Colloquium - 2015/2016

Colloquium, year 2015 - 2016

Every Thursday at 1:30pm in room Conf. IV, 24 rue Lhomond, Paris.

Cellulose bio-inspired hierarchical structures

Silvia Vignolini (Cambridge University) — June 30, 2016 Nature’s most vivid colours rely on the ability to produce complex and hierarchical photonic structures with lattice constants on the order of the wavelength of visible radiation [1]. A (...) | ↦ Read more

Cosmic connections: from cosmic rays to gamma rays, to neutrinos and magnetic fields

Alexander Kusenko (UCLA) — June 23, 2016 Combined data from gamma-ray telescopes, cosmic-ray detectors, and neutrino detectors have produced some surprising new insights regarding the most powerful sources in the universe, as well as (...) | ↦ Read more

Technical and Economic analysis of the EU System in a high RES scenario

Alan Burtin (EDF R&D Vice-President Energy Management) — June 16, 2016 The presentation examines the impacts of the integration of a large share of variable renewable generation into the generation mix of the European interconnected (...) | ↦ Read more

Materials advances for better Li(Na)-ion batteries: any interest to physicists?

Jean Marie Tarascon (Collège de France) — June 9, 2016 Rechargeable lithium ion batteries, because of their high energy density, have conquered most of today’s portable electronics and they stand as serious contenders for EV’s and grid (...) | ↦ Read more

Statistical-physics inspired modelling of protein sequences

Martin Weigt (UPMC) — May 26, 2016 Over the last years, biological research has been revolutionised by experimental high-throughput techniques. Unprecedented amounts of data are accumulating, causing an urgent need to develop computational (...) | ↦ Read more

Multicolor and multicontrast nonlinear microscopy of developing tissues

Emmanuel Beaurepaire (Ecole Polytechnique) — May 19, 2016 Modern issues in systems biology require tissue-scale measurements of multiple cell parameters. Multiphoton fluorescence microscopy has proven invaluable for tissue studies with its (...) | ↦ Read more

General Relativity, Gravitational Waves and Black Holes

Thibault Damour (Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques) — May 12, 2016 General Relativity was finalized by Albert Einstein a century ago, in 1916. Two of the most novel predictions of General Relativity were also discovered in 1916: Black (...) | ↦ Read more

Sports Physics

Cristophe Clanet (Ecole Polytechnique) — April 14, 2016 Physics consists in identifying repeatable sequences in our environment and finding the simplest underlying laws. In this colloquium, the environment will be Sports. Biography: (...) | ↦ Read more

Exploring the outer solar system with stellar occultations

Bruno Sicardy (Observatoire de Paris) — April 7, 2016 The remote objects of our solar system orbiting beyond Neptune merely appear as faint, point-like sources in classical images. Consequently, their physical properties remain poorly known. (...) | ↦ Read more

The H boson and Beyond at the LHC — Lost Loves, New Hopes, and the Wall of Ignorance

Yves Sirois (Ecole Polytechnique) — March 31, 2016 The experiments at the LHC have now begun since 2015 to collect proton-proton collision data at the high centre-of-mass energies of 13 TeV. In this seminar, I shall review the very latest LHC (...) | ↦ Read more

Hybrid organic perovskites: a new semiconductor for photovoltaics and lasers

Emmanuelle Deleporte (ENS Cachan) — March 24, 2016 Molecular crystals based on hybrid organic perovskites (HOP) of general formula (R-NH3)pMXn, where R is an organic group, M a divalent metal and X a halogen, are a new class of semiconductors (...) | ↦ Read more

Making Living Matter from the bottom up

Ramin Golestanian (University of Oxford) — March 17, 2016 There are many ways to study life, and one that is particularly appealing to physicists is regarding it as self-organized active soft matter that is away from equilibrium ``just the (...) | ↦ Read more

The birth of gravitational astronomy

Patrice Hello (Université Paris Sud) — March 10, 2016 One century after the initial theoretical prediction, the first direct observation of gravitational waves has been announced in February the 11th by the LIGO and Virgo collaborations. This is (...) | ↦ Read more

Ergodicity: an historical perspective. Equilibrium and Nonequilibrium.

Giovanni Gallavotti (Sapienza, Rome) — February 18, 2016 A view on the physical meaning of the so called ergodic hypothesis: its role on the foundations of equilibrium statistical mechanics in the ’850’s, interpretations, and its modern influence (...) | ↦ Read more

Is the forced two-dimensional model “good” enough to describe banded structures on giant planets?

Kiori Obuse (Okayama University) — February 11, 2016 Banded structure is one of the most distinctive features we observe on giant planets, such as Jupiter and Saturn, and lots of study has been done to discuss the existence and the robustness (...) | ↦ Read more

What is the difference between a graphene mechanical resonator and a music drum?

Adrian Bachtold (Institute of Photonic Sciences, Barcelona) — February 4, 2016 When a graphene layer is suspended over a circular hole, the graphene acts as a drum. Likewise, a suspended nanotube vibrates as a guitar string. However, one (...) | ↦ Read more

Molecular systems engineering with DNA

Hendrik Dietz (TU Munchen) — January 28, 2016 It is notoriously difficult to observe, let alone control, the position and orientation of molecules because of their small size and the constant thermal fluctuations that they experience in (...) | ↦ Read more

Charge storage in nanoporous carbons: The molecular origin of supercapacitance

Benjamin Rotenberg (CNRS and UPMC) - January 21, 2016 Supercapacitors are electric devices able to deliver a large power, enabling their use e.g. for the recovery of breaking energy in cars and tramways or the emergency door opening in the (...) | ↦ Read more

The building of the future: Challenges and Innovations

Didier Roux (R&D and Innovation Vice President, Saint-Gobain) - January 14, 2016 Housing is a central concern of our societies, buildings are facing many challenges due to energy and environmental issues. We will show that solutions to (...) | ↦ Read more

Biomicrofluidics and Mesobiotechnologies: Tools and Perspectives

Yong Chen (Chemistry Department, ENS Paris) — January 7, 2016 "Nature does nothing uselessly" (Aristotle: I.1253a8). This point of view is particularly helpful when we develop new tools and methods for cell biology and biomedical studies. By (...) | ↦ Read more

Diversity of immune receptor repertoires

Aleksandra Walczak (LPT-ENS, Paris) — December 17, 2015 Recognition of pathogens relies on the diversity of immune receptor proteins. Recent experiments that sequence the entire immune cell repertoires provide a new opportunity for quantitative (...) | ↦ Read more

Non-linear responses, soft-modes and the true nature of glasses

Giulio Biroli (IPhT, CEA Saclay) — December 10, 2015 Amorphous glassy matter is ubiquitous. It intervenes as well in everyday life as in cutting edge science: not only a lot of materials are glassy (glasses, foams, plastic) but also several (...) | ↦ Read more

Climat : y voir clair pour agir

Sébastien Balibar (Laboratoire Pierre Aigrain, ENS Paris) — December 3, 2015 La Terre se réchauffe dangereusement, les conférences internationales sur le Climat se succèdent, mais les États tardent à s’accorder sur les mesures à prendre. Quelles sont (...) | ↦ Read more

Mes 25 dernières années avec l’équation de Fisher-KPP

Bernard Derrida (Collège de France et ENS Paris) — November 26, 2015 — Remise du Prix des Trois Physiciens L’équation de Fisher-KPP décrit comment un milieu instable envahit un milieu stable. Elle fut introduite en 1937 à la fois par le biologiste (...) | ↦ Read more

Learning multiscale invariants from big data for physics

Stéphane Mallat (ENS Paris) — November 19, 2015 Machine learning requires to find low-dimensional models governing the properties of high dimensional functionals. This could almost be called physics. Algorithms have considerably improved in the (...) | ↦ Read more

Cavity quantum electrodynamics with carbon nanotubes: from atomic-like systems to condensed matter

Takis Kontos (LPA, ENS Paris) — November 5, 2015 Cavity quantum electrodynamics techniques have turned out to be instrumental to probe or manipulate the electronic states of nanoscale circuits. Recently, cavity QED architectures have been (...) | ↦ Read more

The Rosetta mission

Jean-Pierre Bibring (Paris Sud University) — October 15, 2015 After a successful rendez-vous with comet P/67, at 4 AU from the Sun, the Rosetta mission has started its in-depth characterization, all along its journey towards its perihelion, (...) | ↦ Read more

SubTHz photons in the universe and in my life, seen in 2015, international year of light

Philippe Goy (AB Millimetre, LPA and LKB, ENS Paris) — October 8, 2015 Past and future, general and personal experiences will be mixed. The subTHz photons belong to the electromagnetic domain between microwaves and infrared, between electronic (...) | ↦ Read more

Controlling light propagation in complex media: from mesoscopic effects to biomedical imaging

Sylvain Gigan (LKB-ENS) — October 1, 2015 Scattering of light in heterogeneous media, for instance the skin or a glass of milk, is usually considered an inevitable perturbation or even a nuisance. Through repeated scattering and interferences, (...) | ↦ Read more

Departement course: Electron quantum optics in ballistic conductors

Gwendal Fève (LPA-ENS Paris) — September 17 and September 24, 2015 Quantum effects have been studied on photon propagation in the context of quantum optics since the second half of the last century. In particular, using single photon emitters, (...) | ↦ Read more

Archives of the Colloquia from previous years

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