Past Dissertations

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

Physics Ph.D. Degrees - Summer 2019

Christopher Akers 
Adviser: Raphael Bousso
Entanglement and Geometry 

Brian Amadio
Adviser: Marjorie Shapiro
A Search for New Physics in Multijet Final States of Pp Collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 13~TeV$ Using the ATLAS Detector at the Large Hadron Collider

Kyle Boone
Adviser: Saul Perlmutter
Improving Cosmological Distance Measurements with Type Ia Supernovae: From Pixels to Dark Energy

Steven Drapcho 
Adviser: Feng Wang
Optical Studies of Electron-Phonon Interactions in Two-Dimensional and One-Dimensional Materials

Emily Duffield 
Adviser: Marjorie Shapiro
Observation of the Electroweak Production of Two W Bosons with the Same Electric Charge in Association with Two Jets in Pp Collisions at Sqrt{s}=13 TeV with the ATLAS Detector

Neil Goeckner-wald
Adviser: Adrian Lee
A Measurement of the Degree Scale B-mode CMB Angular Power Spectrum from the Polarbear Experiment

Illan Halpern 
Adviser: Raphael Bousso
Information in, on, and from the Spacetime 

Adam Levine 
Adviser: Raphael Bousso
Energy and Entropy in Quantum Field Theories

Zhenglu Li
Adviser: Steven Louie 
Electron-Phonon Coupling from GW Perturbation Theory and Electronic and Magnetic Properties of Novel Two-Dimensional Materials

Leigh Martin 
Adviser: K. Birgitta Whaley and Irfan Siddiqi
Quantum feedback for measurement and control 

Sean O'Kelley 
Adviser: John Clarke
The Microstrip SQUID Amplier in the Axion Dark Matter eXperiment (ADMX)  

Ionut Dragos Potirniche
Adviser: Ehud Altman
Many-Body Quantum Dynamics and Non-Equilibrium Phases of Matter

Vinay Ramasesh 
Adviser: Irfan Siddiqi
Quantum Simulation with Superconducting Circuits

Sean Ressler 
Adviser: Eliot Quataert
Towards More Predictive Models of Galactic Center Accretion

Daniel Rizzo
Adviser: Michael Crommie
Tailoring the Local Electronic Structure of Bottom-Up-Synthesized Low-Dimensional Organic Nanostructures

Clio Sleator
Adviser: Steven Boggs and Stuart Bale
Measuring the polarization of compact objects with the Compton Spectrometer and Imager

Aaron Szasz
Adviser: Joel Moore
Transport and topology in strongly correlated two-dimensional systems, using techniques from one dimension

Alex Takeda
Adviser: Vivek Shende and Mina Aganagic
Developments in the mathematics of the A-model: constructing Calabi-Yau structures and stability conditions on target categories

Yuguang Tong
Adviser: Stuart Bale
Electron-Scale Processes in the Solar Wind and Magnetosphere

Physics Ph.D. Degrees - Spring 2019

Trevor Bowen
Adviser: Stuart Bale
Observational Signatures of Nonlinear Interactions in the Solar Wind 

Chien-I Chiang
Adviser: Hitoshi Murayama
The Accelerating Universe, the Landscape, and the Swampland 

Nicolas Ferland
Adviser: Christian Bauer and Lawrence Hall
Study of large electroweak logarithms at high energy in collider experiments

Trinity Joshi
Adviser: Michael Crommie
Local Probe Analysis of the Structural, Electronic, and Optical Properties of Nanomaterials

Benjamin Land 
Adviser: Gabriel Orebi Gann
Past, Present, and Future of Solar Neutrino Detection: SNO, SNO+, and Theia 

Ka Hei Leung
Adviser: Mary K Gaillard
On Super Heat Kernel and One Loop Divergence in Conformal Supergravity 

Zahra Pedramrazi
Adviser: Michael Crommie
Manipulating 1D Conduction Channels; from Molecular Geometry to 2D Topology 

Paul Riggins
Adviser: Surjeet Rajendran
New Probes of Axions and Ultra-Heavy Dark Matter

Niklas Roschewsky 
Adviser: Sayeef Salahuddin and Frances Hellman
Spin-Orbit Torques in Ferrimagnets and Topological Insulators 

Kelly Swanson
Adviser: Wim Leemans and Marjorie Shapiro
Injection and Plasma Waveguides for Multi-Stage Laser Plasma Acceleration

Erik Urban
Adviser: Hartmut Haeffner
Implementation of a Rotationally Symmetric Ring Ion Trap and Coherent Control of Rotational States

Physics Ph.D. Degrees - Fall 2018

Gregory Affeldt
Adviser: Alessandra Lanzara
Angle-resolved Photoemission Studies of a Doped Bilayer Iridate

Thomas Barter
Adviser: Dan Stamper-Kurn
Quantum Simulation of the Bose-Hubbard Model with Ultracold Atoms in Triangular Optical Superlattices

Sinan Can
Adviser: Ahmet Yildiz
The Mechanics of Dynein Stepping and Directionality

Ting Cao
Adviser: Steven Louie
Understanding and Controlling the Optical Properties of Quasi Two-Dimensional Materials

Eric Dodds
Adviser: Michael DeWeese
Statistical learning models of sensory processing and implications of biological constraints

Parker Fagrelius
Adviser: David Schlegel and Saul Perlmutter
Addressing Challenges on the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI)

Brendan Folie
Adviser: Naomi Ginsberg
Extremely Small and Incredibly Fast: Combining Spectroscopy and Microscopy to Reveal Local Excited State Dynamics in Disordered Semiconductors

Nicholas Harrington
Adviser: William Holzapfel
Constraints on Short Lived Signals at 150 GHz

Ian Hayes
Adviser: James Analytis
Extending the Strange Metal Phenomenology of High-Tc Superconductors With High Magnetic Fields

Matthew Jaffe
Adviser: Holger Mueller
Atom interferometry in an optical cavity

Katayun Kamdin
Adviser: Peter Sorensen and Daniel Mckinsey
A Search for Lightly Ionizing Particles in the LUX Detector and Research and Development For Future Liquid Xenon Time Projection Chambers

Eugene Kur
Adviser: Robert Littlejohn
Multisymplectic Geometry with Boundaries

Ramon Ruiz Ramos
Adviser: James Analytis
Study of three dimensional Kiatev Honeycomb materials

Eric Thewalt
Adviser: Joseph Orenstein
Mapping nematic order in BaFe2(As,P)2

Shudan Zhong
Adviser: Joel Moore
Linear and Nonlinear Electromagnetic Responses in Topological Semimetals