[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