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Physics Colloquium is held on Thursdays, 4:00pm - 5:00pm over Zoom and in-person in the Feynman Lecture Hall, 201 E. Bridge. Attendance is limited. Only those with a valid Caltech ID are permitted to attend in person. 

All talks are intended for a broad audience, and everyone is encouraged to attend. 



Watch previous talks on PMA's YouTube page


• Upcoming Colloquia

• Past Colloquia Recordings & Information

• History of Caltech Physics Colloquium

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2023-2024


THURSDAY 
OCTOBER 5, 2023
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Measuring the knots and braids of non-Hermitian oscillators

Speaker: Jack Harris
Host: Rana Adhikari
View talk here

THURSDAY 
OCTOBER 12, 2023
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Simulating the quantum world on a classical computer

Speaker: Garnet Chan
Host: John Preskill

Due to technical difficulties, this talk was not recorded.

THURSDAY 
OCTOBER 19, 2023
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Galaxies as Probes of the Particle Physics Nature of Dark Matter

Speaker: Mariangela Lisanti
Host: Clifford Cheung
View talk here

THURSDAY 
OCTOBER 26, 2023
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Companion-Disk Interaction: From Protoplanetary Disks to AGN Disks

Speaker: Zhaohuan Zhu
Host: Sterl Phinney
View talk here

THURSDAY 
OCTOBER 26, 2023
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Colliders for the Future of High Energy Physics

Speaker: Julia Gonski
Host: Maria Spiropulu
View talk here

THURSDAY 
OCTOBER 26, 2023
4:00pm - 5:00pm

The Cosmic Neutrino Background (CvB): Its Distribution on the Surface of the Earth and its Manipulation on Laboratory Scales

Speaker: Julia Gonski
Host: Maria Spiropulu
View talk here

THURSDAY 
November 16, 2023
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Wielding Frequency Dependent Squeezing against Quantum Back-Action in the LIGO Gravitational Wave Observatories

Speaker: Lee McCuller
Host: John Preskill
View talk here

THURSDAY 
November 30, 2023
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Using Nuclear Reactors to Study Neutrinos

Speaker: Pedro Ochoa
Host: Ryan Patterson
View talk here

THURSDAY 
December 14, 2023
4:30pm - 5:30pm

Deep Learning for Theory: from Particle Physics to the Poincaré Conjecture

Speaker: Jim Halverson
Host: Sergei Gukov
View talk here

THURSDAY 
January 4, 2024
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Ultracold polar molecules: an emerging tool for quantum science

Speaker: Dave DeMille
Host: Nick Hutzler
View talk here

THURSDAY 
January 11, 2024
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Relativistic Fluid Dynamics: From Particle Colliders to Neutron Star Mergers

Speaker: Jorge Noronha
Host: Elias Most
Christy Lecture

View talk here

THURSDAY 
January 18, 2024
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Moiré Materials

Speaker: Allan H. MacDonald
Host: Nai-Chang Yeh
Lauritsen Lecture

View talk here

THURSDAY 
January 25, 2024
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Error correction of a logical quantum bit beyond the break-even point

Speaker: Michel Devoret
Host: John Preskill
Biard Lecture
*This talk will not be recorded.

THURSDAY 
February 1, 2024
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Why are astrophysical plasmas always magnetized?

Speaker: Axel Brandenburg
Host: Sterl Phinney

View talk here

THURSDAY 
February 8, 2024
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Magnetic power of neutron stars

Speaker: Andrei Beloborodov
Host: Elias Most

View talk here

THURSDAY 
February 15, 2024
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Opportunities for Machine Learning in Physics

Speaker: Max Welling
Host: John Preskill

View talk here

THURSDAY 
February 22, 2024
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Topology and "impossible" electronic devices

Speaker: Andrea Young
Host: David Hsieh

View talk here

THURSDAY 
February 29, 2024
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Clocks with ultracold molecules

Speaker: Tanya Zelevinsky
Host: Nick Hutzler
*This talk will not be recorded.

THURSDAY 
March 7, 2024
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Neutron Star Mergers: Frontiers in Computational Relativistic Astrophysics

Speaker: Elias Most
Host: Sterl Phinney

View talk here

THURSDAY 
April 18, 2024
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Quantum materials on the mesoscale

Speaker: Phillip Moll
Host: Linda Ye

View talk here

THURSDAY 
April 25, 2024
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Programmable control of indistinguishable particles: from clocks to qubits to many-body physics

Speaker: Adam Kaufman
Host: Nick Hutzler
*This talk will not be recorded.

THURSDAY 
May 2, 2024
4:00pm - 5:00pm

New frontiers for many-body physics: from non-equilibrium to non-Euclidean

Speaker: Vedika Khemani
Host: John Preskill

View talk here

THURSDAY 
May 2, 2024
4:00pm - 5:00pm

New frontiers for many-body physics: from non-equilibrium to non-Euclidean

Speaker: Vedika Khemani
Host: John Preskill
*This talk will not be recorded.

THURSDAY 
May 9, 2024
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Quantum Critical Metals and the Fermion Sign Problem

Speaker: Erez Berg
Host: Gil Refael
*This talk will not be recorded.

THURSDAY 
May 16, 2024
4:00pm - 5:00pm

The Magic of Moiré Quantum Matter

Speaker: Pablo Jarillo-Herrero
Host: Nai-Chang Yeh
Lauritsen Lecture
*This talk will not be recorded.

THURSDAY 
May 23, 2024
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Searching for topological superconductors using ultrasound

Speaker: Brad Ramshaw
Host: Linda Ye
*This talk will not be recorded.

2022-2023


THURSDAY 
OCTOBER 6, 2022
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Towards a theory of strange quantum metals

Speaker: Senthil Todadri
Host: Jason Alicea
View talk here

THURSDAY 
OCTOBER 13, 2022
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Talk cancelled

Speaker:
Host: 


THURSDAY 
OCTOBER 20, 2022
4:00pm - 5:00pm

The Generalized Landau Paradigm
https://www.caltech.edu/campus-life-events/calendar/physics-colloquium-20

**This talk will not be shown via Zoom and will not be recorded.**

Speaker: John McGreevy
Host: Xie Chen


THURSDAY 
OCTOBER 27, 2022
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Black holes and random matrices

Speaker: Stephen Shenker
Host: David Simmons-Duffin
View talk here

*Mask must be worn for this talk*
 Bring your own or take one (N95) at the door.


THURSDAY 
NOVEMBER 3, 2022
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Bosonic Quantum Information Processing

Speaker: Liang Jiang
Host: Gil Refael
View talk here

THURSDAY 
NOVEMBER 10, 2022
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Quantum sensing and imaging with diamond spins

Speaker: Ania Jayich
Host: David Hsieh
View talk here


THURSDAY 
NOVEMBER 17, 2022
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Laser cooling and trapping radioactive atoms and molecules
https://www.caltech.edu/campus-life-events/calendar/physics-colloquium-24
 

Speaker:  Andrew Jayich
Host:  Nick Hutzler
View talk here



THURSDAY 
DECEMBER 1, 2022
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Quantum matter, clocks, and fundamental physics
https://www.caltech.edu/campus-life-events/calendar/physics-colloquium-25

Lauritsen Lecture

Speaker: Jun Ye
Host: John Preskill 
View talk here



THURSDAY 
JANUARY 5, 2023
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Tests of quantumness with trapped ions

Speaker: Crystal Noel
Host: John Preskill
View talk here



THURSDAY 
JANUARY 12, 2023
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Talk cancelled

Speaker:
Host:



THURSDAY 

JANUARY 19, 2023
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Angular Momentum Radiation in Field Theory and Gravity

Speaker: Aneesh Manohar
Host: Clifford Cheung
View talk here


THURSDAY 
JANUARY 26, 2023
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Shedding nano-light on quantum materials

Biard Lecture

Speaker: Dmitri Basov
https://infrared.cni.columbia.edu

Host: Nai-Chang Yeh
View talk here


THURSDAY 
FEBRUARY 2, 2023
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Axion Dark Matter and Quantum Measurement: ABRACADABRA to DMRadio

Speaker: Lindley Winslow
https://winslow.mit.edu/

Host: Nick Hutzler
View talk here



THURSDAY 
FEBRUARY 9, 2023
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Minerva: Solving Quantitative Reasoning Problems with Language Models

Speaker: Guy Gur-Ari
Host: Hirosi Ooguri
View talk here



THURSDAY 
FEBRUARY 16, 2023
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Understanding Mechanisms for Creating Complex Materials with Built-In Cross-Coupled Responses
https://www.caltech.edu/campus-life-events/calendar/physics-colloquium-31

Speaker: Nicole Benedek
Host: David Hsieh
View talk here



THURSDAY 
FEBRUARY 23, 2023
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Quantum Transport in 2D Superconductors and Semiconductors

Speaker:  Jeanie Lau
Host: Gil Refael
View talk here



THURSDAY 
MARCH 2, 2023
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Black holes in binaries

Speaker: Ilya Mandel
Host: Sterl Phinney
View talk here



THURSDAY 
MARCH 9, 2023
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Ineffective Field Theory

Lauritsen Lecture

Speaker: Lisa Randall
Host: Mark Wise
View talk here


THURSDAY 
APRIL 6, 2023
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Quantum Materials by Design

Speaker:  Andrea Damascelli
Host: David Hsieh
Talk was not recorded.