The Women in Leadership Medal application deadline has been extended to Tuesday 30 April. Nominate yourself or someone you know to recognise excellent contributions to Australian physics.

Second Circular : XVIth Quark Confinement and the Hadron Spectrum Conference

We are pleased to announce that the "XVIth Quark Confinement and the Hadron Spectrum Conference” will be held between 19-24 August 2024 at the Cairns Convention Centre in Queensland, Australia. Please see the linked conference poster for more details.

Conference web sites

The important dates and the list of conveners for the scientific program, as well as additional information on travel, accommodation and the conference social program can be found at the conference webpage: www.confinement24.org.au and this page is regularly updated. The Indico webpage for the conference can be reached at https://indico.cern.ch/event/1293041/

Scientific Topics

Session A: Vacuum Structure and Confinement

Focus Subsection: “Topology and confinement at borderlines of particle physics and condensed matter: emergent confinement in cold atoms and Anderson criticality in the QCD deconfinement transition”

Session B: Light Quarks

Session C: Heavy Quarks

Session D: Deconfinement

Session E: QCD and New Physics

Session F: Nuclear and Astro-particle Physics

Session G: Strongly Coupled Theories

Session H: Statistical Methods for Physics Analysis in the XXI Century 

The important dates and the list of conveners for the scientific program, as well as additional information on travel, accommodation and the conference social program can be found at the conference webpages linked above.

Registration and abstract submission are now open

Abstract submission opening:	29 January 2024
Abstract submission deadline:	29 April 2024
Abstract acceptance notification:	13 May 2024
Registration opening:	29 January 2024
Deadline for paying early registration fees:	03 June 2024
Registration deadline:	01 July 2024
Deadline for student support applications:	03 June 2024
Decisions on student support applications:	10 June 2024

Registration and conference fees

Registration for the conference is through the conference website https://indico.cern.ch/event/1293041/registrations/101933/.

Registration fee type	Early Registration	Late Registration
	until 03 June, 2024	until 01 July, 2024
Full	AU$1150 ~ €690	AU$1300 ~ €790
Student	AU$900 ~ €540	AU$1060 ~ €650
Accompanying Person	AU$200 ~ €120	AU$200 ~ €120

The full and student Conference registrations include: Welcome Reception, Conference Dinner, morning and afternoon teas, lunch on Monday-Friday inclusive, poster session, public lecture and a concert, proceedings, printed programme, and the conference pack. The fee for accompanying persons includes the conference social dinner and welcome reception.

Support for students

There will be a finite capacity for providing partial financial assistance for student attendance at the Conference. Please note that this is indeed limited to students - it is not possible to provide support for general participants. Support is intended only for students who will be making a presentation (either oral or poster). 

Applications for student support can be submitted by sending an email to

ayse.kizilersu@adelaide.edu.au and cc it to cssm@adelaide.edu.au by 3^rd of June 2024.

Please make sure your email contains the following information:

• email subject line
• • QCHSC2024 student financial support application - YOUR NAME - YOUR INSTITUTION
    
• email body
  
• • First name
    
  • Surname
    
  • Institution (i.e. your affiliation)
    
  • Submitted talk type (oral or poster)
    
  • Talk/poster title
    
  • Talk/poster abstract
    
  • A reference letter
    
  • Additional information that you feel is relevant
    

If you apply for a student support please postpone payment of your fee until a decision is made, by 10th June 2024.

 

Accommodation

Conference participants are requested to book their accommodation individually. A variety of hotel options are available in the Cairns city centre within pleasant walking distance of the conference venue.

Reduced rates have been negotiated for the conference participants and those

special accommodation deals for QCHSC2024 are listed at the conference webpage https://confinement24.org.au/#accommodation

Conference Excursions

We offer three conference excursion options – “Outer Reef”, “Oldest Rainforest”, and “Rainforest with Aboriginal Experience” on Saturday August 24th. As a conference participant, you and your accompanying guests are able to choose one of these three during the registration process. 

The details of all excursions and their costs are available on the webpage at https://confinement24.org.au/#conference_excursions and your preferred trip should be selected at registration.

Please note that some options have limited capacity and we apologise in advance if your preferred excursion is not available.

Social Programme

The welcome reception will be held in the evening of Monday, the 19^th of August. There will be a public talk and a concert on Tuesday, the 20^th of August. The poster session will take place on Wednesday, the 21^stof August. The conference dinner will be on Thursday the 22^nd of August. 

Travel

Cairns Airport is one of Australia’s leading tourist destinations, providing air links to a range of domestic and international locations and is just 7 kilometres from the centre of Cairns.

Cairns Airport has direct flights from Tokyo, Osaka, Singapore, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Bali, Auckland and Port Moresby. There are also seasonal flights from Shanghai and Seoul.

Detailed travel information can be found on the conference website https://confinement24.org.au/#information

 

Cancellation Fee and Refund Policy 

For delegate registrations:

• Before 10th June, 2024: Full refund minus $30 administration fee;
• After 11^th June, 2024: 50% of payment refunded;
• After 4th August, 2024: no refund.

For accompanying person registrations:

• Before 3^rd August, 2024: Full refund minus $20 administration fee.;
• After 4^th August, 2024: no refund.

 

Visa information

All travellers to Australia need a valid passport. Visas are required by all visitors travelling to Australia except for New Zealand passport holders.

We advise all international travellers to consult the link below or contact the Australian Consulate in your country to organise the visa that best suits your travel plans.

Visa Information at the Department of Immigration and Citizenship

Depending on the country of issue of your passport, you may be eligible to apply for an eVisitor or ETA via the internet. Please see the following link for more information.

Online Applications at the Department of Immigration and Citizenship

It is also important to note that Australia is an island of immense ecological diversity and takes customs very seriously. To protect its natural ecosystems and agriculture interests, Australia employs strict customs regulations. Organic items such as plants, food, animal products, timber and anything contaminated with dirt or sand may be restricted or even prohibited. Before you set out to Australia, it may be useful to check up on these restrictions at the link below.

Customs Information at the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service

If you require a Letter of Invitation for the conference, please contact us via email.

Please address requests to ayse.kizilersu@adelaide.edu.au and cc it to cssm@adelaide.edu.au

We are looking forward to seeing you at CONFINEMENT2024! 

Sincerely yours,

The local organising committee:

Ayse Kizilersu (University of Adelaide, Chair) and Nora Brambilla (TU Munchen, Co-chair)

Anthony W. Thomas (University of Adelaide, Senior Adviser and organiser)

Derek B. Leinweber (University of Adelaide)

Wally Melnitchouk (JLAB & University of Adelaide)

Martin White (University of Adelaide) 

After more than four years of supporting the AIP as Operations Manager, Nicole Reynolds is finishing her position with the AIP. We are grateful to Nicole Reynolds for supporting the AIP throughout her time as Operations Manager. She proposed and implemented several initiatives to improve the AIP such as the creation of procedural and volunteer documents, setting up the Advertising Hub and volunteer training. Since Nicole started, the number of AIP members has grown thanks to her personal approach to membership and her thorough management of the AIP membership database.

We thank her very much for her service and wish her all the best for her future endeavors.

“I would like to thank the AIP members, volunteers, and stakeholders for making my time at the AIP so fun and engaging. It has been a gratifying experience.”

The Australian Institute of Physics (AIP)  is looking for an early career researcher (ECR) representative to join the national AIP Executive.

The term of the role is for one year, with the possibly of extension. Responsibilities include:

• Attend national Executive meetings (currently virtual and monthly).
• Provide advice on matters related to physics students and postdocs.
• Work to increase the AIPs engagement with physics ECRs.
• Assist with creating content for communications to the physics community.

Please send expressions of interest to aip@aip.org.au with the subject line: ECR representative – “your name”.  Please include a paragraph outlining your interest in the role, and a two-page CV.

Nominations are now invited for the 2023 David Syme Research Prize. The Australia-wide prize recognises the best original research in Biology, Physics, Chemistry or Geology produced* in Australia during the past two years (1 January 2022 - 31 December 2023). *Produced – e.g. published

The David Syme Research Prize is managed by the Faculty of Science at the University of Melbourne.

Summary details are:
Value: approx. $10,000, and a medal
Closing date: 30 April 2024 

• The prize is made by nomination only. Senior members of the academic or research community such as co-authors or co-researchers, heads of department or deputy vice-chancellors (research) are invited to nominate eligible colleagues. Self-nominations are not accepted.
• Researchers associated with any Australian university and researchers without university connections are eligible for nomination, noting that the following are not eligible:
• • Professors or researchers who will have attained the position of professor at the time the award is made;
  • Researchers outside universities who will have attained a level of seniority comparable to a university professor at the time the award is made (LEVEL E);
  • Researchers who have not spent the equivalent of at least 5 full years of the last 7 in Australia.
• The award is made on the basis of the research quality within the discipline and its likely impact and value in the industrial and commercial interests of Australia.

Full details and the nomination form are available here.

Enquiries should be directed to: science-internalfunding@unimelb.edu.au

The deadline to nominate yourself or someone you know for the following awards has been extended to Monday 15 April:

• Walter Boas Medal for Excellence in Research
• Harrie Massey Medal and Prize
• Alan Walsh Medal for Service to Industry
• AIP Education Medal
• Ruby Payne-Scott Award for Excellence in Early-Career Research
• Women in Leadership Medal
• Physics Communication Award

Nominate a colleague now, to recognise excellent contributions to Australian physics.

The Australian Institute of Physics is looking for an Operations Manager.

This is a part-time, work-from-home role, with flexible hours.

Desired skills:

• Administration
• Communications
• Answering membership enquires
• Basic finance admin
• Website maintenance

To find out more, or to arrange a discusison, please contact: executive@aip.org.au 

UNSW researchers have demonstrated multiple ways to write quantum information in silicon for more flexible quantum chips design.

Quantum computing engineers Irene Fernandez de Fuentes and Scientia Professor Andrea Morello. Sydney Quantum Academy

Quantum computing engineers at UNSW Sydney have shown they can encode quantum information – the special data in a quantum computer – in four unique ways within a single atom, inside a silicon chip.

The feat could alleviate some of the challenges in operating tens of millions of quantum computing units in just a few square millimetres of a silicon quantum computer chip.

In a paper published recently in Nature Communications the engineers described how they used the sixteen quantum ‘states’ of an antimony atom to encode quantum information. Antimony is a heavy atom that can be implanted in a silicon chip, replacing one of the existing silicon atoms. It was chosen because its nucleus possesses eight distinct quantum states, plus an electron with two quantum states, resulting in a total of 8 x 2 = 16 quantum states, all within just one atom. Reaching the same number of states using simple quantum bits – or qubits, the basic unit of quantum information – would require manufacturing and coupling four of them.

Lead author Irene Fernandez de Fuentes says the team, under the guidance of Scientia Professor Andrea Morello, drew on more than a decade’s work that had established different methods of quantum control to show all were possible within the same atom. The antimony atom was implanted in the chip by colleagues at the University of Melbourne, using facilities of the Heavy Ion Accelerators at the Australian National University.

“First, we showed that we could control the antimony’s electron with an oscillating magnetic field, similar to the breakthrough in 2012 which was the first time a qubit had ever been demonstrated in silicon,” she says.

“Next we showed that we could use a magnetic field to manipulate the spin of the antimony’s nucleus. This is the standard magnetic resonance method, as used for example in MRI machines in hospitals. The third method was to control the nucleus of the antimony atom with an electric field, something that was discovered by lucky accident in 2020.

Artistic depiction of the 16 quantum states of the antimony atom, and all the different ways in which one can climb between them. UNSW Sydney

“And the fourth way was to control both the antimony nucleus and the electron in opposition to each other, using an electric field using so-called flip-flop qubits, which was demonstrated by this team last year.

“This latest experiment shows that all four of these methods can be used in the same silicon chip using the same architecture.”

The advantage of having four different methods is that each method gives computer engineers and physicists more flexibility when designing future quantum computing chips.

For example, magnetic resonance is faster than electric resonance, but the magnetic field spreads widely in space, so it may also affect neighbouring atoms. Electric resonance, while slower, can be applied very locally to select one specific atom without affecting any of its neighbours.

“With this big antimony atom, we have the complete flexibility of how we integrate it with a control structure over a silicon chip,” Prof. Morello says.

Why this matters

The quantum computers of the future will have millions, if not billions of qubits working simultaneously to crunch numbers and simulate models in minutes what would take today’s supercomputers hundreds or even thousands of years to complete. While some teams around the world have made progress with large numbers of qubits, such as Google’s 70 qubit model or IBM’s version which has more than 1000, they require much larger spaces for their qubits to work without interfering with one another.

But the approach that Prof. Morello and other colleagues have taken at UNSW is to design quantum computing using technology already in use to make conventional computers. While progress may be slower in terms of numbers of working qubits, the advantage of using silicon will mean being able to have millions of qubits in a square millimetre of chip.

“We are investing in a technology that is harder, slower, but for very good reasons, one of them being the extreme density of information that it'll be able to handle,” says Prof. Morello.

“It's all very well to have 25 million atoms in a square millimetre, but you have to control them one by one. Having the flexibility to do it with magnetic fields, or electric fields, or any combination of them, will give us lots of options to play with when scaling up the system.”

Back to the lab

Next, the group will use the large computational space of the antimony atom to perform quantum operations that are much more sophisticated than those afforded by plain qubits. They plan to encode a ‘logical’ qubit within the atom – a qubit built upon more than two quantum levels, to get enough redundancy to detect and correct errors as they occur.

“This is the next frontier for practical, useful quantum computer hardware” says Prof. Morello. “Being able to build an error-corrected logical qubit within a single atom will be a tremendous opportunity for scaling up silicon quantum hardware to the point where it becomes commercially useful”.

This article was published by UNSW Sydney Newsroom.

This is your last chance to nominate yourself or someone you know for the following awards closing 1 April:

• Walter Boas Medal for Excellence in Research
• Thomas H Laby Medal for Excellence in Physics
• Harrie Massey Medal and Prize
• Alan Walsh Medal for Service to Industry
• AIP Education Medal
• Ruby Payne-Scott Award for Excellence in Early-Career Research
• Women in Leadership Medal
• Physics Communication Award

Nominate now.

The Order of Australia awards recognise and celebrate Australians, meritorious awards, and recognition for distinguished and conspicuous service. The AIP would like to congratulate the following AIP members for their accomplishments.

Revealing how collisions with rocks shape planets:

The 2022 AIP Women in Physics Lecturer A/Prof Katarina Miljkovic OAM was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for "service to science as a researcher". Katarina was Scientist of the Year in 2019 and UNESCO Women in Science Fellow in 2018.

X-ray scattering guru and a 'godfather' of the Aus synchrotron:

AIP Life Member Emeritus Prof Dudley Creagh AM was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia “for significant service to science, and to tertiary education”, including contributions to X-ray scattering and the development of the Australian National Beamline Facility at Tsukuba, Japan, and the planning of, and the design of the Spectroscopy beamline for, Australian synchrotron.

The art and science of sundials:

Former AIP member Dr Margaret Folkard OAM was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for service to gnomonics, and to the community. Margaret was a research physicist while co-founding and co-directing Sundials Australia, designing and constructing sundials across Australia.

Former AIP member John Ward OAM was awarded an (Honorary) Order of Australia Medal for service to gnomonics, as co-founder and co-director of Sundials Australia with Dr Margaret Folkard OAM.

(Photo credit: Khama Reid)