Three University Notre Dame physicists have been elected fellows of the American Physical Society (APS) and the Institute of Physics (IOP),United Kingdom.
Ikaros Bigi and Malgorzata Dobrowolska-Furdyna, professors of physics, were named APS fellows, and Jacek Furdyna, Aurora and Tom Marquez Professor of Physics, was named a fellow of the IOP.
Bigi was cited for correctly predicting large CP violation in B meson decays. Dobrowolska-Furdyna was cited for her seminal contributions to the understanding of the role of electron spin in optical transitions in semiconductor compounds. Furdyna was elected in recognition of his status in the physics community.
The APS fellowship program was created to honor members who have made advances in knowledge through original research and publication or who have made significant and innovative contributions in the application of physics to science and technology.Each year, no more than one-half of 1 percent of the then-current membership of the society is elected.
Bigis research is directed mainly toward developing theoretical ideas that will suggest novel methods for uncovering new physics beyond the standard model of high energy physics. He was A co-recipient of the APS 2004 J.J. Sakurai Prize in theoretic particle physics.
Dobrowolska-Furdynas research interests involve magnetospectroscopy of semiconductor heterostructures, which are systems composed of ultrathin layers of different semiconductor compounds with thickness in the range of a few atomic monolayers. Such an arrangement leads to new effects which are of great interest both in fundamental physics and in device applications.
Bigi and Dobrowolska-Furdyna join the ranks of 15 other current APS fellows in Notre Dames Department of Physics: Ani Aprahamian, Albert-László Barabási, GordonBerry, Stefan Frauendorf, Jacek Furdyna, Umesh Garg, Walter Johnson, James Kolata, Gene Livingston, Grant Mathews, James Merz, Randy Ruchti, Jonathan Sapirstein, Carol Tanner and Michael Wiescher.
Furdynas research interests involve the preparation of new semiconducting compounds and the investigation of their physical properties. Most recently, this activity has focused on three semiconducting systems: quantum well structures for use in blue and blue-green light emitters, including semiconductor lasers; magnetic semiconductors (which combinetraditionalsemiconductor phenomena with new magnetic properties, including ferrormagnetism); and semiconductor nanostructures, such as self-assembled quantum dots, quantum wires, and their arrays. All these structures are fabricated at the University by molecular beam epitaxy.
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