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The Department of Physics is proud to welcome its newest faculty member: Assistant Professor Xueyang Song grew up in north China and attended the Asian Physics Olympiad at high school. She got her Bachelor of Science from Peking University, and PhD in physics from Harvard University, under the supervision of Ashvin Vishwanath. Before joining HKUST, she was a Moore postdoctoral fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Professor Song is interested in theoretical condensed matter physics, in particular strongly correlated systems where free electron approximation fails. Quantum effects give rise to emergent phenomena there, such as particles with fractional charge and photon-like excitations in solid state systems. The interplay of symmetry, topology and correlations constrains the ground states, dynamics and kinematics of such systems, despite the absence of exact solution on the many-body systems. She studied effective descriptions and physical properties of frustrated magnetic systems, that fail to order at zero temperature. Instead, the magnetic moments conspire to form collective motions that are best captured by fractions of the elementary degrees of freedom and sometimes gauge structures. More recently, she focused on the exotic physics realized in 2d Moire systems, formed by a slight lattice misalignment among multiple atomic-thin layers stacked together. She investigated topological superconductivity and phase transitions relevant to these tunable platforms.  Her research makes extensive use of effective field theory, as well as lattice models, through a combination of analytical and numerical methods. Read more

Prof. Kam Biu Luk’ homepage Read more

The Department of Physics sets Service Award for Undergraduate Physics Students to promote the spirit of service among the Physics students. Priority will be given to those who served their fellow Physics students, the Physics Department, or the community in the capacity of Physics students. The total amount of the award is up to HK$20,000 annually. We are pleased to announce that the 2019 Physics Service Award will be given to Wai Ki WONG. Wai Ki WONG (3rd year Physics UG student) 2019 Physics Service Award “For his outstanding service and leadership in the initiative of forming the new Physics Students’ Association.”   For the details of the award, please check the HKUST Physics UG Scholarship website: http://physics.ust.hk/scholarship/index.html Congratulations to our students for their achievements. Sincerely yours,   Prof. Penger Tong Head, Department of Physics The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Read more

 Prof Tao Liu was awarded 2016 School of Science Research Award.   Read more

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A research team at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), led by Prof Shengwang Du, Associate Professor of Department of Physics, succeeded in controlling photon’s shape, and reached a record photon loading efficiency of 87% into a cavity. The scientific breakthrough can be used to build nodes of a quantum network based on cavity quantum electrodynamics (CQED) and will help advance the development of quantum communication. The research findings were published recently in Physical Review Letters, one of the most prestigious journals in physics.   Half of the 2012 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to Serge Haroche for his work on CQED. A CQED-based quantum network might consist of flying photonic quantum bits, captured by cavity nodes that perform computations and send information. However, it is not easy to catch and hold a single photon in a cavity. When a photon is injected into a cavity, it can be reflected or transmitted. In previous experiments, reflection and transmission limited the photon loading efficiency to below 20%.   Prof Du and his team exploit the wave-particle nature of a single photon in a cavity between two mirrors—a perfectly reflecting one and an input or output mirror. Using an electro-optical modulator, they shape a photon wave function that, after each round trip in the cavity, interferes destructively with the reflected wave packet. This eliminates most reflections from the cavity while the photon is injected into the cavity.   Prof Du explained that they apply a “heralded” scheme, where a laser-cooled rubidium-atom cloud emits entangled photon pairs, and the detection of one photon heralds the presence of the other one being sent into the cavity. With an optimal exponential-growth photon waveform prepared by the modulator, Prof Du’s team demonstrates a record loading efficiency of 87%, which could advance the development of transmission of quantum information.   Prof Shengwang Du joined HKUST in 2008 and received the School of Science Research Award of HKUST in 2011. He graduated from Nanjing University and obtained a master’s degree in Physics from Peking University. He also received a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering and a PhD in Physics from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He was a Postdoctoral Scholar at Stanford University before joining HKUST. Read more

Prof Tianshou Zhao, Chair Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director of Center for Sustainable Energy Technology, and Prof Qian Zhang, Professor of Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) were recognized with the most prestigious awards in science and technology in China – State Natural Science Award (Second Class) bestowed by the State Council of the People’s Republic of China. Another research project “Discovery and investigation of novel magnetocaloric effect materials” by Prof Xixiang Zhang, a former professor and now an Adjunct Professor at HKUST’s Physics Department, and the research team from the Institute of Physics Chinese Academy of Sciences also won the State Natural Science Award (Second Class).   The State Science and Technology Awards (SSTAs) are China’s most prestigious honor in science and technology. They are conferred by the State Council of the People’s Republic of China on outstanding individuals and institutions for their significant contributions to the development of science and technology. The State Natural Science Award is one of the categories under SSTAs.   As a world-class research university, HKUST is committed to scientific and technological advancement in various disciplines. With major breakthroughs in a wide range of scientific pursuits, the award demonstrates HKUST faculty’s breadth of research talents and their outstanding performances.       “Investigations of multi-scale and multi-physics field coupled fluid flow and heat/mass transfer in complex systems” by Prof Tianshou Zhao   Through the Overseas Outstanding Scholars Project of National Natural Science Foundation of China and other collaborative projects, Prof Tianshou Zhao and researchers from the School of Energy and Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, have conducted collaborative research over the past decade. By the unique research methodology and strategy with integration of experimental observations, theoretical investigations, and computational modeling, the team made significant contributions in the field of heat/mass transfer in complex systems. The main breakthrough in this project is the construction of a framework that describes multi-scale and multi-physics field coupled fluid flow and heat/mass transfer processes by creating and using microscopic, mesoscopic and macroscopic theoretical and numerical approaches. Multi-scale and multi-physics field coupled fluid flow and heat/mass transfer problems are frequently encountered in many complex practical systems including energy, power, chemical, environmental, and biomedical processes and systems. The outcome resulting from the project is particularly important in improving the energy efficiency and reducing greenhouse gas emissions of energy conversion systems.       “Models for Joint Wireless Multimedia Communication and Performance Optimization” by Prof Qian Zhang   Prof Zhang and her partners from the Tsinghua University conducted collaborative research from 1998 to 2008. Starting from the fundamental nature of the wireless multimedia communication, the team revealed the interaction between the structured nature of multimedia information and the dynamic characteristics of the error distribution in wireless networks, established the modeling methodology and performance evaluation theory for multimedia processing and joint optimization in wireless network, made significant contributions to the development of the basic theory for wireless multimedia communication. The project made a major breakthrough in efficient video communications under the discontinuous transmission conditions, and effectively increasing bandwidth efficiency. The outcome resulting from the project is particularly useful for the design of future wireless video, mobile multimedia systems, as well as next-generation wireless networks. Read more