

Condensed Matter Physics and
Statistical Mechanics There
are 12 faculty members working in condensed matter physics and statistical mechanics: Tsu-Teh Chou, Bill Dennis, Michael Geller, Uwe Happek, David Landau,
Howard Lee, Steven Lewis, Richard Meltzer, Kin-Keung Mon, Heinz-Bernd Schüttler, William Yen
and Yiping Zhao.
Some specific areas of research are:
Biophysics and Bioinformatics
Biochemical reaction networks; bioinformatics; biological molecules; computational
biology; functional genomics; neural networks; polymers; spectroscopy of biomaterials.
Computational and Simulational Methods
Computational many-body perturbation theory; density functional theory; exact
diagonalization; lattice dynamics; molecular dynamics; Monte-Carlo simulation; numerical
renormalization group; parallel supercomputing; quantum Monte-Carlo.
Electron and Phonon Dynamics in Nanostructures
Carbon fullerenes and nanotubes; electron-phonon interactions in nanoparticles; mesoscopic
and low-dimensional systems; optical properties of nanostructures; phonon dynamics in
nanoparticles and nanocrystals; semiconductor films and superlattices.
Laser Spectroscopy Methods
Coherent transient spectroscopy; fluorescence line narrowing; IR spectroscopy; nonlinear
spectroscopy; photoconductivity; photon avalanche; photon echo; spectral hole burning;
thermoluminescence; ultrafast spectroscopy.
Material Science
Ferroelectric materials; optoelectronic materials; phosphor materials; photorefractive
materials; photovoltaic materials; semiconductors.
Materials Synthesis
Laser-heated pedestal growth; molecular-beam epitaxy.
Optical Properties of Solids
Charge transfer processes in insulators; dephasing and decoherence in solids; dynamical
processes in glasses and solids; dynamics of elementary excitations; electron-phonon and
phonon-phonon interactions; energy transfer and energy relaxation; molecular impurities;
phonon dynamics in disordered and amorphous systems.
Phase Transitions and Critical Phenomena
Dynamical critical phenomena; finite-size scaling; magnetic phase transitions; phase
transitions in alloys; solid-solid phase transitions; spin dynamics.
Statistical Mechanics
Fick's law of diffusion; fractional statistics; hardsphere fluids; Langevin equation;
low-dimensional fluids; nonequilibrium statistical mechanics; recurrence relation method.
Strongly Correlated Quantum Systems
Bose-Einstein condensation; colossal magnetoresistance; Hubbard model; Luttinger liquid
theory; metal-insulator transitions; nonperturbative methods; quantum Hall effect;
superconductivity; vortex dynamics in quantum fluids.
Surface Physics
Crystal growth; molecule-surface interactions; surface structure and reactivity;
vibrational properties of molecules on surfaces.
Theoretical Materials Science
Density functional theory; electronic structure theory; high-pressure phenomena; periodic
composites and superlattices; structure and dynamics of lattice defects; theory of
compound solid solutions; transition-metal oxides.
There are numerous graduate students and postdocs working in condensed matter physics and statistical
mechanics.
Several people working in this area are also members of the Center for Simulational Physics.
The department offers several advanced graduate courses in condensed matter theory,
many-body theory, mathematical and computational methods, and statistical mechanics.
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