From left to right: Soutry De, Lauren Woods, Ingrid Venero-Velez, Timothy Pillsbury

The Fifteenth Annual UMBC Summer Undergraduate Research Fest hosted by the College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences (CNMS) was held on Wednesday, August 8, 2012 on the Seventh Floor of the Albin O. Kuhn Library.  This event serves as a culminating activity for many students in grant-funded and other formal summer undergraduate research programs that are connected to UMBC and our College.  At the event, the young researchers gave oral or poster presentations of their summer research to the UMBC community.

Congratulations go to the following Physics graduate students for receiving the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award!

Fall 2011 - Fernando Calderon Vargas
Spring 2012 - Garrett Hickman

This award acknowledges and recognizes the best Graduate Teaching Assistant for his/her work as instructor in the classroom and laboratory. Each award recipient will receive:

• An award plaque presented at the first Physics Colloquium in the following semester.
• $500 cash award.
• Recognition at the annual College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences Student Recognition Day.
• Letter of congratulation from the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) and one‐year gift membership (including access to its electronic journals ‐ the American Journal of Physics and The Physics Teacher).

Congratulations go to the following Physics undergraduate students for receiving the Outstanding Undergraduate Learning Assistant Award!

Fall 2011 - Matthew Wilcox
Spring 2012 - Matthew Davis

This award acknowledges and recognizes the best Learning Assistant for his/her work as instructor in the classroom and laboratory. Each award recipient will receive:

• An award plaque presented at the first Physics Colloquium in the following semester.
• $300 cash award.
• Recognition at the annual College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences Student Recognition Day.
• Letter of congratulation from the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) and one‐year gift membership (including access to its electronic journals ‐ the American Journal of Physics and The Physics Teacher).

Date: Friday, August 24, 2012
Time: 10:00am
Location: PHYS 401

Title
Phase Entanglement With Macroscopic Coherent States

Abstract
Entanglement is one of the defining features of quantum mechanics, with current applications in communications and cryptography, but with a wide range of possible future technologies such as quantum computing. Most entanglement experiments use single photons as the carriers of entanglement, and are therefore limited in distance because of the effects of absorption. Entanglement in macroscopic systems such as coherent states with large amplitudes has been suggested in terms of Schrodinger cat states, but rely on large nonlinearities making them unrealistic. In this proposal a method for performing nonlocal interferometry with entangled macroscopic coherent states created using weak nonlinearities is described. In addition an accompanying quantum key distribution scheme is outlined. An analysis of the effects of loss on such a system shows that a large number of photons can be absorbed from the coherent states with only a small loss in visibility. This result along with an entanglement swapping method may allow for greatly improved distances for quantum communications than currently possible.