Noah Graham Receives NSF Grant

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – Noah Graham, professor of physics, has been awarded a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation for a project titled “Scattering Approach to Quantum Fluctuations: Casimir Forces, Curved Spacetime, and Solitons.”

This project will use scattering theory—techniques for computing how light and other waves are reflected and transmitted—to analyze quantum-mechanical effects in systems relevant to nanotechnology and cosmology, building closely on related courses in the Physics Department curriculum.

This work will be carried out in collaboration with researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stellenbosch University, and will involve at least four Middlebury student researchers.

Graham joined the Middlebury faculty in 2002. His research centers around applications of quantum mechanics and classical and quantum field theory to a variety of problems in elementary particle physics, physics of solitons and oscillons, and the Casimir effect. Graham teaches courses on electricity and magnetism, statistical mechanics, general relativity, and quantum mechanics.