Latest news

Math Professor and physics alum elected to National Academy of Sciences

Mathematics Professor Ruth Williams and Physics Alumnus Don Eigler ’75, PhD ’84, an IBM Fellow, were elected to membership in the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors bestowed on U.S. scientists and engineers.

Chemistry Professor Jack Dixon elected to the Royal Society

Jack E. Dixon, professor of chemistry and biochemistry and vice president and chief scientific officer at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, has been elected as a foreign member of the Royal Society, the oldest scientific academy in continuous existence.

Physics Professor Herbert Levine elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

The 232-year-old American Academy of Arts and Sciences is one of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies, celebrating the contributions of members to science and technology, energy and global security, social policy, culture, humanities and education.

Patterns in a new state of matter

Temperatures near absolute zero in a laboratory in the basement of the Natural Science Building have recently allowed UC San Diego physicists to produce the most detailed images ever seen of a new property of matter called “spontaneous coherence in excitons.”

Spin textures and phase singularities emerge when excitons—the bound pairs of electrons and holes that determine the optical properties of semiconductors and enable them to function as novel optoelectronic devices—are chilled to near absolute zero.

This cooling leads to the spontaneous production of a new coherent state of matter, which physicists in Leonid Butov's research group were finally able to measure in great detail. More