final project

Project Topics

Here is a list of possible topics for the final project. More challenging topics are marked with a *, not to scare you off but to indicate that I will be more inclined to discuss them with you in depth than is the norm (I'm happy to discuss any project, but some might need extra guidance to ensure a level playing field.) Email me to claim a topic and it will be noted here - topics that have been struck through have been claimed.

• Band theory: Wannier functions and their uses
• "Floquet theory": Bloch's theorem for time-periodic systems
• Chern insulators and the quantum anomalous Hall effect (theory + recent experiments) Laura Yu
• Kane-Mele model (without Rashba spin-orbit) Mingru Yang
• Landau levels in graphene Siyu Chen
• Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) and spin-charge separation in 1D
• "Fourier-space crystallography" and level degeneracies in crystals and quasicrystals Robert Taylor
• Polarons (quantitatively in d=1 only) Chaitanya Gadre
• Landauer formalism for ballistic conduction (see Datta's book) Christopher Addiego
• Plasmons Nicholas Beier
• NMR relaxation and Knight shift measurements in solids Kevin Ly
• Quasicrystals, theory and experiment Timothy Steeves
• Basic Kondo physics and heavy fermions Brian Casas
• *Landau's Fermi liquid theory Michael Waterbury
• Basics of magnetism: ferromagnets/antiferromagnets. Sasha Perebikovsky
• *Soliton excitations in polyacetylene (connected to the Peierls' transition discussed in class)
• *Spin-orbit coupled semiconductor thin films: Rashba dispersion and persistent spin helix Likun Wang
• *Hopping conduction in disordered systems and Mott's argument for "variable-range hopping" Yang Jiao
• Density functional Theory Daniel Mickelson
• *Basic physics of interacting electrons: the Hubbard model, its reduction to the Heisenberg model in the strong-interaction limit, the t-J model; the Mott metal-insulator transition. Randy Sawaya

Guidelines

• Write-ups should be 4-5 pages in a "Letter style" two-column journal format. The preferred way to do this is to use LaTeX in conjunction with the American Physical Society's RevTeX package. I will post a sample LaTeX file for an article here, closer to the date.
• Write-ups should be serious technical documents: include equations, figures, and references. They should require you to go into the subject in some depth (beyond Wikipedia!)
• Please submit your write-ups in PDF form, with all figures in the main text.
• Presentations will last 8 minutes + 2 minutes for questions/discussion - just a little bit shorter than an APS meeting contributed talk. I will ask you to email me a PDF version of your slides 24 hours before the presentation date, and put them all on one laptop for efficiency.
• Write-ups and talks will be posted on this website unless you have an objection.
• You might find it useful to consult one of the field's master pedagogues, David Mermin, for advice: see What's wrong with these equations? and What's wrong with those talks?