Fall 2025

• Math Physics Seminar (joint talk with dept. colloquium)

  • Date: Friday, August 29 

  • Time: 3:30-4:30 PM 

  • Location:  Math/Physics Building  Room 3314

  • Speaker: Dr. Maxim Durach  (Georgia Southern University)

  • Title: Electromagnetism in Isotropy Broken Materials

  • Abstract: In modern science the familiar tenets of electromagnetism - like the index of refraction being a fixed material property (1.33 for water, 1.5 for glass), rays aligning perpendicularly to wavefronts, and light's polarization remaining transverse to those rays - must be abandoned when venturing beyond the realm of isotropic media. Today's electromagnetism grapples with metamaterials exhibiting broken isotropy, resulting in phenomena which include direction-dependent indices of refraction, tilted rays relative to wavefronts, longitudinal polarization linked to bound-charge waves, and the enigmatic nature of electromagnetic momentum in materials, called Abraham–Minkowski controversy, —a challenge considered by some to surpass even Hilbert's famed mathematical problems in its significance for physics.

In this presentation, we will show how the theory of these effects provides for a variety of new projects to investigate novel materials, novel principles for biomedical sensing, new waves in space magnetoplasma, and even axion electrodynamics, which can help understand the deepest secrets of the universe. We will also describe a path to obtain a broad set of new solutions of Maxwell equations in isotropy-broken media based on our new “Om” ॐ-potential method