73rd Annual Meeting of SESAPS
Southeastern Section of the American Physical Society (SESAPS)
November 9-11, 2006
Williamsburg, Virginia
Program and Schedule
The meeting begins with a Welcome Reception and Registration from 6 to 8 PM on Wednesday evening, November 8. Everyone is cordially invited. The scientific program begins Thursday morning, November 9 and concludes by midday on Saturday, November 11. Please note breakfast is not provided only coffee will be served during breaks.
Click here to download a printable file of the November 2006 Bulletin containing the SESAPS06 program. Click here for access to the electronic version, including last-minute changes in the meeting program and schedule. These resources reveal a stimulating program of invited and contributed talks on forefront research topics and societal challenges of particular interest to physicists.
Invited talk program highlights are:
Astrophysics
One of the most advanced US physics laboratories is the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO), which has one of its two detectors in Livingston, LA. Talks on Thursday afternoon will highlight the status of the search for gravitational waves with LIGO, the astrophysics questions being investigated there, and future plans for improving LIGO's sensitivity. Already LIGO can detect dimensional changes smaller than the size of an atomic nucleus, and further improvements in its detection systems are being planned. A subsequent Saturday morning session is designed to acquaint non-experts with current forefront research in astronomy and astrophysics, with talks describing searches for planets outside our solar system, for sources of cosmic gamma ray bursts, and describing new studies of active galactic nuclei and cosmic rays.
Condensed matter physics
Attendees should find particularly interesting invited talk sessions on solid state nuclear magnetic resonance and on recent advances which are enabling biophysics studies on nanoscale-sized systems. These sessions are scheduled on Thursday morning and afternoon, respectively. Another talk of particular interest to this community will be a Thursday morning overview of a new class of physics and materials experiments enabled by the Jefferson Laboratory kilowatt-class high average-power, sub-picosecond free-electron laser, covering the mid-infrared spectral region.
High-energy physics
Two invited talk sessions on Thursday afternoon and Friday morning, focus respectively on physics leading up to turn-on of the Linear Hadron Collider (LHC) and on a variety of forefront topics in neutrino physics.
Nuclear physics
Our meeting this year in Williamsburg affords the opportunity to become more familiar with the research activities of the neighboring Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, which became operational for physics measurements a decade ago. Electron beams of up to 6 GeV from this accelerator have enabled highly sensitive studies of the quark-gluon sub-structure of nucleons and nuclei. Two sessions of invited talks on Thursday and Friday mornings will highlight JLab research. Talks in the first session focus on how Jefferson Lab was developed by regional scientists, and on research highlights which have emerged from the nuclear physics program and from an allied beam physics and materials studies program enabled by a unique, high-powered free-electron laser. The second session focuses on plans and experimental motivation for a recently approved upgrade of the accelerator and associated experimental equipment to enable studies with beams of energy up to 12 GeV.
Physics and society
Other invited talks will highlight topics of broader interest. On Thursday evening, a plenary session will focus on the societal challenges which loom as growing global economies and populations face energy limits imposed by the coming era of peak oil production. The Friday evening banquet speaker will highlight efforts being spearheaded by scientists in the Southeast to utilize widening arrays of networked sensors and rapidly advancing technologies of grid computing for real-time modeling of the enormous coastal hurricanes which periodically threaten our region.
Physics workforce education
A recent National Academy report, Rising Above The Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future, suggests an urgent need to train the nation's future scientific workforce, to enable continued US economic competitiveness. In a Saturday morning session, after an introduction to the topic by the Deputy Staff Director for the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, who will also discuss the FY07 federal budget response to this report, others will address issues of best practices in educating and training physicists, how many physicists are in the academic pipeline and where they go when they graduate, and outreach programs which are trying to engage pre-college students in physics-related activities.