Australian Institute of Physics

South Australian Branch

Student Night
Visitors, especially undergraduate students, are encouraged to attend.

Date: Tuesday, 31st July, 2001
Time: 7:30pm
Place: Kerr Grant Lecture Theatre
Physics Building, University of Adelaide

The 2000 Silver Bragg medals, awarded for achievement in the final undergraduate year of a Physics degree, will be presented. Three speakers, one from each SA University, will give a talk on their research work.

Christopher M. Klinger
School of Chemistry, Physics and Earth Sciences,
Flinders University of South Australia

"Process Physics: Bootstrapping reality from the limits of logic"

Present day physics models reality with two theories, General Relativity, and Quantum Theory. These work very successfully at scales, respectively, of the very large and of the very small but the two theories remain incompatible despite decades of work seeking to unify them. Process Physics is a deeper theory designed to overcome the profound problems within current physics by taking into account the fundamental limitations of logic discovered by Godel and Chaitin. In Process Physics, the space of general relativity and the fields of quantum theory are emergent features of a self-organising, evolving, and competitive relational information processing system which is characterised by dynamic fractal topological defects described by a quantum homotopic field theory. The model is deeply bio-logical, revealing that at all levels reality has evolved processes for self-replicating information.

Zhenfang Gong
School of Electrical and Information Engineering (Applied Physics)
University of South Australia

"RBS Analysis of 'Quasi' Standards for Studies of Mixed Minerals"

Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy (RBS) is a surface analysis technique based on elastic Coulomb scattering between the incident ions and the target nuclei. RBS is generally regarded as a quantitative analysis technique for thin film compositional analysis. All analysis techniques have strengths and weaknesses. A few samples were chosen to act as 'standards', which challenge aspects of the surface analysis techniques. Analysis of these standards yields insights into the accuracy of quantitative analysis. In this talk RBS analysis of selected semiconductor and mineral samples will be presented.

James Zanotti
Department of Physics and Mathematical Physics
Adelaide University

"Subatomic Physics on Supercomputers"

The Standard Model describes how quarks and gluons make up matter such as protons and neutrons. The theory that describes how these quarks and gluons interact is called Quantum Chromodynamics or QCD.
At high energies, quarks behave as free particles and QCD can be solved analytically. However, at low energies quarks are bound together by gluons and QCD can no longer be solved analytically. This presents the need for numerical techniques such as Lattice Gauge Theories (LGT) which can approximate QCD.
In this talk I will briefly describe the Standard Model and QCD. I will then explain how LGT's can be implemented on supercomputers such as "Orion" which was purchased by the lattice group here at Adelaide University solely for this purpose.