School News

New laser makes waves in Japan

Physics

The University of Adelaide’s Discipline of Physics is making its mark on the world stage by designing, building and exporting a high-tech laser to Japan.

After several years of development, students and staff have this month installed a super-stable laser on the Japanese TAMA-300 Gravitational Wave Interferometer, located at the National Astronomical Observatory on the western outskirts of Tokyo.

The laser is a 10 watt, single frequency, single mode, ultra-stable laser developed at the University of Adelaide, with a purely South Australian heritage linking it back to a pulsed laser range finder originally developed by the DSTO.

“The collaboration with Japan was developed through workshops with the Australian Consortium for Interferometric Gravitational Astronomy, of which the University is a founding member along with Australian National University and the University of Western Australia,” said Professor Jesper Munch, Professor of Physics in the School of Chemistry and Physics.

“Our laser was chosen because of its superior performance and design, and will replace a laser manufactured by a large Japanese company.”

Professor Munch said the scientific collaboration is expected to continue once the laser is incorporated into the interferometer.

“At that time the laser will have to work continuously, 24 hours per day, seven days a week, often completely unattended.

“It is required to emit 10 watts continuously, and be locked to the interferometer to result in an ultra-stable laser beam with extremely tight specifications for amplitude and frequency noise.

“Our laser is one of a very few in the world that can comfortably meet these requirements.”

The development and fabrication was carried out in the Physics Department, primarily by PhD student, David Hosken, and post-doctoral research fellow, Dr Damien Mudge.

They received expert technical assistance from technical officers, Blair Middlemiss, Trevor Waterhouse, Neville Wild and Bob Nation, and guidance from Dr Peter Veitch and Professor Munch.

“The complex hardware and electronic control system were all designed and built in the Physics Department, which for the past 15 years has established itself as a leader in laser and photonics research, including worldwide recognition as a leader in stable lasers for remote sensing,” Professor Munch said.

Harold Woolhouse Prize

Ross Young of the Discipline of Physics and the CSSM has been awarded the Harold Woolhouse Prize for the best PhD thesis produced in the Faculty of Sciences in 2005. His thesis entitled "Finite-Range Regularisation of Chiral Effective Field Theory," breaks new ground in connecting supercomputer simulations of QCD to Nature. In collaboration with his thesis supervisors, Derek Leinweber and Tony Thomas, Ross made rapid progress, preparing 23 refereed journal publications during his PhD of which three are published in the prestigious journal, Physical Review Letters. Ross currently holds a postdoctoral research position at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, in Virginia, USA, where his research is leading to new international collaborations.

Congratulations to Ross on this fine achievement!

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The following story about one of our Physics post-graduate students appeared in the June 2005 Issue of the Adelaidean.

Physics

Making new discoveries about the more extreme parts of our universe is part of the attraction of astrophysics for University of Adelaide student David Jones.

David recently moved from Melbourne to start his PhD at Adelaide which will involve using radio telescopes to measure the interactions of some of the highest energy particles in the universe with the moon’s surface. The findings should help to explore acceleration mechanisms and models of the structure of the universe.

“I always wanted to do sciences, firstly it was palaeontology but I got interested in physics in high school and it was reading A Brief History of Time which got me into astrophysics,” he said.

“It was so different to every other book that I read until then and concerned things so removed from everyday experience.

“I ended up doing a science degree at Monash University and after my honours decided to come to Adelaide for my PhD as the university has a greater focus on high-energy astrophysics.”

To date, David has had the opportunity to use some high profile pieces of equipment to observe objects both in our galaxy and beyond.

“I had a Summer scholarship at the Australian Telescope National Facility and lived at the Australian Compact Array telescope near Narrabri for three months. The Compact Array is six 22-metre dishes spread over six kilometres,” he said.

“I also had the opportunity to work at the Parkes telescope, which was in the film The Dish, and is 70 metres in diameter and the Schmidt telescope in Coonabarabran for an Honours observing project.”

“I’ve got an eight-inch refractor telescope set up for celestial photography and I’ve been able to see Saturn’s rings, a lot of the moons of Saturn and Jupiter and the Andromeda galaxy, that’s the closest galaxy to the Milky Way.

“I enjoy the challenge of astrophysics and the fact that it’s possible to make discoveries no one else has.

“Two studies have already been done to try to find the type of radiation I’m looking for in my PhD – we know it exists because it’s been reproduced in a lab.”

David said astrophysics offered many specialisations depending on a person’s particular interest and studies in this area could lead to jobs at NASA, another US space science institute known as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory or any number of other overseas universities and institutions.

“With high-energy astrophysics, and especially the area that I am in, there are opportunities to work for particle accelerator (laboratories) such as CERN in Switzerland. These places bombard atoms all day long with other atoms at very high speed and watch what comes out,” he said.

“The bottom line is that astrophysics is great for people who like to work, travel and live overseas. Most people in an astronomy department will have worked and lived overseas at least some time in their careers.”

Interested in the stars and the universe beyond? The Investigator Science and Technology Centre’s Stardome, sponsored by the University of Adelaide, is a mobile planetarium which provides a simulation of the stars of the southern hemisphere and an immersing astronomy lesson.

It has been featured at exhibitions such as The Only Way To Live.

For more information, visit: www.investigator.org.au

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Nanosize does matter

Julia Lock, who completed her BSc and more recently her PhD in Chemistry in the School of Chemistry & Physics, appeared in an article in the August edition of The Adelaidean and is also currently part on the University of Adelaide's 'Life Impact' advertising campaign. You may have seen her face on buses and bus stops around Adelaide as well!

Please read the extracts of these articles and also follow the links to the web pages where they and more information can be found.

PhD Student Julia Lock
Bachelor of Science (Honours in Chemistry) (2000)
PhD (Chemistry)
Photo by Randy Larcombe

To think big, Julia Lock had to think small. By making discoveries in nanotechnology today, she's enabling the huge advances of tomorrow.

The following is an article from the August Issue of The Adelaidean:

New technology promises to make a big impact on nearly every aspect of our lives - from sophisticated "smart"
drugs to healthier food - but on the tiniest level imaginable.

The field is nanotechnology: working with some of the smallest matter known, molecules, to do some amazing things. The University of Adelaide is at the forefront of education and research in nanotechnology.

For her PhD, Chemistry student Julia Lock conducted groundbreaking research, developing a special kind of
"molecular switch". These switches are very small - approximately 0.000000001m in size - which means she can't see what she's receiving her PhD for. Literally. "Nanotechnology can be described as a new approach to miniaturising our technologies," Julia said. "Instead of trying to make increasingly smaller versions of current technologies, the idea is to work 'from the bottom up' and begin with the smallest components available to us: molecules."

The type of switch Julia has been working on can be activated by heat or light, and has enormous implications for many industries, including those of medicine, pharmaceuticals and food. For example, researchers could use Julia's technology to develop drugs which are sent into targeted areas of the human body and, when activated by light, switch "on".

Another potential use could be protecting certain additives in food, which would then increase the food's storage life. One of the most important parts of Julia's research was to make her molecular switches "selfassemble". "Obviously, because the molecules are so small, it was impossible for me for to assemble the switches myself," she said. For her molecular switch, Julia had to get a relatively small and straight-shaped molecule known as a stilbene to sit inside a tubeshaped molecule known as a cyclodextrin. Two cyclodextrin molecules - joined together by a "linker" molecule - are used to host one stilbene. This is done by using water as a solvent: both the stilbene and the inside of the cyclodextrin are"water-hating", so the stilbene"seeks refuge" or becomes the"guest" inside the "host" of the larger cyclodextrin. Having assembled itself, the new molecule can now be switched"on" with a burst of UV light."Switching the new molecule on causes a change in the shape of the stilbene molecule - it goes from being relatively straight to a bent shape, almost a V-shape," Julia said. "So instead of fitting snugly inside its host, now half of it is hanging outside of one end of one of the cyclodextrins. This is important, because the other end of the cyclodextrin is now free and could be used as a host for a second guest molecule."

Having just finished her PhD, Julia has now started a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland to further her research into nanotechnology. Julia has also been chosen as one of the new faces in the University of Adelaide's Life Impact campaign.

Story by Ben Osborne

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