 Physics Professor Published 2nd Year in a Row in Premier Physics Journal
When describing his life-long love, Horacio Camblong smiles serenely and uses words like “beautiful” and “wonderful.” The object of his affection? The laws of quantum physics.
The University of San Francisco physics professor’s passion for a discipline that makes others cringe with anxiety is deep-rooted. It began when he was in elementary school in Argentina.
“My first interest was chemistry—making explosions at age 8,” he said. “Gradually, I became fascinated with stars, the sky, the universe. I started reading about cosmology at age 12 and fell in love with it. Cosmology led me to elementary particles. You have to understand elementary particles to understand everything else.”
Elementary particles, such as electrons, are matter’s most basic buildingblocks and are described by the laws of quantum physics. In their most elaborate form, these laws are the basis of quantum field theory, Camblong’s area of expertise. Last fall, he published a research paper on his discovery of when those particles swerve into irregularity in the country’s premier physics journal, Physical Review Letters. It was his third publication in that journal, and his second in consecutive years.
“Physical Review Letters is the most prestigious physics journal in the world and the most difficult to be published in,” said Tristan Needham, associate dean for sciences. “To be published there two years in a row is very impressive.”
Camblong’s most recent paper identifies a simple example—for physicists, that is—of a “quantum anomaly”: an instance in which a physical system’s symmetry breaks down. In physics, symmetry means that a system behaves the same before and after a change is performed on it.
“These systems have been studied since the advent of modern quantum physics in the 1920s,” Camblong said. “We do believe that at the fundamental level, the laws of nature are symmetrical. In this paper, we recognize there is symmetry, then find an example of when symmetry breaks down.”
His research, conducted with three former professors from the university he attended in Argentina, was published in the November 2001 issue of Physical Review Letters. The paper is the result of many years of studying these physical systems to identify when, why, and how the symmetry of a simple physical system—at the level of electrons and molecules—fails.
Camblong’s example involves the interaction of a neutral polar molecule with an electron. Through a complex mathematical analysis of the system’s symmetry, he is able to predict the conditions under which the molecule can “capture” the electron in its electric field.
The findings create the opportunity to take undergraduate physics education a step further, Camblong said.
“With this work, I can now teach about quantum anomalies in an upper division physics class,” he said. “At the level of elementary particles, it is understandable to our students.”
Camblong came to USF in 1993, after completing a master’s and doctorate at New York University and spending a year at the University of Texas at Austin. His endeavor to better understand and explain quantum anomalies, as well as other subtle phenomena in quantum field theory, continues.
“We are beginning to understand quantum anomalies much better,” he said. “There is an intriguing possibility that at a fundamental level, these quantum anomalies could be understood differently. I hope we can describe and reduce them to even simpler phenomena.”
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