News of the group & department

• Sabbatical year (2022-2023) at the Theory Group of the Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, Université Paris-Saclay.
• Congratulations to Laura Tandy who completed her Master's thesis in the group (2023) on Clean superconducting-magnetic proximity systems in the presence of an electromagnetic field.
• Congratulations to Fanuel Mendez who completed his Master's thesis in the group (2023) on Determining the Effect of Applying an External Magnetic Field to Diffusive Superconducting-Magnetic Proximity Systems. Fanuel joined the Ph.D. program at Indiana University in Bloomington.
• Department chair time ended! The two terms as department chair ended in August 2022. I always considered administration work as a service to faculty and students and I enjoyed fulfilling that role. The pandemic has not made it easy at times, but our department stayed strong.
• Congratulations to Trevor Bowman who completed his Master's thesis in the group (2021) on the topic of pair correlations in a magnetic Josephson junction in the clean limit.
• Congratulations to Nicholas (Nick) Werner who was added to the 2021 Dean's List of University Scholars and Artists. Nick is also recipient of the 2020 Graduate Department Honors. He joined Haptic Software.
• Congratulations to Nicholas (Nick) Werner who completed his Master's thesis in the group (2021) on plasmons in twisted bilayer graphene.
• Congratulations to Christopher (Chris) Burgess who completed his Master's thesis in the group (2020) on the study the Coulomb interaction in stacked two-dimensional quantum materials using graph theory.
• New publication with long time colleagues we published a paper (2020) on latest developments on Phase separation and pairing fluctuations in oxide materials ( see publication )
• KITP scholar (2019-2021) The head of the group was selected as a KITP scholar in Santa Barbara, California.
• Congratulations to Renyu Wang who completed her Master's thesis in the group (2019) and is starting her PhD at the University of California, Riverside.
• Congratulations to Nicholas Werner for obtaining the competitive ORSP Summer Research Scholarship to work on bilayer graphene.
• Nicholas Werner joins the group to work on the electronic properties of multilayers of 2D materials. Nick worked as an undergraduate in the group during the summer 2017 but now joined the Master's program. Welcome!
• Congratulations to Alberto Garcia who was added to the CNSM dean's list of excellence. He joins the PhD program at The Ohio State University.
• The head of the group was awarded the CSULB President Award for Outstanding Faculty Achievement.

Read the news archive

Activities

Condensed Matter Theory is the field of Physics in which we develop theoretical models and offer predictions that can be tested experimentally to understand the properties of compounds found in the condensed form, solids in particular. The challenge is to develop an understanding of systems that involve an enormous number of particles (electrons and ions) and discuss how different states of matter (such as superconductivity, metallic, insulating, magnetic, ferroelectric, etc.) arise and coexist.

Our group presently works on two distinct topics: 1) Coexisting quantum phases in heterogeneous structures: We aim at understanding hybrid nanostructures where a superconductor is placed in proximity to an inhomogeneous magnetic material or other low-dimensional systems. We focus on the Josephson effect; 2) Electronic properties of graphene multilayers: Recently we worked on the plasmon spectrum of twisted bilayer graphene and on the description of the Coulomb interaction in layered materials using graph theory.
The group also had an activity on the crystallization of solids and its lognormal distribution. Refs. 12, 17, 18 and 20 are recommended for that topic.

Students are invited to participate in the research and gain valuable hands-on experience that often result in the publication of our results ( see our publication list.)

Faculty members in theoretical physics are developing a Computational Physics option.

Read more about our work

• © Andreas Bill
  CSU Long Beach