Condensed Matter Physics
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.
Researchers
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.
Recent Publications
Multiple virus detection

Yanjun Yang, Beibei Xu, Jackelyn Murray, James Haverstick, Xianyan Chen, Ralph A. Tripp, and Yiping Zhao, “Rapid and quantitative detection of respiratory viruses using surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy and machine learning,” Biosensors and Bioelectronics 217, 114721 (2022).
Plasmonic Hydrogen Sensors

Bin Ai, Yujing Sun, and Yiping Zhao, “Plasmonic Hydrogen Sensors,” Small, 2107882 (2022).
Highly Conductive Nanograting–Nanohole Structures with Tunable and Dual-Band Spectral Transparency

Yanfeng Wang, Inyoung Choi, Kaiyuan Zhang, Yanjun Yang, Shen Ao, Shen; Xiaotian Xue, Wangyang Fu, Zhengjun Zhang, and Yiping Zhao, “Highly conductive nanograting-nanohole structures with tunable and dual-band spectral transparency,” ACS Applied Electronic Materials 3, 3489–3500(2021).
Performance of Transparent Metallic Thin Films

Yanfeng Wang, Fei Yang, Zhengjun Zhang, and Yiping Zhao, “The performance of transparent metallic thin films,” J. Phys. Chem. C 125, 16334–16342 (2021).