Shipping Address:
Department of Physics
217 Prospect Street
New Haven, CT 06511-8499
Mailing Address:
P.O. Box 208120
New Haven, CT 06520-8120
Tel: 203-432-3650
Fax: 203-432-6175
Alumni List
Graduate Alumni List
This page was created in September 2012 and will be added to as information comes in. If you received a physics degree from Yale, we would love to hear from you. Please send your information to Sandra.tranquilli@yale.edu.
 Christopher Gilbreth |
Ph.D., Yale University Ultracold Fermi Gases: Effective Interactions and Superfluidity Cold atomic Fermi gases are clean, highly experimentally tunable systems with connections to many different fields of physics. However, in the strongly-interacting regime they are nonperturbative and difficult to study theoretically. One challenge is to calculate the energy spectra of few-body cold atom systems along the crossover from a gas described by a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) to a gas described by Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory. The configuration-interaction (CI) method is... Thesis Adviser: Yoram Alhassid Theoretical Nuclear Physics |
 Matthew Phillips |
Ph.D., Yale University Sensory Processing in the Olfactory Bulb: From Lateral Inhibition to Behavior Sensory perception is the fundamental process by which all organisms gain knowledge of their world. Perceptions arise from stimulations of sensory receptors that are translated into neuronal signals. These signals become processed and refined greatly before reaching conscious awareness in higher brain areas. Understanding the mechanisms and functions of this processing is a significant and major challenge for science. The use of model systems, such as the mammalian olfactory system, is... Thesis Adviser: Gordon M. Shepherd Biological Physics |
 Hasuk (Francis) Song |
Ph.D., Yale University Entanglement in Quantum Many-Body Systems The scaling of entanglement entropy and, more recently, the full entanglement spectrum have become useful tools for characterizing certain universal features of quantum many-body systems. We motivate the importance of entanglement in the study of many-body systems by considering the “gratuitously big” size of Hilbert space and the need for generic ansatzes that efficiently represent useful wave functions. In addition, we study the scaling of the entanglement entropy in the two-dimensional spin-... Thesis Adviser: Karyn Le Hur Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics |
 Steven Eckel |
Ph.D., Yale University A Search for the Electron EDM using Europium-Barium Titanates The discovery of a permanent electric dipole moment (EDM) of a fundamental particle would prove a great discovery in modern physics, as such an EDM would violate some of the core symmetries of the fundamental forces of nature. Many models that go beyond the standard model of particle physics produce EDMs with magnitudes approaching the level detectable by the next generation of experiments. One possibility for such an experiment involves the use of a solid sample at low temperatures. In a... Thesis Adviser: Steve Lamoreaux Atomic Physics |
 Hanghui Chen |
Ph.D., Yale University A first principles study of oxide interfaces Both theoretically and experimentally, enormous progress has been made toward understanding and controlling materials at the atomic scales. The advances in thin film deposition techniques make it possible to grow artificially designed heterostructures that do not exist in nature. The theoretical developments of ab initio calculations combined with the rapid increase of computational capability enable scientists to analyse data, make predictions and even design experiments from numerical... Thesis Adviser: Sohrab Ismail-Beigi Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics |
 Benjamin Kaplan |
Ph.D., Yale University Testing the Standard Model of Particle Physics: A Search for New Phenomena in Multilepton Events with the ATLAS detector at the LHC An excess of events over the Standard Model predictions in final states with three or more high momentum charged leptons would constitute evidence of new physical processes. Presented is a generic search for new phenomena in such events. To reduce the largest Standard Model backgrounds, events consistent with the production of a Z boson are rejected. Events are selected from 1.02 fb$^{-1}$ of proton-proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS detector at $\sqrt{s}$ = 7 TeV. There is no... Thesis Adviser: Paul L. Tipton Experimental Particle Physics |
 Sarah Lockwitz |
Ph.D., Yale University A Search for the Standard Model Higgs Boson in CDF II Data This dissertation presents a search for the standard model Higgs boson in the associated production process proton anti-proton to ZH to electron positron b quark anti-b quark. Data amounting to an integrated luminosity of 7.5/fb at a center of mass energy of 1.96 TeV collected at the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) at the Tevatron are analyzed. Two objectives are pursued in the methods applied: maximize acceptance, and distinguish the signal from background. The first aim is met by applying... Thesis Adviser: Paul Tipton Experimental Particle Physics |
 Carl Schreck |
Ph.D., Yale University Mechanical and vibrational properties of model granular media This thesis describes comprehensive computational and theoretical studies of the mechanical and vibrational properties of athermal particulate systems, such as granular media, foams, and emulsions, modeled as frictionless particles with spherical or ellipsoidal shapes. First, we investigate the mechanical properties of static packings of ellipsoidal particles. While amorphous packings of spherical particles are isostatic at jamming onset and possess the minimum contact number $z=z_{\rm iso... Thesis Adviser: Corey O'Hern Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics |
 Andrew Jayich |
Ph.D., Yale University Laser cooling a 261 kHz harmonic oscillator Optomechanics is a diverse field where mechanical harmonic oscillators are coupled to an optical field via radiation pressure. The mechanical devices range from atom clouds and nanotubes up to the kilogram scale mirrors used in the LIGO observatories. The starting point for many interesting measurements begins with the mechanical device in its ground state, where it has less than a phonon worth of energy. In Jack Harris's lab we are working to cool a mechanical membrane to its ground state... Thesis Adviser: Jack Harris Atomic Physics |
 Vladimir Manucharyan |
Ph.D., Yale University Superinductance: a New Element for Quantum Circuits We harness the phenomenon of kinetic inductance of a superconductor for the purposes of quantum information processing with superconducting circuits. In this work, the kinetic inductance of an array of Josephson tunnel junctions with carefully chosen parameters exceeds its geometric (magnetic) inductance by four orders of magnitude. Such an inductance can be used to construct electrical circuits in which quantum electrodynamics of charges and fluxes is governed by an e ective ne structure... Thesis Adviser: Michel Devoret Experimental Condensed Matter Physics |
 Benjamin Zwickl |
Ph.D., Yale University Progress Toward Observation of Radiation Pressure Shot Noise It has been over 100 years since the first conclusive demonstration of radiation pressure by Lebedev and Nichols and Hull. Cavity optomechanical systems---high finesse optical cavities coupled to mechanical resonators---are good testing grounds for the mechanical properties of light. The system described in this dissertation is a 7 mm long cavity coupled to a 1 mm square, 50 nm thick silicon nitride membrane. Like many similar optomechanical systems, ranging from LIGO to microtoroids, this work... Thesis Adviser: Jack Harris Atomic Physics |
Copyright © 2013 Yale University. All rights reserved.
Department Chair: C. Meg Urry