SESAPS Holds Annual Fall Meeting

The Southeastern Section of the APS (SESAPS) held its annual fall meeting November 10-12, 2005. The conference was hosted by the University of Florida, Gainsville, with a technical program that ran the gamut of cutting-edge topics in physics: particle physics, dark matter and dark energy, physics history, nanophysics, Bose-Einstein condensates and atomic/molecular optics.

Among the invited lectures in particle physics were reports on the current status of particle searches at Stanford University’s B factories, with the aim of gaining a better understanding of CP violation. Other talks focused on recent results from the CDF and D0 experiments at Fermilab, as well as progress on the Large Hadron Collider.

In the area of astrophysics, invited speakers discussed ongoing experiments to explore the cosmic microwave background radiation, as well as the search for gravitational waves–specifically, plans for the upcoming LISA mission. As for optics, attendees were treated to the latest research involving slow-light nonlinear optics with cold atoms, as well as the use of novel light traps to study ultracold atoms.

The World Year of Physics figured prominently in the physics history session. Speakers recapped Einstein’s years in Switzerland, Max Planck’s early contributions to the theory of special relativity, and Sir Arthur Eddington’s historic 1919 expeditions that resulted in the verification of general relativity. Friday evening’s banquet speaker was Louis Bloomfield, a professor of physics at the University of Virginia, and the author of How Things Work: The Physics of Everyday Life.