CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS - UCSD |
Condensed matter physics in the Department comprises a relatively large and very active group of researchers. The group supports approximately 60 students and 14 postdoctoral associates, and regularly hosts visiting faculty from all over the world. Interaction is quite strong within the group, as existing collaborative efforts and past projects readily attest. We hold lively and well-attended seminars, including both our usual weekly series as well as a biweekly brown bag lunch meeting which our postdocs organize and in which graduate students and postdocs from our groups speak about their recent work. We maintain many strong ties with researchers in other UCSD departments, at other universities, at both small and large industrial companies, and at national laboratories. There are two current NSF-funded joint efforts in condensed matter, one in highly correlated electron systems and the other in magnetism; each includes both theorists and experimentalists. Individual research programs are also strong and generally well funded, especially considering today's fiscal climate. There is some emphasis in the group on materials physics, but the overall focus of the group remains fairly broad, as discussed further below.
Theory |
The theorists in our group are Daniel Arovas , Massimiliano Di Ventra, Michael Fogler , Donald Fredkin , (also Biophysics), Jorge Hirsch , Terry Hwa (also Nonlinear Dynamics), Herbert Levine , (also Nonlinear Dynamics), Sam Liu (emeritus), Lu Sham , Harry Suhl (emeritus) and Congjun Wu . Current research interests include electronic and nonlinear optical properties of solids, quantum Hall effect, superconductivity, strong correlation effects in interacting electron systems, transport in disordered interacting systems, interplay of disorder and quantum/thermal fluctuations, classical and quantum magnetism, superfluity, liquid crystal physics, biophysical kinetics, pattern formation in nonequilibrium systems, and chaos.
Experiment |
The experimentalists are Dimitri Basov , Ami Berkowitz , Leonid Butov , Bob Dynes , John Goodkind , Brian Maple , Ivan Schuller , Shelly Schultz , Oleg Shpyrko, Sunil Sinha , Douglas E. Smith. Research is dedicated to a wide range of subjects in the general area of strongly correlated electron systems and quantum fluids and solids. Systems currently being explored include high temperature superconductors, various unusual magnetic materials, buckyballs, strongly correlated f-electron materials, materials in confined geometric configurations such as one dimensional wires, superlattices and nanocrystals, strong photon localization and photonic band structures, dynamics and micromagnetics of single domain ferroparticles, colossal magnetoresistance, and both solid and liquid helium. There is also active development of new forms of advanced instrumentation, including low temperature STM, scanning near-field optical microscopy, and micro/nano-calorimeters for thin film and biological samples. The research integrates sample preparation, quantitative structural analysis, and measurement of physical properties, allowing a tight feedback between understanding the physics of the novel phenomena being studied and the materials exhibiting the phenomena. Recent highlights of this program include Josephson tunneling studies of conventional and high temperature superconductors, observation of superlattice effects in the electronic structure of metallic superlattices, magnetically induced structural phase transitions, photosynthesis of superconductivity, discovery and characterization of several novel Kondo materials, observation of electron tunneling from the surface of liquid helium, dimensional cross-over effects in 1D and 2D metals, giant magnetoresistance in several types of materials, and measurement of magnetization reversal in individual sub-micron particles.
Post-doctoral Research Associates |
Graduate Students |
Visiting Faculty |