Past Dissertations
Physics Ph.D. Degrees - Summer 2021
Vyassa Baratham
Adviser: Michael DeWeese and Kristofer Bouchard
Constraining Ill-Posed Inverse Problems in Neural Electrophysiology via Biophysically Detailed Forward Simulation
Micah Brush
Adviser: Oskar Hallatschek and John Harte
Macroecological Patterns Out Of Steady State
Venkatesa Chandrasekaran
Adviser: Raphael Bousso
Classical and Quantum Aspects of Black Holes and Spacetime
Ahmet Coskuner
Adviser: Lawrence Hall and Kathryn Zurek
Dark Matter Detection Phenomenology
Siva Darbha
Adviser: Daniel Kasen
Signatures from Aspherical Kilonovae and Unconventional Tidal Disruption Events
Hannah Klion
Adviser: Eliot Quataert
Monte Carlo Radiation Transport Simulations of Asymmetric Neutron Star Mergers
Jonathan Liu
Adviser: Hernan Garcia
Investigating the Dynamics of Non-Equilibrium Behavior in Eukaryotic Transcriptional Regulation
Stephen Martis
Adviser: Oskar Hallatschek
Eco-evolutionary dynamics in high dimensions
Christopher Mogni
Adviser: Petr Horava
Quantum Gravity Beyond Equilibrium
Stephen Randall
Adviser: Petr Horava
Topological Quantum Gravity of the Ricci Flow
Pratik Sachdeva
Adviser: Michael DeWeese and Kristofer Bouchard
The impact of correlated variability on models of neural coding
Tianrui Xu
Adviser: Joel Moore
Quantum Dynamics of Correlated Fermions In- and Out-of-Equilibrium
Physics Ph.D. Degrees - Spring 2021
Da An
Adviser: Hartmut Haeffner
Electric-field noise scaling and wire-mediated coupling of remote ions in a novel elevator surface trap
Niladri Chatterji
Adviser: Peter Bartlett and Michael DeWeese
Why do Gradient Methods Work in Optimization and Sampling?
Trevor Grand Pre
Adviser: David Limmer and Oskar Hallatschek
A large deviation framework for interacting systems far from equilibrium
John Groh
Adviser: Adrian Lee
Design and Deployment of the Simons Array Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization Instrument
Yen-ta Huang
Adviser: Dung-Hai Lee
Regularizability and bosonization of relativistic massless fermion
Samuel Kohn
Adviser: Kam-Biu Luk
Measurement of the Neutrino Mixing Angle theta13 Using Neutron Capture on Hydrogen at the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment
Jacob Leedom
Adviser: Mary Gaillard
Topics in Axions, Supergravity, and the String Swampland
William Livingston
Adviser: Irfan Siddiqi
Continuous Feedback on Quantum Superconducting Circuits
Margaret McCarter
Adviser: Ramamoorthy Ramesh
Synchrotron-based Techniques for Studying Emergent Phenomena in Complex Oxide Heterostructures
William Patrick McCormack III
Adviser: Marjorie Shapiro and Maurice Garcia-Sciveres
Observation and measurement of photon-induced WW production in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 13 TeV using the ATLAS detector
Benjamin Stahl
Adviser: Alexei Filippenko and Daniel Kasen
Trash to Treasure: Extracting Cosmological Utility from Sparsely Observed Type Ia Supernovae
Sophie Weber
Adviser: Jeffrey Neaton
Prediction and Understanding of Functional Topological and Spintronic Materials from First Principles
Fangzhou Zhao
Adviser: Steven Louie
Topological Electronic Properties and Optical Properties of Graphene Nanoribbons and Carbon Conjugated Systems
Physics Ph.D. Degrees - Fall 2020
Samantha Dixon
Adviser: Saul Perlmutter
Using Empirical Models of Type Ia Supernovae to Prepare for Next-Generation Cosmological Measurements
Jeffrey Epstein
Adviser: Kranthi Kiran Mandadapu and Oskar Hallatschek
Statistical Mechanics and Hydrodynamics of Active Fluids
Justin Gerber
Adviser: Dan Stamper-Kurn
Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics with a Locally Addressable Quantum Gas
Charles Hill
Adviser: Adrian Lee
Sensitivity Simulations and Half-wave Plate Polarization Modulators for Cosmic Microwave Background Observatories
Robert Kealhofer
Adviser: James Analitis
Paths to interacting topological semimetals
Tsz Him Leung
Adviser: Dan Stamper-Kurn
Interacting Ultracold Bosonic Atoms in Geometrically Frustrated Lattices
Sylvia Lewin
Adviser: James Analitis
Symmetry-specific probes of strongly correlated materials: Angle-dependent magnetoresistance and resonant ultrasound spectroscopy
Chiu-Yun Lin
Adviser: Alessandra Lanzara
Symmetry-Controlled Spin Entanglement in Quantum Materials
Tairu Lyu
Adviser: Feng Wang
Dirac Fluid Physics in Monolayer Graphene
Thomas Mittiga
Adviser: Norman Yao
Sensing the local charge and strain environments surrounding Nitrogen-Vacancy centers in diamond
Meng Wu
Adviser: Steven Louie
Spin-Orbit Coupling, Broken Time-Reversal Symmetry, and Polarizability Self-Consistency in GW and GW-BSE Theory with Applications to Two-Dimensional Materials
Victoria Xu
Adviser: Holger Mueller
Lattice atom interferometry in an optical cavity
Song Zhang
Adviser: Irfan Siddiqi and K Whaley
Measurement-based quantum feedback controls for quantum computation
Weicheng Zhong
Adviser: Holger Mueller
Precision measurement of the fine-structure constant with atom interferometry
Physics Ph.D. Degrees - Summer 2020
William Berdanier
Adviser: Joel Moore
Universality in Non-Equilibrium Quantum Systems
Vir Bulchandani
Adviser: Joel Moore
Hydrodynamics of Integrable and Near-Integrable Quantum Systems
Yi Chen
Adviser: Michael Crommie
Many-Body Ground States in Single-Layer Transition Metal Dichalcogenides
Elizabeth Hanson
Adviser: Stuart Bale
Multi-Spacecraft Observations of Collisionless Shocks in the Heliosphere
John Mark Kreikebaum
Adviser: Irfan Siddiqi
Superconducting Qubit Enabled Single Microwave Photon Detection
Robert Mcgehee
Adviser: Hitoshi Murayama
Discoverable Matter: an Optimist’s View of Dark Matter and How to Find It
Chirag Modi
Adviser: Uros Seljak
Reconstruction of Cosmological Fields in Forward Model Framework
Daniel Parker
Adviser: Joel Moore
Local Operators and Quantum Chaos
Pratik Rath
Adviser: Yasunori Nomura
Aspects of Holography And Quantum Error Correction
Arvin Shahbazi Moghaddam
Adviser: Raphael Bousso
Aspects of Generalized Entropy And Quantum Null Energy Condition
Adam Stooke
Adviser: Pieter Abbeel and Michael DeWeese
Advancements in Deep Reinforcement Learning: Algorithms and Implementations
Haoyu Sun
Adviser: Ori Ganor
Number Theory in 3d Gravity and from 4d Gauge Theory
Physics Ph.D. Degrees - Spring 2020
Simca Bouma
Adviser: Frances Hellman
Non-Collinear Magnetism and Magnetotransport in Amorphous Transition Metal-Germanium Thin Films
Thomas Darlington
Adviser: Feng Wang and Peter Schuck
Localization of Excitons due to Inhomogeneous Nanoscopic Strain in Monolayer Transition Metal Dichalcogenides investigated by nano-PL and nano-Raman Microscopies
Jennet Dickinson
Adviser: Marjorie Shapiro
ATLAS Measurements of the Higgs Boson Coupling to the Top Quark in the Higgs to Diphoton Decay Channel
Yasin Ezber
Adviser: Ahmet Yildiz
Dynein Harnesses Active Fluctuations of Microtubules for Faster Movement
Yuan Sheng Fang
Adviser: Michael DeWeese
Stochastic Analog Computation for Machine Learning
Ryan Janish
Adviser: Surjeet Rajendran and Lawrence Hall
Supernovae as Dark Matter Signals
Elpida Kitanidis
Adviser: Martin White
Cosmic Cartography: Mapping the Universe for Next-Generation Dark Energy Voyages
Arielle Little
Adviser: Joseph Orenstein
Symmetry-Sensitive Optical Probes of Quantum Antiferromagnets
Vijay Narayan
Adviser: Surjeet Rajendran and Lawrence Hall
New Frontiers for Physics Beyond the Standard Model
Jihwan Oh
Adviser: Ori Ganor
Line defects in 5d gauge theories
Abigail Polin
Adviser: Peter Nugent and Daniel Kasen
Pushing the Helium Envelope: Signatures of Normal and Unusual Supernovae from Sub-Chandrasekhar Mass White Dwarf Explosions
Christian Schmid
Adviser: Mina Aganagic
Little String Defects and Nilpotent Orbits
Sheng Wang
Adviser: Feng Wang
Probing Luttinger Liquid Plasmons in Single Walled Carbon Nanotubes
Physics Ph.D. Degrees - Fall 2019
Halleh Balch
Adviser: Feng Wang
Optical Investigations of Intermolecular Electron Dynamics in Low Dimensional Materials
Eric Copenhaver
Adviser: Holger Mueller
Tune-out measurement in lukewarm lithium with phase-patterned atom interferometry
Blagoje Djordjevic
Adviser: Stuart Bale and Carl Schroeder
Interaction of Higher-Order Laser Modes with Underdense Plasmas
Fang Fang
Adviser: Dan Stamper-Kurn
Explorations of spin excitations and dynamics in homonuclear and heteronuclear spin-1 atomic gases
Stephen Matthew Gilbert
Adviser: Alex Zettl
Two-Dimensional Boron Nitride and Related Materials: Synthesis, Vacancy Formation, and Applications for Nanopores and Nanomachines
Benjamin Horowitz
Adviser: Uros Seljak
Optimal Reconstruction of Cosmological Density Fields
Eric Hunter
Adviser: Joel Fajans
Cavity and Microwave Experiments on Electron Plasma
Sean Lourette
Adviser: Dmitry Budker
Magnetometry and Imaging with Nitrogen Vacancy Centers in Diamond
Stephanie Mack
Adviser: Jeffrey Neaton
Manipulating Materials: Electronic and Topological Properties of Chemically and Structurally Complex Materials
Nityan Nair
Adviser: James Analitis
An Exploration of Quantum Materials: From Topological Semimetals to Antiferromagnetic Memory
Chin Ong
Adviser: Steven Louie
Electronic and Optical Properties of Materials for Energy-Related Applications
Nicholas Salzetta
Adviser: Yasunori Nomura
Holography beyond AdS/CFT
Brian Shevitski
Adviser: Alex Zettl and Shaul Aloni
Hyperspectral Imaging and Machine Learning for Nanomaterials Characterization