This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
This CAREER award is funded by the Division of Materials Research and the Physics Division. It supports theoretical and computational research and education on quantum-many body systems with a focus on ultracold atom systems with connections to materials, particularly strongly correlated materials.
With the experimental manipulation of cold atoms on optical lattices and control of interactions, models that have been studied in Condensed Matter Physics for their relevance to various complex materials may be engineered and tested. New quantum many-body states that have not been or cannot be realized in solid state systems have been obtained, and others are yet to be explored. The PI will investigate correlation effects in fermion-fermion and fermion-boson mixtures of cold atoms in optical lattices, and cold atoms in self-assembled lattices of dipolar molecules. Cooperative phenomena arising from interactions, dimensionality, and lattice geometry lead to rich phase diagrams for these quantum many-body systems. In this landscape of possible microscopic parameters that can be tuned, it is important to have systematic studies from which key physical principles governing quantum many-body systems can be obtained. This will have impact on our understanding of complex materials, and on our ability to design and engineer new quantum states of matter. This proposal also investigates non-equilibrium correlated quantum many body systems, such as sudden switching of interaction terms in the Hamiltonian. The current cold atom technology makes it feasible to create many-body Hamiltonians in which the parameters are time-dependent. A combination of analytical and computational methods will be employed to study the phase diagram of these complex systems, and a significant portion of this project involves development of new tools for the study of dynamics away from equilibrium, and for study in the strong coupling regime.
The educational component of this project focuses on the needs of the school districts surrounding the Inland Empire in Southern California, which has a high proportion of Hispanic, African American, and other underrepresented groups in its population. It utilizes resources provided by the University of California, Riverside and will be done in partnership with the university?s Academy of Learning through Partnerships for Higher Achievement Center. There is a need to improve science education at all K-12 levels, particularly in the field of physics. The PI will establish a bridge between UCR physics students and schools in the community, enriching the education of K-12 students and teachers, and providing an important professional development opportunity for University of California, Riverside students to improve their teaching, communication, and presentation skills. Broader impacts of this project also include training of graduate and undergraduate students in research, curriculum development, and retention of women graduate students. The intriguing physics of the ultracold and its inherently quantum nature engages the interest of scientists, students at all levels, and the general public alike. This award supports the development of an advanced undergraduate physics course on the physics of cold atoms, a Freshman Discovery Seminar Course on Bose-Einstein condensates and optical lattices, and a seminar presentation for the general public.
NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY This CAREER award is funded by the Division of Materials Research and the Physics Division. It supports theoretical and computational research and education to advance the theory of systems composed of many interacting particles. The theory has direct application to cold gases of atoms trapped in laser light to form regular crystalline arrays of atoms and to materials that contain electrons that interact strongly with each other. The research includes developing a potentially powerful but risky theoretical technique that may illuminate the enigmatic behavior of materials like high temperature superconductors which display superconductivity, a quantum mechanical state of matter that exhibits no resistance to the flow of electricity, at the highest temperatures of all known superconductors.
Crystals composed of cold atoms trapped in light offer a particularly promising experimental proving ground for theories of many interacting particles because interactions between atoms can be controlled in the experiments.
The educational component of this project focuses on the needs of the school districts surrounding the Inland Empire in Southern California, which has a high proportion of Hispanic, African American, and other underrepresented groups in its population. It utilizes resources provided by the University of California, Riverside and will be done in partnership with the university?s Academy of Learning through Partnerships for Higher Achievement Center. There is a need to improve science education at all K-12 levels, particularly in the field of physics. The PI will establish a bridge between UCR physics students and schools in the community, enriching the education of K-12 students and teachers, and providing an important professional development opportunity for University of California, Riverside students to improve their teaching, communication, and presentation skills. Broader impacts of this project also include training of graduate and undergraduate students in research, curriculum development, and retention of women graduate students. The intriguing physics of the ultracold and its inherently quantum nature engages the interest of scientists, students at all levels, and the general public alike. This award supports a Freshman Discovery Seminary and advanced undergraduate physics course as well as public outreach efforts that aim to convey the wonders of interacting systems cold atoms and their intriguing properties.
