IST-Physics Visitor Programme

The IST – Physics Visitor Programme aims to support short-term stays by international professors and researchers, fostering the development of teaching and research activities in emerging scientific areas of high relevance and impact. The presence of these researchers exposes the academic community of the Department of Physics and IST to the latest scientific advances in Physics, Engineering Physics and related disciplines, while strengthening the DF’s standard of excellence in research and teaching.

The visits are intended to provide students across all study cycles with direct contact with cutting-edge research topics as well as with innovative pedagogical methodologies. The programme seeks to enrich the education of students in the three study cycles of the Department of Physics, while also benefiting students from other IST courses through the promotion of interdisciplinary, innovative and scientifically robust approaches. At the same time, it aims to create a niche of opportunities for the establishment of new collaborations and partnerships at both national and international levels.

Past visitors and activities:

• September 2025: Professor Visitante Jeff Steinhauer (Technion, Israel)
  Mini course (2 lectures): Hawking radiation in an acoustic Black Hole
  Dates: 15 September (16h30 - 18h30, room V0.06) and 18 September (10h30 - 12h30, room V1.26)
  
  
  Brief description: This two-session mini-course provides students with an intuitive view of Hawking radiation in a sonic black hole. Hawking radiation is a semiclassical phenomenon, and we will discuss both the classical and quantum aspects during the first session. We will also discuss the observations via the density-density correlation function. In the second session, students will run and modify the provided Python code to simulate emission of thermal Hawking radiation, analyze the resulting correlation functions, and compare their simulations with real experimental data. The activity concludes with a short writing exercise in which students will explain what they have learned about the correlation function. This hands-on course brings the abstract concept of Hawking radiation to the real world.
  
  About the Lecturer: JEFF STEINHAUER is a Full Professor of Physics at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. He leads the Atomic Physics Group, where he studies analogies between ultracold atomic systems and gravity. Steinhauer is best known for creating a sonic black hole in a Bose–Einstein condensate and for the first laboratory observation of spontaneous Hawking radiation, showing that emitted phonons have a thermal spectrum and are entangled. He earned his Ph.D. at UCLA on superfluid helium, held postdoctoral positions at the Weizmann Institute and MIT, and has since become a pioneer in analogue gravity experiments.