Seminar Series: Optical Science
Title: Seeing the Light: Photons, Complexity and Randomness
Rajarshi Roy, University of Maryland
TO BE RESCHEDULED
Abstract:
Seeing the light is no simple task – it is accomplished with a complex system consisting of our eyes and brain, which we are only beginning to understand in a rudimentary way. This is certainly good news – there is so much interesting science left to do and so many interesting discoveries to make, experimentally and theoretically. We will look at a few examples to illustrate these points, the highly interdisciplinary nature of the problems, and tools needed to begin to unravel them. We will conclude with a description of experiments to probe the transition from randomness to determinism in a simple optical feedback system, entropy production and random number generation.
Bio:
Rajarshi Roy was a student of Leonard Mandel at the University of Rochester, who taught him to design small scale table-top experiments and explore the nature of light and its interaction with atoms and molecules. Understanding order and randomness in light and matter has been a passion ever since. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1981, he went to Boulder, Colorado, as a postdoctoral research associate to work at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA) and then moved to the School of Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology, in 1982. He moved to the University of Maryland, College Park, to set up a laboratory for research on the nonlinear dynamics of optical devices and systems. Since 1999 he has worked there in the Department of Physics, the Institute of Physical Science and Technology (he served as the director of IPST from 2003 - 2014), and the Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics (IREAP).
Event is free and open to the public.
Light refreshments available shortly before seminar.
