi Ojambati, an experimental physicist. I tell light where to go in this or that material.I am Diana Grishina, experimental physicist and nanotechnologist. I want to lock light inside the other media and make most use of it.I did my bachelor and master in Moscow and until last year, in my master I had no idea I was going toEurope. The atmosphere is important in the group and when I visited, I really felt I could work here. It's nice. In Moscow it's very different because you don't normally talk to professors so freely. You always need to show respect and when professors are very important, they don't eat with you,they have their own chef. Here it's amazing. Very bright professors spend their lunchtime talking to their students. It's normal and free.My final goal, my dream in my project is to specifically tell light where it should go. And how it should behave. Should it be absorbed or stored infinitely, or the amount of time it should stay there. That would be my dream.Basically the fundamental question we all want to answer is how to describe what happens to lightin some complex media. They're called complex photonic systems and their behaviour is different from the sum of the parts. That's why many fundamental questions can be answered by investigating the complex systems..One very interesting moment for me was when I was able to.. When I got this result... okay, it's nice. But we need to understand it. We need to know why it's going on. Then we developed a very simple model, to understand the physics of what is going on inside. I just made a comparison of theexperimental results with the theoretical predictions and they go very well on top of each other. That's the moment. What did I say? Wow!I spent much time manufacturing a sample which was a piece of silicon with holes. Then I put it in my setup and shined light, and normally silicon reflects some light. And then suddenly when I shined light on silicon with holes, it started to reflect more. It doesn't make sense if you think about it.It's silicon with holes but reflects more. It's really awesome. It means physics works.'
What physicists do with light: Anja Bieberle FOM archive 2015-04-08 | In the FOM Annual Report 2014 physicists tell us about their research into light. You can read the interviews here (in Dutch):http://www.fom.nl/live/overfom/jaarverslagen/artikel.pag?objectnumber=292431&referpagina=14197Who?Anja Bieberle completed her PhD as a material scientist at the ETH Zürich. She has worked in Switzerland as engineer, teacher, researcher and project leader. She spend one year at MIT as a postdoctoral researcher. Since 2013, Bieberle works at FOM Institute DIFFER. She is the first DIFFER researcher to start her research on the new DIFFER location in Eindhoven.Transcript:'My name is Anja Bieberle, materials scientist. I use light in order to make fuel that can be stored and used when we need it.So my main motivation is that we need more or better energy sources, on a large scale but also for daily life. My motivation is for example that batteries are always empty. And we depend on the electricity grid. We have to go to the grid every day to charge the computer. To charge the laptop or the smartphone. I think there we are very much restricted in our lives.What I like about solar light is: it's for free, and that it's available most of the time. But not always, so we need to store it. And with photoelectric solar conversion, the idea is that you can store the fuel you transfer from sunlight. So what I'm interested in is to understand the limitations at the interface between the electrode and the electrolyte, the heart of a photoelectric chemical system. This I would like to understand and when I do, I can manufacture and design electrodes which are better.So my aim is to make better electrodes then at the moment. And when they're better, I hopeindustry will be more interested in solar fuel conversion. And that this will be a boost.I see the project I used in the first instance for large-scale applications. But it would also be nice for small-scaleapplications.I don't know if this is feasible or can be done in the end. I don't know if this can be realised.. but I can imagine having a backpack or laptop with a membrane on it, which can make photo-electric chemicalsolar fuel conversions. So I can make and store it in a small container and then use it with a fuel cell to power the laptop or to power a smartphone or something. This is very futuristic.'
What physicists do with light: Fred Bijkerk FOM archive 2015-04-08 | In the FOM Annual Report 2014 physicists tell us about their research into light. You can read the interviews here (in Dutch):http://www.fom.nl/live/overfom/jaarverslagen/artikel.pag?objectnumber=292431&referpagina=14197Who?Fred Bijkerk completed his PhD at the VU University Amsterdam. He has led the Nanolayer Surface and Interface Physics group at the former FOM Insitute for Plasma Physics Rijnhuizen. In 2012 he started the industrial focus group XUV-Optics at the MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology (University of Twente). The group uses fundamental research for hightech applications.Transcript:Transcript:'I'm Fred Bijkerk, a materials scientist. Especially that needed to develop and understand XUV optics. This makes exciting new applications possible.This is what my technical people call the most beautiful lab in the Netherlands. Maybe even in Europe and the world. We are very proud to show the usage and equipment we've installed in this focus group. They're all components that show knowledge of thin films, and can unravel them to an atomic level. We can use this to develop such systems from scratch.We are at the XUV optics group in Twente. We work on light that can no longer easily be made visible from UV to soft X-rays. It's not visible but there are exciting applications. For that we develop the optical elements. One application springs to mind and that is photo-lithography.in Holland and Germany we have industry far advanced with making chips, and equipment to make them. They're now interested in optics for the XUV field. They call it XUV lithography. That application is very much in thepicture now.To work with industry you need to speak the language. And you have to understand what people on the shopfloor are doing, and how their queries can translate to research. You have to sell your knowledge. And don't get put off by critical remarks at the start. We started selling in 1994 at SARS. There was varying interest. Some staff at Zeiss wanted to start using it the next day. Others wanted to take it easy. They wanted questions answered before they dared start. In the end became a technique as a candidate for the mass production of integrated circuits.'
Physics@FOM 2015, Impression FOM archive 2015-03-12 | Physics@FOM Veldhoven is a large congress that provides a topical overview of physics in the Netherlands. It is organised by the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) and takes place each year in January. Traditionally, young researchers are given the chance to present themselves and their work alongside renowned names from the Dutch and international physics community. The programme covers Light and matter, Atomic, molecular and optical physics, Nanoscience and nanotechnology, Statistical physics and Soft condensed matter, Surfaces and interfaces, Physics of fluids, Subatomic physics, Plasma and fusion physics, and Strongly correlated systems. http://www.fom.nl/veldhoven
Physics@FOM 2015 - Masterclass David Awschalom FOM archive 2015-02-04 | Prior to Physics@FOM 2015, the programme committee organised four masterclasses. These classes offer PhDs and young postdocs a unique opportunity to receive an introduction to their discipline from top researchers.Please note: the first few minutes of this masterclass were not recorded.Creating and controlling spins in semiconductorsEighty years since Dirac developed the quantum theory of electron spin, contemporary information technology still relies largely on classical electronics: the charge of electrons for computation and magnetic materials for permanent storage. There is a growing interest in exploiting spins in semiconductor nanostructures for the manipulation and storage of information in emergent technologies based upon spintronics and quantum logic. We provide an overview of temporally- and spatially-resolved optoelectronic measurements used to generate, manipulate, and interrogate electron and nuclear spin states in the solid state. In particular, we discuss progress toward scalable quantum systems based on quantum control and coherent coupling between single spins and optical photons for technologies beyond electronics. These demonstrations include advanced materials synthesis techniques, gigahertz-rate coherent manipulation, nondestructive single spin readout, nanofabrication of spin arrays, operation of a single nuclear spin quantum memory and recent material discoveries that represent progress toward the integration of spins and photons for future quantum information processing.About the conference: Physics@FOM Veldhoven is a large congress that provides a topical overview of physics in the Netherlands. It is organised by the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) and takes place each year in January. Traditionally, young researchers are given the chance to present themselves and their work alongside renowned names from the Dutch and international physics community. The programme covers Light and matter, Atomic, molecular and optical physics, Nanoscience and nanotechnology, Statistical physics and Soft condensed matter, Surfaces and interfaces, Physics of fluids, Subatomic physics, Plasma and fusion physics, and Strongly correlated systems.http://www.fom.nl/veldhoven
Physics@FOM 2015 – Masterclass Sharon Glotzer FOM archive 2015-02-04 | Prior to Physics@FOM 2015, the programme committee organised four masterclasses. These classes offer PhDs and young postdocs a unique opportunity to receive an introduction to their discipline from top researchers.Soft matter quasicrystals Quasiperiodic crystals with long range rotational symmetry but no translational repeat unit have been known in metallic alloys since they were first reported in 1984. Yet only in the past ten years have such complex structures been reported in soft materials, comprised of, e.g., polymers, macromolecules, nanoparticles and colloids. In nearly all of these soft matter systems, quasiperiodicity is entropically stabilized, and any interactions are essentially short range. Interestingly, despite the fact that most metallic quasicrystals exhibit icosahedral symmetry, no icosahedral quasicrystals have been reported for soft matter systems. Instead, primarily 12-fold rotational symmetries are found, with recent, occasional reports of 8-fold, 10-fold, 18-fold, and even 24-fold planar quasicrystals. In this talk, we discuss common features and unifying principles for the self-assembly of soft matter quasicrystals, and we present results for the first icosahedral quasicrystal to be thermodynamically self-assembled in a computer simulation. This icosahedral quasicrystal is robust over a range of parameters, and is obtained from a single particle type interacting via a short-ranged, oscillatory pair potential that may be achievable in systems of colloidal spheres. The icosahedral quasicrystal we report is surrounded in parameter space by clathrates, important for deep sea methane storage, and other new crystal structures never before reported in a one-component system.About the conference: Physics@FOM Veldhoven is a large congress that provides a topical overview of physics in the Netherlands. It is organised by the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) and takes place each year in January. Traditionally, young researchers are given the chance to present themselves and their work alongside renowned names from the Dutch and international physics community. The programme covers Light and matter, Atomic, molecular and optical physics, Nanoscience and nanotechnology, Statistical physics and Soft condensed matter, Surfaces and interfaces, Physics of fluids, Subatomic physics, Plasma and fusion physics, and Strongly correlated systems.http://www.fom.nl/veldhoven
Physics@FOM 2015, David Awschalom - Abandoning perfection for quantum technologies FOM archive 2015-02-04 | Beyond electronics: abandoning perfection for quantum technologiesOur technological preference for perfection can only lead us so far: as traditional transistor-based electronics rapidly approach the atomic scale, small amounts of disorder begin to have outsized negative effects. Surprisingly, one of the most promising pathways out of this conundrum may emerge from recent efforts to embrace defects and construct 'quantum machines' to enable new information technologies based on the quantum nature of the electron. Recently, individual defects in diamond and other materials have attracted interest as they possess an electronic spin state that can be employed as a solid state quantum bit at and above room temperature. Research at the frontiers of this field includes creating and manipulating these unusual states in a new generation of nanometer-scale structures. These developments have launched technological efforts aimed at developing applications ranging from secure data encryption to radical improvements in computation speed and complexity. This lecture will describe recent advances towards these goals, including the surprising ability to control atomic-scale spins for communication and computation within materials surrounding us for generations.About the conference: Physics@FOM Veldhoven is a large congress that provides a topical overview of physics in the Netherlands. It is organised by the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) and takes place each year in January. Traditionally, young researchers are given the chance to present themselves and their work alongside renowned names from the Dutch and international physics community. The programme covers Light and matter, Atomic, molecular and optical physics, Nanoscience and nanotechnology, Statistical physics and Soft condensed matter, Surfaces and interfaces, Physics of fluids, Subatomic physics, Plasma and fusion physics, and Strongly correlated systems. http://www.fom.nl/veldhoven
Physics@FOM 2015, Alan Guth - Inflationary Cosmology: Is Our Universe Part of a Multiverse? FOM archive 2015-01-28 | Alan Guth's lecture starts at 13.20Inflationary Cosmology: Is Our Universe Part of a Multiverse?Inflationary cosmology gives a very plausible explanation for many features of our universe, including its uniformity, its mass density, and the patterns of the ripples that are observed in the cosmic microwave background. Most versions of inflation, however, imply that our universe is not unique, but is part of a possibly infinite multiverse. Guth talks about how inflation works, and why he believes that the possibility of a multiverse should be taken seriously.About the conference: Physics@FOM Veldhoven is a large congress that provides a topical overview of physics in the Netherlands. It is organised by the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) and takes place each year in January. Traditionally, young researchers are given the chance to present themselves and their work alongside renowned names from the Dutch and international physics community. The programme covers Light and matter, Atomic, molecular and optical physics, Nanoscience and nanotechnology, Statistical physics and Soft condensed matter, Surfaces and interfaces, Physics of fluids, Subatomic physics, Plasma and fusion physics, and Strongly correlated systems. http://www.fom.nl/veldhoven
Physics@FOM 2015, Sharon Glotzer - Entropy, information and order in soft matter FOM archive 2015-01-28 | Entropy, information and order in soft matterEntropy, information, and order are important concepts in many fields, relevant for materials to machines, for biology to econophysics. Entropy is typically associated with disorder; yet, the counterintuitive notion that a thermodynamic system of hard particles (colloids) might - due solely to entropy - spontaneously assemble from a fluid phase into an ordered crystal was first predicted in the mid-20th century. First demonstrated for rods, and then spheres, the ordering of colloids by entropy maximization upon crowding is now well established. In recent years, surprising discoveries of ordered entropic colloidal crystals of extraordinary structural complexity have been predicted by computer simulation and observed in the laboratory. These findings, presented in this talk, demonstrate that entropy alone can produce order and complexity beyond that previously imagined, and that, in situations where other interactions are also present, the role of entropy in producing order may be greatly underestimated. Glotzer discusses how new statistical mechanical principles learned from recent findings can be used to design shapes that promote long-range entropic order.About the conference: Physics@FOM Veldhoven is a large congress that provides a topical overview of physics in the Netherlands. It is organised by the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) and takes place each year in January. Traditionally, young researchers are given the chance to present themselves and their work alongside renowned names from the Dutch and international physics community. The programme covers Light and matter, Atomic, molecular and optical physics, Nanoscience and nanotechnology, Statistical physics and Soft condensed matter, Surfaces and interfaces, Physics of fluids, Subatomic physics, Plasma and fusion physics, and Strongly correlated systems.http://www.fom.nl/veldhoven
Physics@FOM 2015, Poster Prize ceremony FOM archive 2015-01-28 | Physics@FOM Veldhoven is a large congress that provides a topical overview of physics in the Netherlands. It is organised by the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) and takes place each year in January. Traditionally, young researchers are given the chance to present themselves and their work alongside renowned names from the Dutch and international physics community. The programme covers Light and matter, Atomic, molecular and optical physics, Nanoscience and nanotechnology, Statistical physics and Soft condensed matter, Surfaces and interfaces, Physics of fluids, Subatomic physics, Plasma and fusion physics, and Strongly correlated systems. In 2015 there were about 400 poster presentations.http://www.fom.nl/veldhoven
Physics@FOM 2015, FOM Prizes ceremony FOM archive 2015-01-28 | Physics@FOM Veldhoven is a large congress that provides a topical overview of physics in the Netherlands. It is organised by the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) and takes place each year in January. Traditionally, young researchers are given the chance to present themselves and their work alongside renowned names from the Dutch and international physics community. The programme covers Light and matter, Atomic, molecular and optical physics, Nanoscience and nanotechnology, Statistical physics and Soft condensed matter, Surfaces and interfaces, Physics of fluids, Subatomic physics, Plasma and fusion physics, and Strongly correlated systems. At Physics@FOM 2015, three FOM Prizes were awarded.For more information about the congress, please see:http://www.fom.nl/veldhoven For more information about the FOM Prizes, please see:http://www.fom.nl/prizes
Physics@FOM 2015 - Masterclass Alan Guth FOM archive 2015-01-28 | Prior to Physics@FOM 2015, the programme committee organised four masterclasses. These classes offer PhDs and young postdocs a unique opportunity to receive an introduction to their discipline from top researchers. About the conference: Physics@FOM Veldhoven is a large congress that provides a topical overview of physics in the Netherlands. It is organised by the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) and takes place each year in January. Traditionally, young researchers are given the chance to present themselves and their work alongside renowned names from the Dutch and international physics community. The programme covers Light and matter, Atomic, molecular and optical physics, Nanoscience and nanotechnology, Statistical physics and Soft condensed matter, Surfaces and interfaces, Physics of fluids, Subatomic physics, Plasma and fusion physics, and Strongly correlated systems.http://www.fom.nl/veldhoven
Physics@FOM 2015 – Masterclass Heinrich Jaeger FOM archive 2015-01-28 | Prior to Physics@FOM 2015, the programme committee organised four masterclasses. These classes offer PhDs and young postdocs a unique opportunity to receive an introduction to their discipline from top researchers.Granular materials by designGranular materials are large amorphous aggregates of discrete, individually solid particles. Despite seemingly simple ingredients, such aggregates exhibit a wide range of complex behaviours that defy categorization as ordinary solids or liquids. This includes non-Newtonian flow behaviour and collective 'jamming' transitions. One of the key issues has long been how to link particle-level properties in a predictive manner to the behaviour of the aggregate as a whole. However, for actually designing a granular material, an inverse problem needs to be solved: for a given desired overall response, the task becomes finding the appropriate particle-level properties. This master class discusses new approaches to tackle the inverse problem by bringing concepts from artificial evolution to materials design. These results have general applicability and open up wide-ranging opportunities for materials optimization and discovery.About the conference: Physics@FOM Veldhoven is a large congress that provides a topical overview of physics in the Netherlands. It is organised by the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) and takes place each year in January. Traditionally, young researchers are given the chance to present themselves and their work alongside renowned names from the Dutch and international physics community. The programme covers Light and matter, Atomic, molecular and optical physics, Nanoscience and nanotechnology, Statistical physics and Soft condensed matter, Surfaces and interfaces, Physics of fluids, Subatomic physics, Plasma and fusion physics, and Strongly correlated systems.http://www.fom.nl/veldhoven
International Year of Light 2015 - Official Trailer FOM archive 2015-01-22 | Official trailer for the International Year of Light 2015 (IYL2015), by Nickolas Barris. This trailer kicked off the official United Nations/UNESCO opening ceremony of the IYL2015 in Paris on January 19, 2015. The concept of this video ‘propagated light from the cosmos activating life on earth’, is based on Barris' documentary film Einstein’s Light, which is in production and will be released in September 2015. For more information about the IYL2015, please visithttp://www.light2015.org (English)http://http://www.iyl2015.nl (Dutch)
Magnon spintronics FOM archive 2015-01-07 | Programme leader Rembert Duine tells us about his new FOM programme, named 'Magnon spintronics'. This 'Vrije Programma' was awarded funding in November 2014.In November 2014 the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) awarded a total of 12 million Euros to six new research programmes. The research groups will work in areas where Dutch physics has a superb international record and there is a clear scientific and societal interest. This varies from researching fundamental questions about the universe that have not been answered by the standard model, up to research into variable behaviour of multi-cellular organisms at the level of individual cells.For more information, please see http://www.fom.nl and http://www.fom.nl/live/english/research/research_programmes/free_programmes/artikel.pag?objectnumber=280206
Higgs as a probe and portal FOM archive 2014-12-22 | Programme leader Eric Laenen tells us about his new FOM programme, named 'Higgs as a probe and portal'. This 'Vrije Programma' was awarded funding in November 2014.In November 2014 the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) awarded a total of 12 million Euros to six new research programmes. The research groups will work in areas where Dutch physics has a superb international record and there is a clear scientific and societal interest. This varies from researching fundamental questions about the universe that have not been answered by the standard model, up to research into variable behaviour of multi-cellular organisms at the level of individual cells.For more information, please see http://www.fom.nl and http://www.fom.nl/live/english/research/research_grants/free_programmes/artikel.pag?objectnumber=280083.
Two-dimensional semiconductor crystals FOM archive 2014-12-22 | Programme leader Harold Zandvliet tells us about his new FOM programme, named 'Two-dimensional semiconductor crystals'. This 'Vrije Programma' was awarded funding in November 2014.In November 2014 the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) awarded a total of 12 million Euros to six new research programmes. The research groups will work in areas where Dutch physics has a superb international record and there is a clear scientific and societal interest. This varies from researching fundamental questions about the universe that have not been answered by the standard model, up to research into variable behaviour of multi-cellular organisms at the level of individual cells.For more information, please see http://www.fom.nl and http://www.fom.nl/live/english/research/research_programmes/free_programmes/artikel.pag?objectnumber=280328.
Exciting exchange FOM archive 2014-12-22 | Programme leader Theo Rasing tells us about his new FOM programme, named 'Exciting exchange'. This 'Vrije Programma' was awarded funding in November 2014.In November 2014 the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) awarded a total of 12 million Euros to six new research programmes. The research groups will work in areas where Dutch physics has a superb international record and there is a clear scientific and societal interest. This varies from researching fundamental questions about the universe that have not been answered by the standard model, up to research into variable behaviour of multi-cellular organisms at the level of individual cells.For more information, please see http://www.fom.nl and http://www.fom.nl/live/english/research/research_programmes/free_programmes/artikel.pag?objectnumber=280164
The signal is the noise: seeking physical origins of fluctuation in organism-scale behaviour FOM archive 2014-12-22 | Programme leader Tom Shimizu tells us about his new FOM programme, named 'The signal is the noise: seeking physical origins of fluctuation in organism-scale behaviour'. This 'Vrije Programma' was awarded funding in November 2014.In November 2014 the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) awarded a total of 12 million Euros to six new research programmes. The research groups will work in areas where Dutch physics has a superb international record and there is a clear scientific and societal interest. This varies from researching fundamental questions about the universe that have not been answered by the standard model, up to research into variable behaviour of multi-cellular organisms at the level of individual cells.For more information, please see http://www.fom.nl and http://www.fom.nl/live/english/research/research_programmes/free_programmes/artikel.pag?objectnumber=280300
