Physics colloquium draws big name to UTK
Peng Xiong, a physics professor at Florida State University, visited Knoxville for the first time and was the first speaker in a semester-long colloquium series created by the Physics Department. Xiong spoke to the community about his research in superconductivity, specifically talking about lead as a superconductor. Student Ryan Raul was excited to attend the lecture because his major lines up with Xiong’s research.
The series will continue Sept. 22 with guest speaker Randy Fishman.
Dr. Peng Xiong (Florida State Dept. of Physics)
The Science and Engineering Research Facility (SERF) began its physics colloquium series by welcoming Peng Xiong to Circle Park Sept. 15, to discuss his research on lead and superconductivity.
(Florida State Dept. of Physics)
Xiong, a physics professor at Florida State University, spoke to students and professors for over an hour about the history of superconductivity, focusing on conventional superconductivity with dimensional confinement and quantum phase transition. Along with how lead can be used as an insulator when made into ultra-thin sheets.
Ryan Raul, a student and Ph.D. candidate studying condensed matter physics, was excited to attend the colloquium due to Xiong’s research in superconductivity overlaps with what he has been studying.
“It was nice to see his data and experiments backing up what theories I have been told in my classes,” he said.
Further, Raul said he was excited to learn about phase destruction and phase disruption, something he hadn’t learned before, and was glad that Xiong came to Knoxville and shared his experimental findings with UT students.
Finishing his discussion, Xiong took questions from the audience.
Today’s colloquium was one of many in a series of talks the Physics Department will be holding at the SERF Building this semester.
The next colloquium is scheduled to take place with Randy Fishman of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory coming to speak in a lecture titled “Using Inelastic Scattering Measurements to Determine the Complex Spin States of Multiferroic Materials,” in SERF, Sept. 22, at 3:30 p.m., Rm. 307.
Edited by Hannah Hunnicutt.
