To request a media interview, please reach out to School of Physics experts using our faculty directory, or contact Jess Hunt-Ralston, College of Sciences communications director. A list of faculty experts and research areas across the College of Sciences at Georgia Tech is also available to journalists upon request.
Scientists have spotted a theorized—but never-before detected—property of quantum matter in the lab. The team proved that a particular quantum material can demonstrate electrical dipole fluctuations—irregular oscillations of tiny charged poles on the material—even in extremely cold conditions, in the neighborhood of minus 450 degrees Fahrenheit. The story is based on a Science paper, coauthored by School of Physics Assistant Professor Martin Mourigal.
reconfigurable transceivers 2018-06-12T00:00:00-04:00Maggots aren't the cutest creatures. But David Hu, who is affiliated with the School of Physics and the School of Biological Sciences, spends time with them in a lab, studying their motion to determine how they are able to eat food so efficiently. Hu's lab is not a creepy, crawling maggot madhouse without a purpose: these creatures may be harnessed for breaking down waste.
John Lewis Student Center 2018-04-13T00:00:00-04:00"A study spearheaded by scientists at Georgia Tech has found that an obscure class of crystal could improve the way we light and power our world. The subatomic behavior of these crystals is fluid, dynamic and, frankly, bewildering in the context of some established laws of quantum physics. However, this latest study, completed early this month, shows that weirdness doesn’t necessarily mean ineffectiveness. In fact, the substance could be the key to more efficient electric lighting—perhaps even across a full rainbow of colors." The study is by School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and School of Physics Professor Carlos Silva and Ph.D. student Felix Thouin.
Daniel Muratore 2018-03-26T00:00:00-04:00"A person's accomplishments accumulate over years and decades. Something else accumulates, too — their poop. The quantities of poop that people leave behind during an individual bathroom break can vary widely, depending on age, body weight, diet, exercise and other factors." David Hu's research on how long it takes animals to defecate informs this story. Hu is affiliated with the Schools of Mechanical Engineering, Biological Sciences, and Physics.
nicholas platt 2018-03-21T00:00:00-04:00Legendary physicist/cosmologist Stephen Hawking died on March 14, and the news is already prompting stories about the inspiration he provided to scientists around the world. For Karan Jani, a postdoctoral research fellow with Georgia Tech's Center for Relativistic Astrophysics, it was Hawking's classic book A Brief History of Time that launched him on his own path to success in physics. Jani was part of the Georgia Tech LIGO Scientific Collaboration team that detected the first gravitational waves, an achievement that won the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for the LIGO founders. This link within the Quartz India story leads you to Jani's heartfelt recollection of the lunch he once shared with Hawking.
seung-eun chang 2018-03-15T00:00:00-04:00The latest discovery from Georgia Tech physicists may seem like something straight out of Black Mirror. But don't worry, it's not that sinister. School of Physics' Dan Goldman worked with School of Computer Science's Dana Randall and doctoral student William Savoie to develop an algorithm that orders simple robots to "swarm," or move in complex ways as a group. Imagine the birth of the supervillain Sandman in Spider-Man 3, from loose grains of sand skittering across the desert and then congealing into the shape of a human. The possiblities for these "smarticles" are endless. This story has been reproduced in Scientific American.
Metz Mayor 2018-02-14T00:00:00-05:00You won’t feel it happen, but the kilogram, used to measure the mass of electrons, galaxies, and everything in between, is about to be transformed. The General Conference on Weights and Measures is set to meet to redefine the kilogram in terms of a physical constant, Planck's constant. Ronald Fox of the School of Physics, an early advocate of redefining the kilogram, is very pleased. Commenting on the story, he mentions the LIGO experiment to detect gravitational waves, in which Georgia Tech researchers participated. "The unit of mass is very important because you're looking at a very, very delicate effect."
recycling event 2018-02-06T00:00:00-05:00Look up at the winter sky on a clear night. The brilliance of the stars is breathtaking. James Sowell, an astronomer in the School of Physics, weighs in on why stargazing is so beautiful in the winter. "There are more brighter stars in the quarter of the sky that we call the winter sky. Plus, cold air holds less moisture than the warmer summer air, making the nights clearer. So, faint stars that may go unseen during the summer nights may be more visible," Sowell says. So take Sowell's advice, grab your tent, and get out there! Or just come to Public Nights at the Georgia Tech Observatory. The next one is on Feb 22.
materials for energy harvesting 2018-01-23T00:00:00-05:00School of Physics researchers Paul Goldbart, Benjamin Loewe, and Anton Souslov have made a breakthrough in fluid dynamics. They've derived hydrodynamic equations describing active fluids, something that had proven very difficult to do in the past. Their research was published in the New Journal of Physics. Loewe was a doctoral student and Souslov was a postdoctoral research associate in Goldbart's research group in the School of Physics. Goldbart is also College of Sciences Dean and Sutherland Chair .
Experimental Flights class 2018-01-22T00:00:00-05:00Georgia Public Broadcasting radio host Celeste Headlee replays her 2015 interview with Patricia Yang, a doctoral student and co-winner of an Ig Nobel Award, an honor presented by Improbable Research given to science projects that "make you laugh, then make you think." Yang's award was for a study on animal urination, which involved monitoring and recording the bladder-emptying habits of 32 different mammals at Zoo Atlanta. Yang worked on the study with David Hu, an associate professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Biological Sciences, with an adjunct appointment in the School of Physics.
Ilker Çatak 2018-01-10T00:00:00-05:00A Georgia Tech honors graduate who was both a Rhodes and Truman Scholar may have a chance to impact the purchase of new technologies for the Air Force. William Roper, currently founding director of the Pentagon's Strategic Capabilities Office, is President Trump's nominee to be assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisitions. Roper, who has argued that the Defense Department should use more commercial software, graduated summa cum laude with a B.S. from the School of Physics in 2001. He earned his M.S. in physics from Tech in 2002, also summa cum laude. Roper has a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Oxford.
digital divide 2018-01-03T00:00:00-05:00Yes, last year's detection of neutron stars colliding was indeed "kind of a big deal," especially here at Georgia Tech. Seventeen of our faculty members, researchers, and students were part of the international Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory team that detected the first-ever observation of a kilonova, or neutron star mashup. LIGO Deputy Spokesperson Laura Cadonati, quoted in this story, is also a professor in the School of Physics. (This Newsweek story is essentially a recap of a Science magazine item that named LIGO's discovery as Breakthrough of the Year.)
Elizabeth Kornegay 2017-12-22T00:00:00-05:00- ‹ previous
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Events
Soft Matter Seminar| Prof. Justin Burton | Emory UN | Host: Dr. Itamar Kolvin
Soft Matter Seminar| Prof. Justin Burton | Emory UN | Host: Dr. Itamar Kolvin
School of Physics Fall Colloquium Series- Dr. Zhenghan Wang(UCSB)
Dr. Zhenghan Wang(UCSB) Topological fault-tolerance in quantum computing
Special CRA SEMINAR| Prof. Paz Beniamini | The Open UN of Israel | Host: Prof. David Ballantyne
Special CRA SEMINAR| Prof. Paz Beniamini | The Open UN of Israel | Host: Prof. David Ballantyne
State of the School Address- Dr. Feryal Ozel
Dr. Feryal Ozel- GA Tech School of Physics Chair
CRA SEMINAR | Vikram Manikantan | UN of Arizona | Host: Dr. Matthew Liska
CRA SEMINAR | Vikram Manikantan | UN of Arizona | Host: Dr. Matthew Liska
Georgia Tech Space Week
A campus-wide celebration of innovation in the space domain, bringing together academia, industry, and government.
Experts in the News
Researchers in the School of Physics, working with King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, have found that standard methods for identifying chirality in topological phases fail when applied to mixed quantum states. The study reveals that established diagnostics, including bulk-boundary correspondence and the modular commutator, are unreliable in these complex systems. Consequently, the research presents two new measures, based on relative entropy, to accurately diagnose chirality and determine the chiral central charge in decohered topological phases, indicating a need for a new set of tools when investigating mixed-state topology.
Quantum Zeitgeist 2026-07-16T00:00:00-04:00Bacteria have no neurons or memories in the human sense. Yet in a new study, researchers at Georgia Tech and Carnegie Mellon University — including School of Physics Associate Professor Shiladitya Banerjee and Postdoctoral Fellow Josiah Kratz — found that individual E. coli cells carried traces of past hardship into the future. When nutrients repeatedly rose and fell, the cells changed how quickly they grew, suggesting that even simple microbes can use experience to prepare for what may come next.
ZME Science 2026-06-10T00:00:00-04:00Georgia Tech researchers have recreated the effects of solar wind on lunar minerals in a laboratory experiment, providing new evidence that the constant stream of charged particles from the sun plays a major role in shaping the moon’s surface.
The team exposed ilmenite, a mineral commonly found on both Earth and the moon, to a synthetic version of solar wind. The experiment produced nanophase iron, tiny metallic particles that are widely observed in lunar soil and are considered a key signature of space weathering.
Interesting Engineering 2026-06-10T00:00:00-04:00A new study led by researchers, including School of Physics graduate student Julia Esposito and Associate Professor Gongjie Li, used 1,500 virtual planetary systems to examine how planet-planet scattering may have influenced the formation of Jupiter-sized planets.
American Astronomical Society NOVA 2026-05-22T00:00:00-04:00Researchers have long known that when two galaxies approach each other and merge, the supermassive black holes at their centers form a pair and are eventually expected to merge as well. It is precisely these mergers that are considered one of the sources of the gravitational-wave background — a faint “hum” of spacetime detected in recent years. However, the role played by the geometry of the collision in this process has remained an open question.
Graduate student Sena Ghobadi of the Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Physics, along with her colleagues, has developed three-dimensional dynamic models of such collisions.
A similar story appeared in Sky & Telescope.
Universe Magazine 2026-04-28T00:00:00-04:00Research led by Georgia Tech physicist Itamar Kolvin has found that the presence of small imperfections or heterogeneities in materials can have a dual effect on their strength and resilience. While heterogeneities were historically believed to make materials stronger by creating an obstacle course for cracks, the new study shows that in some complex materials, heterogeneities can actually accelerate crack propagation and weaken the overall structure. The findings have implications for how engineers design and reinforce materials to optimize their toughness.
Atlanta Today 2026-02-27T00:00:00-05:00
