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September 2018 Newsletter

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In This Issue

Introduction

Our Mission: To advocate, promote, and advance research on few-body systems in atomic, molecular, nuclear, particle, and mathematical physics.

Dear GFB Members,

This newsletter summarizes the activities of the APS Topical Group on Few-Body Systems and Multiparticle Dynamics (GFB) over the past year. For general information, updates, and upcoming deadlines please visit our website.

This year’s highlight has been the awarding of the inaugural Faddeev Medal to Vitaly Efimov and Rudolf Grimm at the 22nd International Conference on Few-Body Problems in Physics, in Caen, France. You will find an article on this (with a picture of the awardees, spouses, and presenters) further below (thanks to Nasser Kalantar-Nayestanaki and Daniel Phillips for contributing this piece!). The next Faddeev Medal will be awarded at the 23rd International Few-Body Conference in Beijing, China in 2021.

The regular activities of GFB include seeking and recommending nominations for APS Fellowship. Newly minted APS Fellows will be announced later this year. GFB also suggests and sponsors invited sessions at the APS April and DAMOP meetings and we support student participation in these meetings through the Student Travel Award program. The deadline for applications is January 31, 2019.

Information on the Next Cycle

As of April 2018, GFB had 343 members. We continued with our practice to offer one-year free membership to April and DAMOP meeting attendees, and more than 30 individuals took advantage of this opportunity this year. We welcome them to the Topical Group and hope they find their membership useful (and will renew it next year).

Every year the GFB Executive Committee composition changes and 2018 is no exception. I’d like to thank those who completed their terms in 2018 and left the Committee: Ricardo Alarcon served in the Chair-Line from 2014-2018, Robert Forrey and Philip Johnson served three-year terms as Executive Committee Members at Large, and Charlotte Elster served as our Secretary-Treasurer (for many years). Your efforts on behalf of GFB have been generous and vital! The Executive Committee has four new members: Harald Griesshammer has been elected Vice-Chair, Wayne Polyzou Secretary-Treasurer, and Peter Schmelcher and Seth Rittenhouse Executive Committee Members at Large. Welcome to the GFB leadership team!1

We hope you enjoy reading this newsletter. If you have any questions/comments/suggestions, don’t hesitate to let us know.

Tom Kirchner (Past Chair)

1If you are interested in joining the GFB Executive Committee in the future, please get in touch.

Inaugural Faddeev Medal Awarded

By Nasser Kalantar-Nayestanaki (University of Groningen) and Daniel Phillips (Ohio University, Athens)

On July 11, 2018, the inaugural Faddeev Medal was awarded at the 22nd International Conference on Few-body Problems in Physics, in Caen, France. The medal recognizes distinguished achievement in few-body physics. The winners are:

  • Vitaly Efimov: "For the theoretical discovery of a series of weakly-bound three-body quantum states known as Efimov states.”
  • Rudolf Grimm: "In recognition of his ground-breaking experiments confirming the Efimov effect.”

In addition to the medal itself, Efimov & Grimm also each received US$1250 and a copy of the Ludwig Faddeev Memorial Volume, published by World Scientific. They engaged attendees at the conference with two delightfully different talks describing the paths that led them to their seminal results.

The Faddeev medal was inaugurated in 2016 by the European Research Committee on Few-Body Problems in Physics (ERCFBP) and the Topical Group on Few-Body Systems & Multiparticle Dynamics (GFB) of the American Physical Society. Springer, the publisher of the journal “Few-body Systems” provided generous support. It is awarded every three years to a scientist (or scientists) who advanced the field of few-body physics significantly — either through ground-breaking research or due to crucial progress achieved over the course of a career. An international panel of experts, chaired by Professor Giuseppina Orlandini (Trento) solicited nominations from the few-body community, and then selected Efimov & Grimm as the first Faddeev Medal recipients. The next Faddeev Medal will be awarded at the 23rd International Few-body Conference in Beijing, China.

Staszek Kistryn, Giuseppina Orlandini, Albina Shabelsky; Vitaly Efimov; Rudolf Grimm; Tatiana Shibaeva-Grimm; Daniel Phillips, & Nasser Kalantar-Nayestanaki.

Awardees, spouses, and presenters just after the ceremony. Left to right: Staszek Kistryn (Chair, ERCFBP); Giuseppina Orlandini (Chair, Selection Committee); Albina Shabelsky; Vitaly Efimov; Rudolf Grimm; Tatiana Shibaeva-Grimm; Daniel Phillips (Former Chair, GFB); Nasser Kalantar-Nayestanaki (Former Chair; ERCFBP). Photo credit: Nigel Orr.

APS April Meeting

The APS April Meeting 2018 took place in Columbus, Ohio, from April 14 to 17. GFB co-sponsored two sessions:

Session C05 (with DNP): From QCD to the Deuteron (chaired by Dean Lee, Michigan State University) featured three invited talks:

Session Y05 (with DNP): Weakly-Bound Systems (chaired by Kenneth Nollett, San Diego State University) featured three invited talks:

In addition, our 2017 APS Fellow Roxanne Springer (Duke University) gave a plenary talk on Feynman's Footprints: Quantum Field Theory in Nuclear and Particle Physics in the Kavli Foundation Keynote Plenary Session: A Feynman Century (Session A01).

Two students presenting talks at April 2018 were supported through the GFB Student Travel Award program:

Congratulations to Daniel and Hershdeep!

APS DAMOP Meeting

The 2018 Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics (DAMOP) took place in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 28 to June 1. GFB co-sponsored two sessions:

Session D02: Ultracold State-to-State Chemistry (chaired by Mike Tarbutt, Imperial College London) featured four invited talks:

Session J02: Quantum Engineering with Ultracold Molecules (chaired by Kang-Kuen Ni, Harvard University) also featured four invited talks:

In addition, Session A04: Few Body Physics (chaired by Francis Robicheaux, Purdue University), which featured five contributed talks, had a distinctive GFB flavor.

One student presenter at DAMOP 2018 was supported through the GFB Student Travel Award program:
Jun Hui See Toh (supervised by Subhadeep Gupta at the University of Washington): Photoassociation Spectroscopy and Atom-Molecule Coherence in Ultracold Li-Yb Mixtures

Congratulations to Jun Hui!

Miscellaneous

The GFB leadership can submit nominations for the APS 2019 Beller and Marshak Lectureships. Each lectureship provides $2,000 in travel support. To qualify, nominations must be for physicists living outside of the U.S. who have been invited to speak during a session at the APS March or April meeting. For more information, please consult:

If you are interested in being nominated or know of a worthy nominee, please contact us. The deadline for nominations is November 1, 2018.

Here is a full list of the current GFB leadership team (access email addresses):

  • Chair: Dean Lee ( 04/18 - 05/19), Michigan State University
  • Chair-Elect: Jose D'Incao ( 04/18 - 05/19), University of Colorado, Boulder
  • Vice-Chair: Harald Griesshammer ( 04/18 - 05/19), George Washington University
  • Past Chair: Tom Kirchner ( 04/18 - 05/19), York University
  • Secretary/Treasurer: Wayne Polyzou ( 04/18 - 05/21), University of Iowa
  • Members-at-Large:
    • Kenneth Nollett ( 04/16 - 05/19), San Diego State University
    • Saori Pastore ( 04/16 - 05/19), Los Alamos National Laboratory
    • Wes Campbell ( 02/17 - 05/20), California State University, Los Angeles
    • William Detmold ( 02/17 - 05/20), Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    • Seth Rittenhouse ( 04/18 - 05/21), United States Naval Academy
    • Peter Schmelcher ( 04/18 - 05/21), University of Hamburg

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Opinions expressed represent the views of the individual authors and not the American Physical Society or author’s employers.