Coloquio en el IFIS: “Quantum Thermodynamics and Information: Maxwell’s Demon in a Quantum Thermoelectric Engine”

El próximo jueves 2 de julio, el Dr. Felipe Barra, destacado investigador en Termodinámica Cuántica y profesor asociado de la Universidad de Chile, dictará el coloquio “Quantum Thermodynamics and Information: Maxwell’s Demon in a Quantum Thermoelectric Engine” a las 14:30 horas en la Sala 208 del Instituto de Física, Edificio de Ciencias, Campus Curauma, PUCV.

Compartimos el resumen de la presentación:

Can information drive a current against a bias? This talk introduces a quantum thermoelectric engine where part of the system acts as an autonomous Maxwell’s demon.

The laws of thermodynamics are deeply connected with notions of information. Quantum thermodynamics explores this connection in systems where coherence, entanglement, and measurement backaction can affect energy and particle transport. In this talk, I will introduce some central ideas of the field through a concrete example: a multipartite quantum system operating as a thermoelectric engine. The device can be interpreted as an autonomous Maxwell’s demon, where one part of the system monitors another and helps drive a particle current against a chemical-potential bias. I will discuss how quantum coherences and correlations appear in the steady state, and how coupling to a dephasing environment induces a transition toward a more classical transport regime.

Extendemos la invitación a la comunidad del Instituto de Física y público interesado a participar de este coloquio.

Coloquio en el IFIS: “Sliding phasons in Moiré Ladders”

El próximo jueves 25 de junio, la Dra. Paula Mellado, física teórica y profesora en la Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (Santiago, Chile) dictará el coloquio “Sliding phasons in Moiré Ladders” a las 14:30 horas en la Sala 208 del Instituto de Física, Edificio de Ciencias, Campus Curauma, PUCV.

Compartimos el resumen de la presentación:

An incommensurate charge density wave is a periodic modulation of charge that breaks trans-lational symmetry at a momentum that does not coincide with the primitive lattice vectors. Its Goldstone excitation, the phason, comprises collective gapless phase fluctuations. Aiming to unveil the mechanism behind the onset of incommensurate charge order in layered materials, we study a half-filled, four-band tight-binding model on a ladder with a relative shift δ = p/q between the legs, induced by the dimerization of one of them. The shift results in a moiré supercell comprising q composite cells and a modulated inter-leg tunneling. The moiré potential compresses the leg bands
into flat minibands near the Fermi level, resulting in additional low-energy peaks in the density of states. Including Coulomb interactions, we find an incommensurate charge-density-wave phase in which the charge modulation is out of phase between the legs. The collective excitations of this state are long-lived neutral, acoustic phasons whose speed is controlled by the moiré parameter δ and the inter-leg tunneling amplitude. This model sheds light on the role of interlayer incongruities in the formation of excitonic charge-ordered phases in van der Waals and heterostructured materials.

Extendemos la invitación a la comunidad del Instituto de Física y público interesado a participar de este coloquio.

Seminario de Astrofísica: “Formation of O-bearing Complex Organic Molecules in protoplanetary disks”

Seminario de Astrofísica en el IFIS. El próximo martes 16 de junio a las 14:30 hrs, Constanza Castillo, estudiante de magíster en astrofísica (UC), presentará en el Instituto de Física el seminario:

“Formation of O-bearing Complex Organic Molecules in protoplanetary disks”.

La presentación se realizará en la Sala 208 del Instituto de Física (IFIS), 2° piso, Edificio de Ciencias, Campus Curauma, PUCV.

Revisa el abstract de la presentación:

Protoplanetary disks around young stars are the environment where planets form, making it crucial to characterize their composition and spatial distribution, as part of this material can be incorporated into forming planets. In this context, Complex Organic Molecules (COMs) are particularly interesting, as they are considered a bridge to prebiotic molecules and the initial steps of life’s formation. Among them, methanol (CH3OH), the simplest COM, is a key precursor to more complex species. However, its detection in disks remains challenging, as it is primarily locked in icy grains. Formaldehyde (H2CO), a brighter and more commonly detected molecule that shares formation pathways with methanol, can thus serve as a tracer of organic chemistry in disks. This work retrieves the excitation conditions and column densities of H2CO through disk-averaged and radially resolved analyses. By extending these studies beyond the small number of well-characterized disks currently available, we aim to compare the chemical properties of different planet-forming environments and constrain the origin of oxygen-bearing organic molecules in protoplanetary disks.

Extendemos la invitación a la comunidad PUCV y al público interesado.

Mini-Curso: Introduction to Cosmology Part I

El Instituto de Física PUCV tiene el agrado de presentar un nuevo Mini-Curso: Modelos basados en agentes y ciencia de las redes, impartido por la Dra. Yerali Gandica, profesora visitante del IFIS proveniente de la Universidad Internacional de Valencia, España.

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Panoramas 2026: Conocimiento sin límites

¿Buscas un panorama para aprender, inspirarte y conocer nuevas oportunidades?

Te invitamos a Panoramas: Conocimiento sin Límites, encuentro académico del Doctorado en Ciencias Físicas de la Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María y la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, dirigida a estudiantes interesados en distintos caminos académicos y profesionales vinculados a la física.

Podrás conocer más sobre el programa de postgrado, investigación y las posibilidades que ofrecen las distintas instituciones.

📍 Martes 9 de junio
Centro de Eventos Sala A3, Casa Central USM
📍 Miércoles 10 de junio
Auditorio Otto Zöllner Schorr, Campus Curauma PUCV

Extendemos la invitación al público interesado.

Seminario de Astrofísica: “FRBs as foreground probes: Recent results from the CHIME collaboration and ongoing work with FLIMFLAM”

Seminario de Astrofísica en el IFIS. Este martes 09 de junio a las 14:30 hrs, el Dr. Sunil Simha, investigador postdoctoral (Northwestern University and The University of Chicago), presentará en el Instituto de Física el seminario:

“FRBs as foreground probes: Recent results from the CHIME collaboration and ongoing work with FLIMFLAM”.

La presentación se realizará en la Sala 208 del Instituto de Física (IFIS), 2° piso, Edificio de Ciencias, Campus Curauma, PUCV.

Revisa el abstract de la presentación:

The field of Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) is experiencing a rapid growth in FRB detections spearheaded by the CHIME/FRB collaboration. The CHIME Outrigger telescopes have come into full operation since early 2025 and have enabled sub-arcsecond-scale VLBI localizations of tens of published FRBs to date. Subsequently, our optical follow-up led by the F^4 team is steadily associating the bursts with their hosts and obtaining spectroscopic redshifts for these bursts. Armed with the FRB dispersion measures (DM) and their host redshifts, we are now able to constrain the gas distribution along the FRB sightlines. In my talk, I will provide an overview of our early results, including: (1) constraints on galactic feedback models prevalent in FRB hosts, (2) baryon retention fractions in group and cluster halos, (3) host galaxy ISM constraints from an extremely bright nearby (~40 Mpc) burst, and (4) a statistical hint of halo gas around M31. I will also highlight some of the ongoing work on the FLIMFLAM project, an effort to constrain gas in halos and the IGM via spectroscopic maps of foreground galaxies.

Extendemos la invitación a la comunidad PUCV y al público interesado.

Coloquio en el IFIS: “The Simons Observatory”

El próximo miércoles 10 de junio, la Dra. Jo Dunkley, cosmóloga y profesora Joseph Henry de Física y Ciencias Astrofísicas en la Universidad de Princeton, dictará el coloquio “The Simons Observatory” a las 11 horas en la Sala 208 del Instituto de Física, Edificio de Ciencias, Campus Curauma, PUCV.

Compartimos el resumen de la presentación:

The Simons Observatory (SO), a new millimeter-wave observatory in the Atacama, has started gathering data. It measures the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the earliest image we have of the universe, with the goal of better understanding our cosmological model. With its smaller telescopes we are seeking a primordial signal imprinted by gravitational waves generated in the early universe. Its largest telescope will measure the finer scales of the CMB with increased sensitivity, probing the initial conditions of the early universe as well as revealing the later-formed cosmic web of gas and dark matter.  By surveying half the sky every couple of days, we also hope to see new types of transient astronomical events in millimeter-wavelengths with SO. In this talk I will describe the status of SO and its science plans.

Extendemos la invitación a la comunidad del Instituto de Física y público interesado a participar de este coloquio.

Seminario de Astrofísica: “The JWST Emission Line Survey (JELS)”

Seminario de Astrofísica en el IFIS. El próximo martes 26 de mayo a las 14:30 hrs, el Dr. Eduardo Ibar, académico de la Universidad de Valparaíso, presentará en el Instituto de Física el seminario:

“The JWST Emission Line Survey (JELS)”.

La presentación se realizará en la Sala 208 del Instituto de Física (IFIS), 2° piso, Edificio de Ciencias, Campus Curauma, PUCV.

Revisa el abstract de la presentación:

The H-alpha (Ha) emission is the best-calibrated star-formation rate (SFR) tracer. Previous to JWST, surveys mapped the evolution of Ha emitters out to the peak of the Cosmic SFR Density (CSFRD) at z~2.5. Beyond this redshift, samples of star-forming galaxies and estimates of the CSFRD were almost ubiquitously based on rest-frame UV observations with HST. In this talk, we describe new JWST NIRCam’s narrow-band filters to observe a 65 arcmin^2 in COSMOS to identify several 100s of line-emitting galaxies. We consider difference imaging between closely-spaced narrow and broad band filters, to find line-emitting galaxies to provide the first clean and robust sample of homogeneously selected star-forming galaxies into the Epoch of Reionization (at z~6.2 and 8.2). We measure the ionised gas structures of these galaxies at sub-kpc resolution, determine how the relationship between UV and ionised gas varies with host galaxy properties, and tackle the physical processes driving the star formation activity at different reshifts. We describe also the properties of a newly discovered population of Paschen emitters at Cosmic Noon (Pa-alpha@z~1.5, Pa-beta@z~2.6) including their SED properties, their contribution to the CSFRD, and upcoming future follow-up campaigns.

Extendemos la invitación a la comunidad PUCV y al público interesado.