Condensed matter physics is the study of the macroscopic properties of matter. Condensed matter theory seeks to use the well-established laws of microscopic physics to predict the collective and structural properties of large numbers of electrons, atoms or molecules. While the basic laws of motion of individual electrons, protons and neutrons are very simple, large numbers of such particles often display surprisingly complex phenomena. For materials as diverse as semiconductors, superconductors, or liquid crystals, considerable progress has been made in relating their bulk properties to those of their microscopic constituents.

Theoretical research at the University of Cincinnati in condensed matter physics is carried out in an interdepartmental group with members from both the Departments of Physics and Chemistry. The group has five faculty members listed below, along with several postdoctoral fellows and many graduate students. Our interests include supersolids, anomalous superconductivity, the properties of strongly correlated and disordered materials and nanostructures, the effects of disorder and confinement on Bose systems, and the unusual properties of mesoscopic systems. For more information, please see the links below. Applications from students seeking a Ph.D. degree in Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics are welcomed and support and fellowships are available, please see http://homepages.uc.edu/physics/grad/index.html .

Faculty Members of the Condensed Matter Theory Group

Multiple embedding scheme employed in the Multi-Scale Many-Body project.

Mark Jarrell : Prof. Jarrell's group studies the physics of strongly correlated electronic materials which include (high T_c) cuprate superconductors, rare-earth hydrides, heavy Fermion and magnetic materials, and lower dimensional nanoscale systems such as carbon nanotubes and DNA. In general, exact solutions of models of these systems are not possible, and attempts to use uncontrolled analytic techniques have met with limited success. However, in addition to the usual many-body techniques, Professor Jarrell has developed numerical techniques which combine numerical techniques such as quantum Monte Carlo with self-consistent schemes as a more reliable approach to the study of the dynamical properties of these systems. Professor Jarrell is funded by the NSF and DOE, and has 7 graduate students and 3 postdocs in his group.

Frank Pinski : Prof. Pinski is trying to extract the microscopic origin of chemical ordering or clustering in alloys composed of iron, nickel, copper, zinc or other transition metals. By calculating the response of the electrons to various types of orderings, Prof. Pinski is able to learn about the quantum- mechanical origin of the ordering or clustering tendencies. These studies rely heavily on large numeric calculations performed on large machines, such as the Cray at the Ohio Supercomputer Center.

Commensurate vs. incommensurate supersolid

Michael Ma :The main focus of Prof. Ma's research is in quantum disordered systems, strongly correlated systems, and quantum phase transitions. Recent work includes novel superfluid-insulator transitions, supersolidity, spintronics, transition metal oxides, and fermion quartet condensation.The main focus of Prof. Ma's research is in quantum disordered systems, strongly correlated systems, and quantum phase transitions. Recent work includes novel superfluid-insulator transitions, supersolidity, spintronics, transition metal oxides, and fermion quartet condensation

Oscillations of the variance of the number of levels on an energy interval for a particle in a rectangular box as a function of the interval width: theory (green), numerics (red), a simple ansatz with a single time scale (blue).

Slava Serota : Professor Serota's research focuses on Mesoscopic Physics and Quantum Chaos. Much of his recent effort involves study of level correlations in semiclassical energy spectra of size-quantized systems and orbital magnetism of mesoscopic metals. He is now involved, on theoretical side, with the single electron tunneling experiments by Prof. Andrei Kogan's group which uses Single-Electron Transistors -- specially fabricated semiconductor devices -- to trap small numbers of electrons in regions of space only several tens of nanometers in size and study the dynamic properties of their quantum states.

Tom Beck : Prof. Beck is a member of the Department of Chemistry with a joint appointment with Physics. He has significant overlap of interests with the Physics CMT group. He is developing new computational approaches for solving the Kohn-Sham equations in Density Functional Theory for electronic structure of condensed phases and quantum chemistry. Nonlinear multigrid techniques are utilized to accelerate the convergence to the ground state self consistent solution. Other projects include studies of electrostatic effects for complex molecular systems such as polyelectrolytes and proteins, and computer simulations of liquid interfaces and fluid phase equilibria using classical molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo methods. These techniques are also being applied to study ion-permeation through protein channels. Prof. Beck is funded by DOD (MURI) and NSF (MAST center), and his group is composed of both physics and chemistry students.