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Many of our modern devices—from cell phones to electric cars—depend on charged batteries to operate. But when battery voltage fades, so does the amount of energy a battery can hold. This fading is especially problematic for certain lithium-rich cathode materials used to power things like electric cars; how the fading occurs isn’t well understood. To help remedy the problem, a team of UC San Diego researchers applied heat and X-ray imaging differently to demonstrate for the first time the origins of voltage fade. I...

UC San Diego Researchers Charge Quest to End ‘Voltage Fade’

Currently, information-processing tools like computers and cell phones rely on electron charge to operate. A team of UC San Diego physicists, however, seeks alternative systems of faster, more energy-efficient signal processing. They do this by using “excitons,” electrically neutral quasiparticles that exist in insulators, semiconductors and in some liquids. And their latest study of excitonic spin dynamics shows functional promise for our future devices. In their research, Professor Leonid Butov and recent physics PhD ...

Physicists Practice ‘Spin Control’ to Improve Information Processing

As if taken from a Star Wars or Star Trek movie script, the term “exciton” (pronounced ˈek-sə-tän) comes from condensed matter physics. Excitons are bound states of electrons and electron holes attracted to each other by electrostatic force. They can be created both by light and transformed into light. Electrically neutral, these quasiparticles exist in systems like insulators and semiconductors, but University of California San Diego physicists have established a way that may bring them into future cell phones and laptops.

Physicists’ Room-Temperature Research Leads to ‘Exciting’ Possibilities for Science

University of California San Diego condensed matter physicists noticed something surprising about electrons—they behave like a family. Electrons not only carry electric charge as exhibited in electric currents, but they also possess spins which are responsible for quantum magnetic properties. Electron spins can organize, bond and interact. When excited, one spiraling part impacts the others. This dynamic spin was the subject of breakthrough research by UC San Diego Professor Congjun Wu, physics graduate student Wang Yang, for...

UC San Diego Physicists Apply Pencil, Paper and Sociology to Breakthrough Research

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has named Professors Tongyan Lin, Elena Koslover, and Tenio Popmintchev as 2018 Sloan Fellows. They are three of 126 talented young U.S. and Canadian researchers to receive this distinction. The Sloan Research Fellowships are extraordinarily competitive awards involving nominations for most of the very best early-career scholars from the United States and Canada. The Fellowships seek to stimulate fundamental research by early-career scientists and scholars of outstanding promi...

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has named Professors Tongyan Lin, Elena Koslover, and Tenio Popmintchev as 2018 Sloan Fellows

University of California San Diego researchers in the Department of Physics have shed light on the formation of supermassive black holes and galaxies. The research by Professor Shelley Wright, graduate student Andrey Vayner and their colleagues outlines the physics surrounding the formation of black holes and galaxies, improving scientific understanding of how the two grow in unison. Their findings, published in the Dec. 20, 2017 issue of Astro...

UC San Diego Researchers Shed Light on Formation of Black Holes and Galaxies

UC San Diego has begun designing a powerful telescope that will be placed in Chile’s Atacama Desert to search for “ancient light” that could help explain how the universe arose from the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago. The $10 million telescope will be the largest of five instruments that are being developed as part of the Simons Observatory, which will be located on a high, arid plateau that’s well-suited for searching the cosmos. UC San Diego will collaborate with a Germany company on the design ...

UC San Diego to design telescope to search for "ancient light" from the universe

Chelsey Dorow, UCSD Physics graduate student, has been selected as Inamori Fellow for 2018. Chelsey studies the physics of indirect excitons. The Inamori Fellowship Program supports our best and brightest graduate students. This fellowship has been established by the Inamori Foundation.

Chelsey Dorow has won 2018 Inamori Fellowship

Physics faculty member Oleg Shpyrko has been named one of the recipients of the 2017 UCSD Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award. The prestigious award is bestowed upon faculty and graduate students to honor teaching excellence. Recipients are selected for their creativity, innovative teaching methods, ability to motivate students and commitment to teaching. Read more here.

Oleg Shpyrko Recipient of 2017 UCSD Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award

For the first time, scientists have directly detected gravitational waves — ripples in space-time — in conjunction with light from the spectacular collision of two neutron stars. This marks the first time that a cosmic event has been viewed in both gravitational waves and light. The gravitational signal, named GW170817, was first detected on August 17 at 8:41 am EDT by two identical Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors, one located in ...

LIGO and OSG launch multi-messenger astronomy era