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Faculty:
R. Kulkarni;
K. Park;
M. J. F. Pleimling;
B. Schmittmann;
U. C. Täuber;
R. K. P. Zia
Emeriti Faculty:
C. D. Williams
Research Associates:
A. Angel;
S. Banik;
S. Barraza-Lopez;
I. Benczik;
V. Elgart
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Several undergraduate and graduate students work with Professors Schmittmann and Zia.
Back row, from left: Sam Gong, Mike Avery, Royce Zia, and David Adams;
front row, from left: Sayak Mukherjee, Beate Schmittmann, Jiajia Dong and Brian Skinner.
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Theoretical investigations of a wide range of physical, chemical, and biological systems are being carried out using both analytical and computational techniques. Our research interests range from complex systems, both near and driven far from thermal equilibrium, to nanoscience and biological physics, supporting fruitful interactions of faculty, postdoctoral associates and graduate students working in different areas of condensed matter theory.
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Prof. Schmittmann (left) working with a student.
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Broad research areas include phase transitions and critical phenomena in a variety of interacting many-body systems, population dynamics and random walk problems, driven diffusive systems, electronic, magnetic, optical and transport properties of semiconducting materials and heterostructures, molecular devices and biological systems.
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Current projects include universal properties and scaling behavior in magnetic and interacting particle systems, branching/annihilating random walks and percolation problems, reaction-diffusion systems and chemical reactions, population dynamics, fundamental properties of nonequilibrium steady states, traffic problems such as jam formation and coarsening dynamics, structural phase transitions, boson localization, vortex transport and flux pinning in superconductors, effective interactions between large (bio)molecules, spin dynamics for nanoparticles, electronic and vibrational properties of semiconducting clusters, magnetic, optical, and transport properties of magnetic molecules, related heterostructures and interfaces, regulatory networks in biological systems, and the theoretical modelling of protein production rates.
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Prof. Kulkarni (right) advising a student.
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Prof. Park (right) working with a student.
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Analytic techniques include classical Landau-Ginzburg theory as well as modern approaches such as coherent-state path-integrals and field theoretic renormalization group analysis. Computational methods include numerical solutions of Master and Langevin equations, Monte Carlo simulations of model systems, and first-principles approaches for ground state and transport problems within density functional theory. We have access to excellent computing facilities, such as the Physics Department's 66 node Thunderbird cluster, 60 node Tempest cluster, and Virginia Tech's terascale supercomputer, System X.
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Our work is naturally suited for interdisciplinary research. As a result, we have numerous collaborators, both in other departments at Virginia Tech and in research institutions - such as universities, industrial and government laboratories - around the world. The group runs an active seminar series which attracts high profile visitors from a variety of disciplines.
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Dr. Wu (left) and Prof. Zia (right)
discussing a research project.
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Drs. Angel (left) and Benczik (right)
working on computers.
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We are members of the following on-campus centers:
Research is supported by the National Science Foundation, Division of Materials Research, DMR-9419393, DMR-0075725, DMR-0088451, DMR-0308548, DMR-0405057, DMR-0414122.
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