In This Issue

Letter from the Chair

Distinguished Lecture

Honors and Awards

Old Buildings History

Centerfold : New Building

SOAR Complete

NSCL Update

Hantel Endows Fellowship

Institute for Quantum Science

Sloan Winner Goes Gold

Alumni News

New Building Moves

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Physics and AstronomySummer 2002Michigan State University

Dear Friends

of the Department of Physics and Astronomy,

In front of you is the newest edition of our newslet-ter, and there are many outstanding news items to report.

First and foremost is the fact that we have a newhome. In early March we began moving into the Biomed-ical and Physical Sciences Building, and now this move issubstantially completed. We share our new building withthe departments of Physiology and Microbiology. Thebuilding is connected to the existing Chemistry and Bio-chemistry buildings, forming the core of a new sciencecomplex on our campus. Perhaps most important for ourdepartment, the new building is now right across from thecyclotron lab, making it much easier for the different re-search interest groups to interact.

We now have outstanding teaching and research fa-cilities and have begun to hire additional faculty to takeadvantage of these facilities. The first two new arrivalsare Profs. Kirsten Tollefson, a particle physicist, andCarlo Piermarocchi, a condensed matter theorist. Andjust before we moved into the new building, Prof. StevenZepf joined our astronomy faculty.

Retiring from our faculty will be Prof. Ed Kashy andProf. Sue Simkin, both of whom have given a lifetime ofdedicated service to MSU. But, as with all driven peo-ple, don’t expect them to just slip away. They still havebig plans. Ed continues to work on the lon-CAPA teach-

A Letter from the ChairWolfgang W. Bauer

Eugene Capriotti

Daniel R. Stump

S. D. Mahanti

Eugene J. Kales

Darlene Salman

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Department Chair

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Associate Chair for Astronomy

. . . . Associate Chair for Undergraduate Instruction

. . . . . . . . . . Associate Chair for Graduate Instruction

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Newsletter Production Editor

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Contributing Editor

Volume 3Summer 2001

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ing project as well as the modernization of our lecturedemonstrations, and Sue has just taken on the duties asthe editor of a major astronomy journal.

Several donations and endowments have helped us toestablish fellowship awards for undergraduate and gradu-ate students, which will help our recruiting efforts.

More exciting news is on the way. Just this spring,we celebrated the inauguration of the Institute for Quan-tum Science, and the condensed matter group is ready totake advantage of it. Late this year, we expect the com-pletion of the office wing addition to the cyclotron labora-tory. And early next year should see the first light fromour SOAR telescope in the Chilean Andes Mountains.The nuclear physics group, with backing from all levelsof the University administration, continues in their questto attract the $900 Million RIA project to MSU, andhopefully we will hear good news soon. And finally, weare in the process of creating joint hires in the interdisci-plinary interface areas between our department andChemistry and Biochemistry, allowing us a deeper con-nection to the life sciences and in particular the MichiganLife Science Corridor initiative.

Best wishes

Wolfgang Bauer

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Steven Chu meeting with students and faculty at a luncheonin the NSCL atrium before his lecture.

Distinguished Lecture Series

The Physics and Astronomy Department, as part of thecontinuing Distinguished Lecturer Series, hosted NobelLaureate Steven Chu, Stanford University, during Fall Semes-ter 2001. Professor Chu received the Nobel Prize for Physicsin 1997 "for development of methods to cool and trap atomswith laser light." A luncheon in the NSCL atrium and a dinnerat Kellogg Center before the talk allowed students and facultyto visit with Dr. Chu.

Previous speakers in this series include William Phillips, NIST(Nobel Prize in Physics 1997), T. D. Lee, Columbia (Nobel Prizein Physics 1957), J. Robert Schrieffer, NHMFL (Nobel Prize inPhysics, 1972), Joseph Taylor, Princeton (Nobel Prize inPhysics 1993), and Leon M. Lederman, ITT (Nobel Prize inPhysics, 1988).

Dr. Chu during his Lecture on Laser Trapping

Honors Mentionable

Congratulations to Faculty, Staff, and Students in the Depart-ment who have received these Awards and Honors recently:

Gary D. Westfall has been honored with the MSU Distin-guished Faculty Award. His discovery of the disappearanceof flow has been one of the most significant research resultsto emerge from the National Superconducting CyclotronLaboratory at Michigan State University, leading to newinsight into the nuclear equation of state. Dr. Westfall is anexcellent teacher of physics and astronomy and has written anintroductory textbook in physics; he has introduced numer-ous students to research in his field, supervised thesis work,and guided them to successful careers.

Department of Phys ics and Astronomy Awardsfor 2001/2002: Bruce Ver West Outstanding Junior Award toDavid J. Oostdyk; Thomas H. Osgood Outstanding SeniorAward to be shared by Lynn R. Carlson and Joseph M.Welsch; Best Teaching Assistant Award to Susan H. Musser;Sherwood K. Haynes Outstanding Graduate Student Award tobe shared by Erik J. Tryggestad and Sergei Vrashdin; BestGraduate Teacher Award to Martin M. Berz; Outreach Awardto Darlene Salman for Science Olympiad, MAAPT Confer-ence, and MMPA; Distinguished Staff Award to Sandra L.Teague; Thomas Kaplan Award to be shared by Andrew J.Rader and Sergei Vrazhdin; Thomas H. Osgood Awards forExcellence in Teaching to Hendrik Schatz and Horace A.Smith. Nicholas Kreucher is a Student Employee of the YearFinalist.

State event supervisors at the Science Olympiad, Saturday 27April 2001, included Scott Pratt, Hendrick Schatz, WalterBenenson, Darlene Salman, Jane Repko, Jack Bass, Ed Loh,Dave Batch, Michael Thoennessen, Jules Kovacs, and GaryWestfall. Thus our department provides about 20% of allevent supervisors. Outstanding! There are many people thatwork behind the scenes to make these events a success; MarkOlson put in many hours of support, and the guys in the ma-chine shop also provide lots of valuable help. Thanks to all ofyou for doing your part in making this event the success it is.

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REU Triumph: Students enrolled in the Research Expe-rience for Undergraduates compete with PA faculty in basket-ball. In closely contested games, REU students nipped Facultyby a bucket twice. This Department of Physics and Astronomyprogram for undergraduates is the longest running and one ofthe largest of its kind in the country.

Meet Stephen Zepf

Stephen Zepf joined the astron-omy group in the Department inJuly 2001. He was previously onthe faculty at Yale, and beforethat was a Hubble Fellow at UCBerkeley, a postdoc at Durham(England), and received his PhDat Johns Hopkins in 1992. SteveZepf's research focus is the for-mation and evolution of galax-ies, which is one of the central challenges in modern astrono-my and astrophysics. One of the ways Zepf determines howgalaxies form and evolve is to study their globular cluster sys-tems, which provide important and observationally accessiblefossil records of the history of star formation in galaxies. Thisis particularly important for elliptical galaxies, which are notforming stars now, but formed large numbers of stars sometime in the past. Since most stars are in such galaxies, knowinghow and when they form is critical for developing a physicalunderstanding of how the universe evolved into the currentcomplex structures we see today.

Zepf “fell into” work on extragalactic globular cluster systemswhen he and colleague Keith Ashman wrote a paper predictingthat recently created globular clusters would be observed instarbursts induced by galaxy mergers, and that old ellipticalswould have bimodal globular cluster systems as a result oftheir formation in past mergers. The first prediction was con-firmed by observations with the Hubble Space telescope lessthan a year after the paper was published. The second predic-tion was confirmed not long after through observational workof Zepf’s group. They have continued to use these break-throughs to determine when the major star formation episodesof elliptical galaxies occurred, to study how globular clustersthemselves form (an extraordinarily large number of stars

bound together in a very small region), and to study the darkmatter properties of elliptical galaxies by using line of sight ve-locities of globular clusters as dynamical probes of the poten-tial at large radii.

Zepf is also engaged in direct searches for the distant high red-shift starbursts that make elliptical galaxies, and for signaturesof the growth of massive black holes that are found in thesegalaxies. This work involves combining data from space-basedNASA missions (e.g. the Hubble Space Telescope and theChandra X-ray observatory) and ground-based observationalfacilities, soon to include the SOAR telescope in which MSU isa partner. One particular aspect of this work in which SOARwill play an important role is that much of the star formationand as well as emission from any black hole present at thecenter of the galaxy will be embedded in dusty regions. As aresult, detailed images in the near-infrared, as provided by theMSU infrared camera, are invaluable for elucidating the physi-cal nature of the progenitors of elliptical galaxies.

Some Spring MS and PhD graduates andtheir advisors; front: Wolfgang Bauer, Marguerite Tonjes, Za-chary Constin; back: Sen Cheng, Michael Davis, Edwin Loh,Susan Simkin, Richard Shomin, Wanpeng Tan, Scott Pratt, JoeyHuston, Simona Murgia, William Lynch, William Hartmann,Philip Duxbury, Jan Meinke, and Connie Bednarski

In The Beginning...Darlene Salman

College Hall (1857-1871)College Hall, the first building erected at Michigan AgriculturalCollege, was built in 1857. It was also the first building in thecountry to be erected specifically for agricultural education.During the 60th anniversary celebration, attended by PresidentWilson and other dignitaries, the north side collapsed as theband started to play the National Anthem. Unfortunately, thefoundation rested on a giant tree stump that had rotted overtime and was removed in 1918. Beaumont Tower stands on its

former location.Physics andastronomyclasses weretaught there fromthe earliest days.Physics had astudent lab in thebasement ofCollege Hall andlectures weretaught in the

chapel. Heating was by hot air and flues ran in the walls fromthe basement to various rooms. It never worked and wasreplaced by wood burning stoves. The flues were never re-moved and students would gather in the basement to listen inon the faculty meetings.

Chemical Laboratory (1871-1906)(known as the Chem Fort)

Physics was officially separated from chemistry in 1889 and,with the guidance of P.B. Woodworth, became a separatedepartment. The first annual report was published in 1890.Woodworth was a student of Kedzie and later went to Cornelland University of Berlin in 1902. The picture on the bottomright shows a typical physics lecture. Note that the physicsdepartment at MSU was one of the first in the country to allowwomen into the general physics curriculum. Women did notattend physics laboratory with male students.

About the turn of the century, the campus was lit by kerosenelamps. The physics faculty did not like the smell and the messof kerosene lamps hanging from the trees and installed electriclighting on the exterior of the building, making it the first oncampus to have outdoor lights. Physics was also the first

building in the area to install neon lighting about 1912.

The building was built in 1869 for $10,000. This was the firstlaboratory on campus and was built to take the place of therooms occupied in the north portion of College Hall. The De-partment of Physics occupied the north wing of the ChemicalLab. On the main floor there was a lecture room for 100 stu-dents, two offices and a large workroom. Physics was to returnagain in March of 1916.

Physics and Engineering Building (1906 – March 1916)

This building was destroyed by fire in 1916 along with most ofthe physics equipment. The building stood west of Farm Laneand North of the river. Old Wells Hall was on the west,approximately where the Graduate library now stands. Physicsoccupied rooms in the basement, 1st and 2nd floors of the westend of the building. Physics had a large lab used for generalexperiments and smaller labs for other applications. Also in thisbuilding were the electrical labs. The Engineering Building wasmade of slow burning brick and heavy timber roof hoists. Itincluded Mechanical, Civil and Electrical Engineering andPhysics. After the fire, physics was not invited to share thenew Olds Engineering Building constructed to replace thisbuilding. According to the hand-written faculty meeting notes,there was some question about the suspicious nature of thedestruction of nearly all of the physics inventory. It seems theadministration didn’t think the faculty and students tried hardenough to rescue the equipment. After the fire, physics wasable to upgrade and replace most of the items they had beenwanting for the last few years.

This is the first in a series of articles covering the variousbuildings that housed the Physics Department. Astronomyand the NSCL will be covered separately. If you would like ad-ditional information contact Darlene Salman atsalman@pa.msu.edu.

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Dedication ceremony reception in atrium as seen from the fourth floor

Shop and Lab Wing

Teaching Laboratories

Scenes from the New Home of the Physics

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Hantel Endows Fellowship in Memoryof Professor Donald J. Montgomery

The late Lawrence Hantel (’60, ’62) and his wife Elizabeth re-cently donated $300,000 to the Department of Physics and As-tronomy to create the Lawrence W. Hantel Endowed Fellow-ship Fund in Memory of Professor Donald J. Montgomery.Lawrence Hantel received both his undergraduate and Mas-ter’s degrees in physics from Michigan State University. Agolfing scholarship brought Hantel to MSU, but he developeda keen interest in chemistry and physics and never played forthe golf team. Lawrence Hantel believed that Professor Mont-gomery was instrumental in his scientific development and hisvery successful career.

Hantel was greatly influenced by Montgomery’s caring guid-ance during his student years. Throughout his career, Hantelwould often reflect upon the excellent leadership and exampleshown by Professor Montgomery. Sadly, Lawrence passedaway in February of this year at age 62, after a battle with leu-kemia. One of his last wishes was to show his appreciation ofthe guidance and mentoring he received from Professor Mont-gomery and MSU.

The Hantel endowed fellowship was created to provide talent-ed undergraduate students the opportunity to participate inlong-term research programs that will augment their prepara-tion for graduate school and the work environment. The goalis to develop in the student the ability to identify a problem, toplan and execute a program to solve the problem, and last butnot least, to write up the results in a clear, understandablemanner. These skills will help advance awardees in theachievement of their goals in graduate school and on the job.

Through this endowed fellowship, the Hantels have ensuredthat the legacy of both Lawrence Hantel and Professor DonaldJ. Montgomery will continue, as it fosters continued scientificdevelopment of motivated undergraduate students.

[CNS 2001 Fall Magazine 6-27-01]

Interdepartmental Library

Offices and Conference Areas

Konrad Gelbkeand US Senator

Debbie Stabinowvisiting in theNSCL atrium

Wolfgang Bauerand US Con-

gressman NickSmith on his

visit to the newBPS building

Distinguished Visitorss and Astronomy Department

Large and Small Lecture Halls

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SOAR telescope building and dome are essentially complete. Theoptical system, without which the completed part is like agun without a bullet, is scheduled for installation early in2003. The telescope will undergo engineering tests for thefirst part of 2003 and should be in full science operation bythe end of that year. The most important component of theoptical system is the 4.2-meter primary mirror. The primarywas cast and ground at the Corning works in upstate NewYork. It is currently being polished by Goodrich Corporationin Danbury, Connecticut to specifications that will result in amirror surface of extraordinary precision so that it's imageswill be of unrivaled sharpness. The Soar telescope will be thepremier imaging telescope on Earth."

Completed dome amid July snowsof the South American winter

Arrival and installationof the shutter lift duringthe Andean spring last

autumn

Last September as constructionbegan on the dome

Dome nearing completion in Marchof this year, the Andean summer.

President and Mrs. Peter McPhearson donate $10,000.00 to SOARProject and present a check to College of Natural Science DeanGeorge Leroi during Fall 2002 Homecoming festivities.

9NSCL Update

by Orilla McHarris

The coupled cyclotron facility iscomplete. The NSCL's K500 andK1200 coupled cyclotrons havebeen producing beams for exper-iments ever since their success-ful commissioning in June 2001,when the first experiment (report-ed in a large front-page article in

the Lansing State Journal) was done with a beam of nuclei ofthe very neutron-rich isotope 33Al. Funding for operating theCCF (Coupled Cyclotron Facility) as a national user facilitystarted in November 2001, with a five-year $75 million operatinggrant.

The first experiment at the CCF utilized the new APEX array(pictured above) of position-sensitive sodium iodide countersto detect and reconstruct the gamma rays emitted from the v/c~ 0.4 33Al beam. This array and the recently-commissionedSeGA array of segmented germanium detectors will be the workhorses of in-beam gamma-ray spectroscopy at the CCF.

In the subsequent first year of operation, the CCF completed10 experiments and many new equipment developments. TheA1900 fragment separation works exceptionally well (as calcu-lated) and has the highest efficiency of any fragment separatorin the world. Experiments in the first year addressed the chang-es in structure found in rare isotopes and studied the proper-ties of new isotopes, some of which are important for findingthe site of the r-process (the astrophysical process by whichabout half of the heavier elements are created).

The S800 spectrograph has been upgraded and re-commis-sioned. A digital readout of the focal plane Cathode ReadoutDrift Counters allows multiple hits to be read simultaneously.The new high-purity gas-handling system for the focal planeand tracking detectors is computer-controlled. The new PPACtracking detectors, 10 cm × 10 cm in area and less than 1 milli-gram/cm2 thick, will read up to 1 × 106 counts/second (100-1000times faster than previous models).

A consortium of ten institutions is providing an opportunityfor undergraduates to participate in nuclear physics research.The group, Ball State, Central Michigan, Concordia, Hope, In-diana at South Bend, Millikin, Western Michigan, and West-

mont, plus coordinators Florida State and MSU, is building ahighly-efficient large-area neutron detector, MoNA (for Modu-lar Neutron Array). Undergraduates have been assembling andtesting scintillator bars, and the complete detector will be as-sembled and used at the NSCL. Several Concordia College stu-dents spent summer “vacation” at the NSCL completing theircollege's share, and in a real show of enthusiasm, completedthe work on the 16 bars assigned to MSU/FSU as well! MoNAis funded by nine separate Major Research Instrumentationgrants from the NSF to the participating institutions.

The NSCL continues to be actively involved in shaping theconcept for an advanced rare isotope accelerator, RIA, which isdesignated top priority for major new construction in the Nu-clear Science Advisory Committee's Long Range Plan. Designstudies for RIA are now underway at several labs, and a na-tional research and development plan has been outlined.

As part of this nationaleffort, and also withother possible nuclearscience applications inmind, the NSCL accel-erator physics grouphas initiated an R&Dprogram in supercon-ducting radio frequen-cy (SRF) cavities. Atleft, a superconductingcavity is being pre-pared in a clean roomfor testing inside a“dunking dewar” filledwith liquid helium. MSUfunded the construc-tion of the required in-frastructure. Cavity design and testing is being done in collab-oration with the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facilityin Newport News, Virginia, and INFN's Laboratorio Acceleratorie Superconduttività Applicata in Milano, Italy.

To provide desk space for the additional staff needed to runthe coupled cyclotron project, with a little extra space for newprojects, a new office wing is being added on the west end ofthe NSCL building. The former one-story wing is being re-placed by a two-story wing, with space added on the north fora new main entrance.

Institute for Quantum Scienceby Mark Dykman

The Institute for Quantum Sciences has been recently createdat MSU and will focus on the new and rapidly growing area ofquantum computing and information processing, provide anenvironment for scientists and mathematicians to explore thefundamental physical characteristics of quantum systems, im-plement prototype quantum computers, and develop quantumalgorithms for novel applications. Quantum computing promis-es to revolutionize information processing as a whole, includ-ing rapid decryption, large database searches, and other prob-lems that would benefit from the massive parallelism inherent inquantum systems; it opens a qualitatively new and secure wayof information transfer.

Quantum computers have the potential to be many orders ofmagnitude more powerful than existing computers. Their mak-ing will require expertise in condensed matter physics, quan-tum optics, chemistry, and nanotechnology; the IQS will pro-vide an infrastructure to focus research on developing a quan-tum computer. One of the most promising ideas for a solid-statequantum computer is based on quantum systems with dipolarcoupling. Implementation will involve low-temperature tech-niques, microwave and optical spectroscopies, nanosciences,the theory of atomic-scale dipolar systems in solids, as well asquantum algorithms and architecture development.

The IQS will sponsor an active visiting scholars program, across-disciplinary campus seminar and lecture series, nationaland international conferences on quantum computing, and fel-lowships for outstanding research students and postdoctoralfellows. The IQS is supported by the MSU Foundation andthe Office of the VP for Research. Further information is avail-able at http://www.pa.msu.edu/iqs. Contact: Mark Dykman, Di-rector. IQS Office: BPS 2170, ph.355-9200x2170.

16 bit quantum computer based on electrons on liquid helium

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R. I. PR. I. PR. I. PR. I. PR. I. P.....

PHYSICS-ASTRONOMYPHYSICS-ASTRONOMYPHYSICS-ASTRONOMYPHYSICS-ASTRONOMYPHYSICS-ASTRONOMY

né PHYSICS-MAné PHYSICS-MAné PHYSICS-MAné PHYSICS-MAné PHYSICS-MATHEMATHEMATHEMATHEMATHEMATICSTICSTICSTICSTICS

BUILDINGBUILDINGBUILDINGBUILDINGBUILDING

1949 - 20021949 - 20021949 - 20021949 - 20021949 - 2002by Julius Kovacs

Amid the words of great expectations expressed for the Bio-medical and Physical Sciences Building (BPS) that have beenwritten in these newsletters, local newspapers, alumni maga-zines, etc., a few last words must be said for the dearly depart-ed-from P-A Building. The Physics and Astronomy Department(with and without astronomers) had continuously occupied thebuilding since July 1949 (the Mathematics Department movedto Wells Hall in the early ̀ 60s). In the spring and summer of2002 the exodus from the building was carried out in orderlyfashion, sort of, even while classes were being held in thebuilding in the Spring Semester and the last occupant removedhimself and the contents of his desk on July 30. At the time ofthis writing, only trash, empty boxes, old equipment and furni-ture destined for salvage are in the offices, labs and corridors.The 10-ton Harvey-Wells electromagnet is still on its tracks inRoom 8 in the basement (What will the Psychology Depart-ment, rumored to be the new occupants, do with this magnet?).

What great things were anticipated for the Physics-Mathemat-ics building in 1949? We don't have to speculate about this be-cause it is documented. In Volume 18 of the American Journalof Physics, 1950, an 8-page article, starting on page 378, waswritten about the new structure. What was expected for it andwhat about the building were sources of pride are clearly indi-cated in this article. The teaching function was the main em-phasis; research seemed to be an add-on. In the basement,where there were no teaching facilities at the time of the aban-donment, seven of the largest rooms were designated as teach-ing laboratories. The first floor likewise had seven teachinglaboratories along with the two lecture halls. Five classroomsand four laboratories were designated for the second floor.The third floor likewise had two laboratories (astronomy andmeteorology). Laboratories for research appear in the floorplans of the basement area shown in the article but not much issaid about them except their availability for various researchprograms. Needless to say, as the department grew and theneed for research space increased, many instructional labs andclassrooms disappeared to make way for the growth of re-search in the department until it became necessary to move toanother building, which was done in 2002.

11Alumni News

by Julius KovacsWe continue to receive information from alumni/alumnae andreport it to you below. Please send us information about your-self that we may include in future newsletters. We have ad-dresses for about 2500 alums (there are many more for whomwe lack addresses) so the information below is but a small frac-tion of those from whom we’d like to get email(kovacs@pa.msu.edu) or paper correspondence. We haveover a thousand names on our lists for BA, BS, MS and PhDrecipients going back to 1927, and we continue to fill them in.We invite you to browse this column and if you don’t see yourname, let us know (or if you see any errors in the informationabout your degree, report corrections to us). To see these pag-es, get on the Physics-Astronomy home page (http://www.pa.msu.edu), click on the Alumni/News button and scrolldown to Graduate Announcements to get to the various but-tons that will lead to the pages for our various degrees. Here isinformation we have collected since a year ago.

Donald A. Hall (BS, ’51, MS ̀ 54) responded to reading aboutalumni in the Summer 2001 Newsletter and expressed his enjoy-ment at reading about happenings in the 40s and 50s. AlanStrelzoff (BS, ̀ 57) is a Vice President of Embedded System De-sign at Cadence Design Systems working on new ideas in em-bedded system design languages that could take the place ofVerilog and C. He’d be happy to hear from anyone interestedin functional and dataflow programming. Martha Schwartz-mann (BS, ̀ 66) has had a career where she transformed fromphysicist to engineer to high school teacher to law student.She has been practicing law since 1980 and is currently a re-search attorney at the Third District Court of Appeals in SanDiego. Tim Murphy (BS, ̀ 69; MS, ̀ 77) is School Superinten-dent in Sandusky, MI. He says he uses his physics training forfun, runs a school system for pay. Paul Sojka (BS, ̀ 76) is Pro-fessor and Chairman, School of ME Research Committee atPurdue University. He started at Purdue in 1983, when he com-pleted his PhD in Mechanical Engineering at MSU. MichaelBozack (BS, ̀ 75; MS, ̀ 77) is on the faculty at the Surface Sci-ence Laboratory in the Physics Department at Auburn Univer-sity. He completed his PhD in Applied Physics at the OregonGraduate Institute of Science and Technology. Stanley Radford(BS, ’76) has joined the Physics faculty as Associate Professorat Marietta College in Ohio. Andrea Pepper (BS, ’75) informedus that she has taken a position as lab supervisor at GeorgiaPerimeter College. GPC is a system of community colleges ring-ing the Atlanta area. LeighAnn Nichols (MS, ̀ 88) is at the Uni-versity of Nebraska, Lincoln, in the PhD program in Physicsworking on a project in magnetic force spectroscopy amongother research pursuits. Ronald Kumon (BS ’92) is at NIST,Boulder, CO on a National Research Council Research Associ-ateship. He completed a PhD in Physics in 1999 at the Universi-ty of Texas, Austin; at NSIT he is modeling acoustic character-ization of materials in the Materials Reliability Division. ErikHendrickson (MS, ̀ 90; PhD, '94) was elected Chair of thePhysics & Astronomy Department at the University of Wis-consin - Eau Claire in January, 2002 for a 4-yr term.

Sloan Winner Goes For the GoldHendrik Schatz wants to knowwhere gold comes from, but asan astrophysicist he isn’t look-ing in mines. “The only elementsright after the Big Bang werehydrogen, helium, and traces oflithium,” says the assistant pro-fessor of physics. No carbon, noiron, no gold, no uranium.

The nuclear reactions that powerstars and stellar explosions alsosynthesize elements. One reaction sequence is the rapid neu-tron capture process, which converts one element to anotherto create about half of all heavy elements in the universe. Butno one knows where among those nuclear reaction sites theprocess occurs.

One possibility, Schatz says, might be a supernova explosion.In experiments to generate data not available from observingsuch astrophysical events, he uses the National Supercon-ducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL) accelerator to hurl ordi-nary, stable nuclei at high speeds against a solid object. Bil-lions of nuclei hit the wall each second, producing new nuclei,sometimes exotic and unstable, which are then sent through asystem of magnets designed to throw out as many as possibleof the nuclei that aren’t applicable to the search for gold.

“Maybe once an hour we find a piece that’s interesting,”Schatz says. And when they do, they analyze it and comparethe data with information from the astrophysical event. It’s anexpensive way to make gold, he acknowledges, but it allowshim to measure properties of some of the nuclei in the processpath. Because the reaction sequences in the rapid neutroncapture process lie outside the region of known nuclei andbecause the involved nuclei are unusually rich in neutrons,theoretical models may not predict the properties accurately.

Now Schatz has an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship-one of 104awarded this summer-to support his research. “My work linksnuclear physics and astrophysics, and many of the astrophys-icists I work with are in California, Chicago, Germany, andSwitzerland,” he notes. The fellowship will allow him to spendmore time with those collaborators, meet some equipmentneeds, and provide additional computing power for the inten-sive computations that are part of his experimental work.

That work also explores another nuclear reaction sequenceinvolving exotic nuclei. The rapid proton capture process oc-curs on the surface of a neutron star that, Schatz says, issucking matter, mostly hydrogen and helium, from a compan-ion star onto its surface. Thermonuclear explosions seen asbursts of X-rays fuse that matter into heavier elements. Schatzmodels the process that supplies the energy during the explo-sions to clarify the connection between the X-ray bursts andthe neutron star’s properties.

“I’m fortunate to have access to the world’s best accelerator,”he says of the NSCL. “Right now, this is the only place thatcan make these nuclei.”[Research News, newsletter of the Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies]

url: www.pa.msu.edu/alumni.htmemail: newsletter@pa.msu.edu

Department of Physics & AstronomyEast Lansing, MI 48824-1116

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Northwest (above) and southeast (below) views of BPS

New Building Completeby Marc Conlin

We've been moving since March and are now about 95% complete.The moving has been done by the MSU setup crew, Mayflower VanLines and department faculty, staff, and students. Various vendorshave been brought into to disassemble, pack, unpack, reassemble,and re-certify equipment such as shielded rooms, low-temperaturecryostats, electron microscopes, and other delicate equipment.Heavy equipment movers have moved items such as machine toolsfor the Shop, optical tables, etc.; they also lowered equipment thatwould not fit in the elevators into the basement through an accessway that was included in the building design. One of the last itemswe moved was the liquid nitrogen tank. The gas is distributedthroughout the basement and is available in most of the labs sostand alone tanks can be eliminated except for special uses.

The telephone system has been operating since March at 517-355-9200 and many numbers have been updated in the web based direc-tory at: http://extranet.pa.msu.edu/directory/ The buildinghas a proximity card access system for certain areas and we're alsogetting used to that, to sharing a building with other departmentsand being in a building that does not have not the same name as ourdepartment. Being closer to the NSCL, Chemistry, Biochemistry,Abrams Planetarium, and Engineering is a big plus.

We are getting ready for the new Graduate Student orientation whichstarts on August 19th and concludes on the 23rd with a receptionusing the new seminar room and the observation deck on the roof.eMail: Conlin@pa.msu.edu Phone: 517-355-9200 Ex 2018