[UCI-CalIT2] Forthcoming Physics Colloquia of interest to Cal-IT
Stuart A ROSS
STUROSS@uci.edu
Tue, 25 Mar 2003 11:59:19 -0800
Doug Mills asked us to send you this information about two forthcoming
talks in the Physics Colloquia series. They are usually held on
Thursday at 4 p.m. in room 2111 Frederick Reines Hall.
I want to call two upcoming physics colloquia to your
attention. Let me describe them briefly here, and you will get
reminders as the dates approach.
You may be aware that there has been very active discussion
of new artificial structures which at microwave frequencies act as
"negative index of refraction materials", called also "left handed
optical materials". The strange electromagnetic properties of such
materials were discussed by the Soviet theorist Veselago over three
decades ago, and in response to very interesting recent theory by
John Pendry (Imperial College, London) at UCSD David Smith and Shelly
Schlutz claim to have created "meta materials" which act as negative
index of refraction materials. There is a great deal of interest in
the engineering and device community as well, as one sees from the
project at Boeing (Seattle) established by DARPA recently.
On Thursday, April 3, John Pendry will be giving the Physics
colloquium, and on May 22 David Smith will be speaking on the
experiments. I am sending out this comment with the thought that
these two talks will be interested to an audience broader than that
provided by the Physics Department. Incidentally, those of you
engaged in surface science will recognize John Pendry from his
earlier seminal work on the theory of multiple scattering of
electrons from crystal surfaces. He is one of the "founding fathers"
of modern low energy electron diffraction (LEED) theory. Clearly, he
has been doing other things recently.
Doug Mills