Bulletin of the American Physical Society
2007 APS April Meeting
Volume 52, Number 3
Saturday–Tuesday, April 14–17, 2007; Jacksonville, Florida
Session A1: Plenary Session I |
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Chair: Leo Kadanoff, University of Chicago Room: Hyatt Regency Jacksonville Riverfront Grand 4-5 |
Saturday, April 14, 2007 8:30AM - 9:06AM |
A1.00001: Results from Gravity Probe B. Invited Speaker: The NASA Gravity Probe B (GP-B) orbiting gyroscope test of General Relativity, launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on 20 April, 2004, tests two consequences of Einstein's theory: 1) the predicted 6.6 arc-s/year geodetic effect due to the motion of the gyroscope through the curved space-time around the Earth; 2) the predicted 0.041 arc-s/year frame-dragging effect due to the rotating Earth. The mission has required the development of cryogenic gyroscopes with drift-rates 7 orders of magnitude better than the best inertial navigation gyroscopes. These and other essential technologies, for an instrument which once launched must work perfectly, have come into being as the result of an intensive collaboration between Stanford physicists and engineers, NASA and industry. GP-B entered its science phase on August 27, 2004 and completed data collection on September 29, 2005. Analysis of the data has been in continuing progress during and since the mission. This paper will describe the main features and challenges of the experiment and announce the first results. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, April 14, 2007 9:06AM - 9:42AM |
A1.00002: Electrons in Flatland Invited Speaker: Like the classical squares and triangles in Edwin Abbott's 19th century social satire and science fiction novel {\em Flatland}, electrons and other quantum particles behave differently when confined to a two-dimensional world. Condensed matter physicists have been intrigued and regularly suprised by two-dimensional electron systems since they were first studied in semiconductor field-effect-transistor devices over forty years ago. I will discuss some important milestones in the study of two-dimensional electrn systems, from the discoveries of the integer and fractional quantum Hall effects in the 1980's to recent quantum Hall effect work on quasiparticles with non-Abelian quantum statistics. Special attention will be given to a new electronic {\em Flatland} that has risen to prominence recently, graphene, which consists of a single sheet of carbon atoms in a honeycomb lattice arrangement. Graphene provides a realization of two-dimensional massless Dirac fermions which interact via nearly instantaneous Coulomb interactions. Early research on graphene has demonstrated yet again that {\em Flatland} exceeds expectations. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, April 14, 2007 9:42AM - 10:18AM |
A1.00003: New Measurement of the Electron Magnetic Moment and the Fine Structure Constant Invited Speaker: This abstract not available. [Preview Abstract] |
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