The Society of Physics Students at Columbia University

The Society of Physics Students at Columbia University is a student-run club which aims to provide a forum for students interested in physics to meet in an informal setting. During the academic year, the SPS meets every Thursday evening at 7:00 p.m. in 831 Pupin Laboratories. Free food is served. Several times each semester, students or professors present their research, or graduate physics students make advising presentations. To receive emails about our weekly meetings and other news, email hbar (at) phys.columbia.edu. All are welcome to come and enjoy the free food and ever-stimulating conversation. The SPS has a lounge (Pupin 612 and 614) open for physics majors and other SPS attendees. Please browse around our website to find out some more about us!

Interested in attending a colloqium and learn about advances in cutting-edge science? Check out the list of Spring 2012 colloquia to see a list of researchers coming to Columbia University this semester to give a lecture about advances in their research area.

Click here for a list of events of the Columbia astronomy department.

Not receive our weekly updates via email? If that is the case and you would like to be informed about what is happening at Columbia SPS, send us an email to our email address (see on the left) and we will be happy to add you to our mailing list.

New: Professor Brian Cole will be giving a presentation at our meeting on Thursday 3/1. As always, we will be meeting in 831 Pupin at 7 pm. We hope to see you there!

Studies of the thermodynamics of strongly interacting matter using lattice quantum chromo-dynamics show a transition from confined matter to deconfined "quark gluon plasma" at a temperature near 200 MeV. Ultra-high energy nuclear collisions are thought to provide the conditions necessary to create the quark-gluon plasma in the laboratory, and a decade of experimental measurements at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) facility at Brookhaven National Laboratory provides overwhelming evidence for creation of the quark-gluon plasma in nuclear collisions at RHIC. A direct indication of quark-gluon plasma formation is provided by measurements of high-momentum hadrons produced in the fragmentation of energetic quarks and gluons. The rate for the production of these hadrons is reduced due to the energy loss of the parent quarks and gluons -- a process frequently referred to as "jet quenching". Measurements of jet quenching at RHIC have been hindered by limitations of the current detectors and the large number of low energy particles that make the reconstruction of full jets difficult. The Large Hadron Collider has recently provided collisions between lead ions at a center of mass energy a factor of 10 higher than that achieved at RHIC. The higher center of mass energy of the LHC allows the production of sufficiently energetic jets that the full jets can be measured, even in the presence of a large background of soft particles. I will describe a program of jet measurements currently being carried out by the ATLAS experiment, including the first observation of jet quenching by ATLAS made within two weeks of the start of the LHC lead-lead program in 2010. I will also briefly describe a program to upgrade the PHENIX detector so that full jet measurements can be carried out at RHIC.

New: Applying to a graduate program? You should check out our notes from the graduate school application discussion panel held at Columbia in the physics department in Fall 2009. See links to the notes on the Graduate School Applications Panel Discussion page.

New: Interested in Summer research program or attending an upcoming symposium leading to numerous exciting research opportunities? Check out our Opportunities for Students page.