Professor Alex Maradudin has been elected a Fellow of the Optical Society of America.
Professor Andrew Lankford received the School of Physical Sciences Award to Physics and Astronomy for Outstanding Contributions to Undergraduate Education for 1997.
In graduate student awards, Thomas Tierney has received the Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award for 1996-97, and Yinglei Yu has received the 1996 Marco Vecic award for the graduate student with the highest score on the qualifying exam.
The 1997 awards to Physics and Astronomy undergraduates were as follows: Elizabeth Tong received the Outstanding Senior Award, Frank Albert received the Undergraduate Research and Department Service Award, and Oscar Villareal received the Herbert Chen Award for outstanding junior. Additional Honors at graduation were to Elizabeth Tong (Summa Cum Laude), Frank Albert (Magna Cum Laude), and Mark Hamamura (Cum Laude).
There is a new staff member in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. On July 7, 1997, Maria Gillespie joined the staff as the administrative assistant staff supervisor. Maria's responsibilities include administratively supporting several faculty, providing computer support to the administrative staff, maintaining the Department seminar and colloquium listservs and webpages, and helping with webpage updates and the newsletters. An alumnus of UCI, she has been on campus since 1987 and working here since 1989. Her previous position was in Scheduling & Conference Services where her responsibilities included scheduling and conference coordination as well as providing computer support for the office. Outside of work, she enjoys working out, skiing, camping and generally spending time with her husband, John and their two cats, Barnum and Bailee.
In both Solar Neutrinos and Atmospheric Neutrinos, several experiments have seen large discrepancies between the observed neutrino flux and that predicted by the Standard Solar Model and atmospheric neutrino simulations. In both cases the observed deficit in neutrinos has been interpreted as an indication of neutrino oscillations.
Super-Kamiokande is a second generation detector. The goal is to go beyond the observations of previous detectors by studying detailed characteristics of the effects which could resolve whether the flux deficit is due to neutrino mass effects or simply uncertainties in the flux predictions.
Super-Kamiokande detects Solar Neutrinos by using the elastic scattering reaction of neutrinos on electrons and observing the recoil electrons. Up to now, we have simply compared the total number of recoil electrons with that predicted by the Standard Solar Model. Our current efforts are concentrated on studying the energy spectrum of these recoil electrons. Any distortion of the expected spectral shape would be positive evidence of oscillations.
A similar situation exists for Atmospheric Neutrinos. Existing experiments have compared observed count rates with the predicted rates to observe the deficit. We are now studying the angular distribution of these events. Since neutrinos are produced uniformly in the atmosphere, we would expect similar numbers of up-going (neutrinos produced in the atmosphere on the other side of the earth) and down-going (neutrinos produced in the atmosphere above our detector) in our detector. Distortions in the angular distribution would be positive evidence of Neutrino Oscillations. The current data favors oscillations but more study is necessary before we can make such a claim.