Michael Geller

We invite new graduate students to learn about the many activities going on in our theoretical physics research group. We are currently working in two main areas, strongly correlated systems and nanomechanics. Strongly correlated systems is the study of condensed matter such as superconductors, superfluids, and quantum Hall systems, where the physical properties depend crucially on the many-body interaction between particles. Nanomechanics is an exciting new subfield of nanoscience and nanotechnology, where the mechanical, vibrational, and thermal properties of nanometer-scale solids are being studied. Part of our nanomechanics research is connected with the extremely hot subject of quantum computing. More detailed information about our group can be found at:

http://www.physast.uga.edu/~mgeller/group.htm

Students participating in this independent-study course will be given an overview of our activities, and then will choose some particular problem to think about and learn more about. This might be a problem we are already working on, one we plan to investigate in the near future, or something proposed by the independent-study student. Depending on the nature of the chosen problem, the student might simply read more about it or might start a small research project on it. Many of the things we do have significant computational components and are not too difficult for incoming students.