Fermilab

Colloquium

Fermilab’s Batavia site will be temporarily closed to the public from Aug. 26 through Sept. 8, 2024. This includes the Lederman Science Center, all outdoor areas and Wilson Hall. View more details on hours, activities and site access requirements.

The Fermilab colloquium introduces a wide range of scientific and science-related topics presented by notable speakers from across the country and around the world.


The colloquium is open to the public. Talks are held at 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday afternoons in One West in Wilson Hall (WH1W). To enter the site you will need a Real ID or a valid passport.

Upcoming colloquia

An integral part of Fermilab’s academic culture, “orange” colloquium talks are aimed at a broad scientific and technical audience, while “green” talks are of general interest to everyone.

  Appropriate for physicists     Appropriate for all attendees

Cooking, Fishing and Jogging through Phase Space: A Practical Guide to Discovering and Understanding New Materials

Aug. 7, 2024, 3:30 pm US/Central
Paul Canfield, Distinguished Professor of Physics, Iowa State University Senior Scientist, Ames Laboratory
The design, discovery, characterization and control of novel materials is perhaps the most important research area for humanity as it moves into the 21rst century. A myriad of societal problems concerning energy, clean water and air, and medicine all need to be solved by the discovery of new compounds with dramatically improved, or even new, properties. The search for such materials requires a blending of skills and mindsets that, traditionally, have been segregated into different academic disciplines: physics, chemistry, metallurgy, materials science. In this colloquium I will outline the basic philosophy and techniques that we use to search for novel materials. These include a combination of intuition, experience, compulsive optimism and a desire to share discovery.[1] In the second half of the lecture, the specific case of superconductivity will be used as an example of one such search. Over the past couple of decades, a growing sense of where and even how to search for new superconductors has been developing, with the recent discoveries of MgB2 and the FeAs based materials providing, at least for me, clear guidance. [2] [1] Paul C. Canfield, Rep. Prog. Phys. 83 [2020] 016501. [2] Paul C. Canfield, Nature Materials 10 [2011] 259.

Terrestrial tests of quantum gravity

Oct. 2, 2024, 3:30 pm US/Central
Daniel Carney, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
I will give an overview of recent activity based on the idea that we can test quantum properties of the gravitational field in experiments. I will emphasize the need to state precisely what hypotheses are being tested, discuss some explicit models of low-energy gravity that violate the usual rules of effective quantum field theory, and discuss some of the basic experimental challenges to getting these tests done.

The Vector Calculus of Insect Navigation

Oct. 23, 2024, 3:30 pm US/Central
Larry Abbott, Columbia University
To navigate through the world, insects perform many of the vector computations that are taught in introductory physics classes.  They do this using methods that are rigorous but would not be recognized by students in these classes.  Recent advances in the techniques used to study the brains of fruit flies have revealed what these methods are.  I will describe how flies construct, add, rotate, multiply and integrate vectors, and how they use these calculations to navigator to goals such as the sources of odor plumes.