what is thesis in physics

Andrea Idini

How to write a thesis in theoretical physics.

Your thesis is like your first love: it will be difficult to forget. In the end, it will represent your first serious and rigorous academic work, and this is no small thing. - U. Eco

A Thesis in theoretical physics

You visited an advisor and got a topic to work on in theoretical physics, congratulations! Now the only thing you are left to do is study; do the research; wrap it up and write it down. As for the Tools of the trade article, this list has a down-to-earth approach on providing a pragmatical look on tools and advice regarding your thesis. As in other articles I will be as general as possible and as specific as needed. I will describe my suggestions for doing a thesis in general -> in physics -> theoretical physics -> theoretical nuclear physics -> and my Lund group in particular. Both at undergraduate, graduate and PhD level.

There are entire libraries, websites, and initiatives dedicated to the craft of writing in general and academic writing in particular. Nice initiatives and tools on general writing are shut up and write , Hemingway App . There is also plenty of material to take inspiration regarding academic writing. Most interestingly, there is a whole 300-pager by Umberto Eco: “How to write a thesis” ( here you can read the review and excerpt). Online you can find the book if you wish but don’t waste precious thesis time (this post is already long more than enough). Keep in mind that Eco’s book was written in the context of Italian humanities where a thesis lasts easily more than a year of pure writing, therefore is more applicable to a PhD’s than an undergraduate’s thesis. Lund University (LU from now on) has its own resources on academic writing. There are courses, workshops and an interesting website .

Learning to have a strong academic writing is a lifelong endavour. It is not possible to master every process at any given stage of your studies. However, following advice and practicing you will become better and more confident on your writing.

Bibliographic Research

Textbook, journals and articles, bibliographic tools, programming, scope, tone, language, following up.

The thesis is the final academic document testifying some work required for the attainment of a degree. There are theses for bachelor, master students, licenciate, and PhD degrees. Theses are used even for some professional or professor habilitation in some countries and circumstances. Therefore, even though topics, length and depth might differ from thesis to thesis, they have always the same primary audiences: the people handing out the degree. In LU the B.Sc. and M.Sc. graduation theses are refereed by one or two external examiners. In our case, they are usually people in mathematical physics, that have experience in many-body systems but not necessary in your method of choice or nuclear physics.

When writing anything, the first thing to keep in mind is the reader. Like your examiners, other people that might read your thesis are knowledgeble of the field, but not of the argument. For example in our case, they will be your students colleagues that might need to pick up your work. That is, prospective physicists but not necessarely with a nuclear or theoretical physics background. You can give for granted that the reader knows what is a Lorentz transformation or quantum state, but you should not abuse field-specific jargon and use it without introduction. Every acronym, method and code must be introduced and referred to with references.

The use of references has to be strategic. Being the thesis an official document for the attainment of degree, it has to “stand on its own feet”. The reader from your target audience has to be able to read comfortably without need of constantly referring to the literature. Of course, you need to use references and literature, especially to provide plenty of examples and material to study in more depth. However, within reason, everything you use for your results needs to be introduced explicitly so that the content and context of your work is clear.

The work done for a thesis in physics is usually a work centered in research, either by critically reviewing previous research results or by developing original research guided by the supervisor. Bachelor and Master theses are 15, 30, or 60 credits, corresponding to 10, 20 or 40 weeks of full time work respectively. The goals are usually set by the supervisor, and the amout of supervision and independence will dependend on the specific project and adjusted according to performance.

Last and probably least, another consequence of being an official document it is that the thesis has often to adhere to some official or unofficial guidelines. Usually concerning length, structure, format and rarely content. For Lund physics department, you can find the guidelines here and here . Here is the checklist for registration of a Physics diploma work in LU. Pay particular attention to the learning outcomes.

The first thing when approaching thesis work, is to understand the scientific background and context to your work. This is done by reading articles and books suggested by the supervisor that are instrumental to the problem. Some articles are worth to read and understand in detail, others to skim to grasp the main concepts and results. Only experience can judge how much to devote to each article and how to read and understand effectively. It is not an exact science but an art that improves with experience.

Your thesis work is the opportunity to delve into the literature and start to gain this experience, picking the brain and experience of an expert supervisor, so make the most of it. Try to read academic literature every day. Read everything that you think is worth to cite and everything you will cite in your work. Read modern developments on journals and the arXiv of your field. It is not uncommon for a thesis work to review dozens and even few hundreds articles. The articles your supervisor cites you are only the starting point of a journey of understanding.

In the writing of your thesis, especially in the introduction you will need to refer to the literature, in order to point the reader providing context and pointers to concept and tools you used in your work. In the same way, scientists use references in articles, and often in books. Therefore, you can use the bibliography of the article you read as an important tool for your bibliographic research. You can follow citations in two ways:

• upstream, looking at an article references to understand on which other works is based,
• and downstream, looking at works that cited the said articles and use it for follow-up works.

This is crucial to understand the scientific foundation and impact of a work.

At LU a short training course is given in Language and Library .

There are different outlets of scientific publications. Textbooks are published by a publisher. Articles of different type get published by a journal. Topical journals are the traditional and always good way to read and update about new results in a field. The editorial collocation of an article is an indication about subject, novelty, and median impact of a publication. Unofficially and roughly they can be cathegorized in the following way.

• Textbooks: you encountered textbooks in your basic education. Academic textbooks are often more advanced but they are written to be a comprehensive, reliable, organized, and pedagogically useful treatment of an argument. There are few updated books in nuclear physics, in the later years the community is relying more and more on articles.
• Review papers: they are long overview of an argument published in a journal. More updated, limited and cutting-edge than a book, may contain new results. They are a good starting point to work on an argument, especially if books are not available. Journals publishing reviews are e.g. Review on Modern Physics and Reports on progress in physics
• Articles: these are the “standard” scientific publications, describing new results in as much detail as needed for understanding and reproduction. It is good practice to periodically read issues of the journal publishing articles in the field you want to be updated. For physics a good resources are the APS journals , in particular Physical Review C (shortened PRC) for nuclear physics and Physical Review E for many-body systems and non-linear phenomena. In these journals, some particularly interesting articles get featured on the homepage as editorial suggestions.
• Letters: these are short articles, to communicate particularly novel results and timely results that the community should take quick notice. For this reason, on average letters have higher impact and the selection is often stricter. Topical journals like PRC have “rapid communication” sections for letters. Letters are often targeted to a wider public of physicists and even scientists in general. Being featured in Physical Review Letters (shortened PRL), Nature and Science is an achievement for any physicist.

To organize the work of the bibliographic research and citation, apart from the quite important brain and internet, sometimes is useful to be helped by tools:

• Zotero to organize your article library.
• Scholar and web of science to find scientists, topics, articles and track citations.

Some people use Mendeley, but I don’t feel right endorsing bibliographic options owned by editorial companies.

This will probably be your first experience in original scientific work. Arguably, your objectives shoud be:

• To learn as much as possible.
• To do a good research job, that feeds into the primary objective.
• To present it properly. That is part of the learning outcomes for the diploma work.
• To think about the role of science and your work in business, society and in your future.

Here is the list of learning outcomes for the diploma work of B.Sc. and M.Sc. . These are no small technicalities, but set the expectation of the quality of your work required by not only LU, but the ministry of research and education. Be mindful of the responsability that the title you are applying for carries.

To organize the work according to these requirements, you have to coordinate with your supervisor. Set a timeline and schedule. Keep in mind that the most open and available of the supervisors is probabily a busy person, and has other duties to attend to and frequent trips. Be sure that he is available for any strict bureaucratic or work request you have from your project.

The time management is your responsability and to be open about duties and request you have is an important part of efficient project management and hence successfull work. Check the deadlines and appointments. According to the type of work and credits you have for the project (1 credit are 25-30 hours of work), the work load will be set accordingly and the supervisor will help you set realistic goals.

Some research requires coding to simulate and understand the physical system and formalism. The tools of the trade article can help you find some tools and resources. Regarding the context of the thesis work, one word of advice is to not trying to do it all. Choose few tools to perfect and focus on getting most done and be effective for your project.

To help the organization of the work and collaboration, it is sometimes efficient to use git. For this reason at the division of mathematical-physics we set up our own Gitlab server (not to be confused with the public gitlab.com). Focus the objectives and the structure the code accordingly.

It is good practice to use git as versioning system (not anymore v1, v2) and when you get the hang of it, it is convenient to use also for important documents, such as the thesis.

The tone and language of the thesis have to be gauged according the objective and the audience. The audience are your examiners, and your fellow students. You have to write for prospective students that need to understand the scientific context, have a good bibliography to start from, and a report of your results useful to reproduce and continue your work. Even more than usual, write only what you really know to be correct. Typos happen. Imprecise concepts, incorrect statements, wrong equations, will not help your reader, and therefore you.

Scientific writing has to be crisp and precise. Use short and clear phrases. Keep the grammar simple and exact. Choose your words precisely. The objective is first and foremost a dry, correct , and objective account of your research and results.

A modified version of George Orwell’s rules for writing can be used: > A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself […]: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? […] I think the following rules will cover most cases:

• Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print .
• Never use a long word where a short one will do.
• Without compromising precision , if it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
• Never use the passive where you can use the active. Use the first person singular, when is work you (and only you) have done. Use the first person plural to refer to the group or the community. Use “One” to refer to an eventual reader. Use the passive voice when needed, especially to refer to the work itself
• Never use a foreign phrase ~~, a scientific word, ~~ or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. Use the scientific words respecting their context and meaning
• Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous wrong .

In addition,

• Equations are part of a phrase, use punctuation when introducing (not : but ,) and after the equation (usually , or .)
• I cannot stress this enough: define everything you use. Every symbol and index in an equation, quantum number, content of a figure, axes of a plot… etc… Attach captions to figures and tables.
• Refer to equations as Eq. (*). Figures as Fig. *. Tables as Table *.
• Write, both thesis and code, for yourself of the future. When you will have forgotten what was that index in the third line of equation (7.24) about.

If you read as suggested, you will pick up the style of your discipline. Try to imitate it.

For more information, a short training course is given in LU regarding Language and Library .

Being the thesis an official document, it is extra important to respect official rules. One of the most relevant regards plagiarism. Literal quotes of other works have to be in quotes and properly referred. Not original figures have also to be cited, even when the copyright is available and free to use. Plagiarism is a serious offence, and can ruin careers and lives. LU has a zero-tolerance policy on plagiarism on diploma works, including self-plagiarism (copying one own’s work). To guarantee this, al thesis are passed through a plagiarism detection system called URKUND. Submit the thesis to URKUND few days in advance of the deadline.

The number of pages of a report varies enomoursly according to topic and originality. A research thesis requires less pages than a review one. At the Physics department of Lund a (somewhat) strict limit of pages for diploma works is in place:

• 15 credits B.Sc. report: 25 pages max;
• 30 credits M.Sc. report: 40 pages max;
• 60 credits M.Sc. report: 50 pages max.

This can work also as indicative size for similar works.

Other constrains might be in place, depending on your field, University and situation. Formalities such as cover page are often in place. Moreover, Lund’s physics department also imposes the sections that have to be present in a thesis.

The title of the thesis should illustrate the work you have done. There is no point in too general titles (“Nuclear physics”); too specific titles (“Study of 2+ states in rotational bands using HFBTHO code in the Praseodymium isotopic chain”) on the other hand discourage the reader that might be interested in more general concepts. As with many things related to writing, you will have to strike a balance. Let’s use the latter example to guide you through the process, considering you evaluate this to be your contribution. Your study might not only be interesting for people looking for 2+ states. For sure, if your study is in physics, the results should not depend on the code used. Hence, without loss of information, “Study of rotational bands in the Praseodymium isotopic chain” is definetely more useful for people that need to decide if your thesis deserves a second look.

When writing, you should always ask yourself what is needed here, why, and how is it possible to improve it. Especially for important sections like title and abstract.

The abstract is a short summary of few lines. It regards the premise, main method and results and conclusion of your work. A thesis summary is not much different from an article, therefore you have plenty of examples under your hand.

In the appendix of the diploma work are specified the necessary sections and content of a thesis.

If you allow me a kitchen metaphor, consider the thesis as a hamburger: the Introduction is the restaurant, table and plate; the Method the bottom bread; the Results the patty; the Conclusion the condiments; the Bibliography the top bun; the Appendix , code and other documentation your complementary fries and beverage.

Introduction

The introduction is the support and presentation for your work. It is needed to introduce your work and its scientific context. Use what you have read but don’t exagerate with background information. A thesis is not a textbook. The main objective of having context is to introduce the significance of your work. Why are you doing what you are doing, and how does this help the scientific community. One of your student colleagues should be able to be introduced to the topic, have the pointers to the literature needed to understand deeper, and be compelled to continue reading.

The method section is the foundation of your work. It is not strictly required by the syllabus and can eventually be merged with “results”. However, is good practice to keep them separate. Here you should introduced the techniques that will be used in the result section, in order to decrease the reliance of external reference material and make your thesis self-sufficient.

For example, Hartree-Fock method, or cellular automata, are examples of well-known techniques that might be needed to understand your work. A brief and to the point description of this well-known method will help the reader. But restrain yourself and describe only the methods which are most relevant to your work. Other background information should be referenced to literature. Remember the page limit and to preserve the sanity and disposition of advisors and examiners. Think that we have to read few of these theses in a week, and while we want to verify you understand, reading pages of well known irrelevant details does not put us in the mood for a positive evaluation.

The results section is where “the beef” is. The main content of your work, your original contribution. Here you use the methods introduced, within the scientific context explained in the introduction, to provide new insight into the topic of your thesis. Depending on the type of thesis, stage of studies, ambition, field, it can be radically different. The results section is the one most comparable to articles. Therefore, you should take inspiration from the literature on how to present your results.

Here more than ever you have to consider Orwell’s suggestion: ask yourself “What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer?”. Try to focus a message and think of the best way to convey it.

A common mistake is thinking of the thesis as a simple laboratory report, where you are tempted to list all your trials in chronological order. Introducing results chronologically might be an efficient strategy (often a thesis progresses in complexity and builds on previous results), but it is not always the best strategy. Focus on the scientific message, and select those results that are important to illustrate that message.

Conclusion and Outlook

The conclusion gives the flavour and aftertaste. What you want the reader to take away and remember? What are the discoveries you made in your work, and how do they fit with and contribute to our understanding?

Moreover, an outlook must also be provided. That is, suggesting possible avenues for continuing the journey you started. What should we do next? Why?

Bibliography

The good researched and redacted bibliography is an essential part of a text. It provides both motivation, context and possibility to investigate deeper. In good bibliographies you can find insightful texts and hidden gems. An expert examiner (or referee) can almost judge the quality of a work by only looking at the attached bibliography. The bibliography is a good marker of quality because is a marker of the intellectual “diet” of a person. The more varied, deep, sophisticated is the diet the higher quality the work will usually come to be. An intellectual is just as good as his/her reading list and scientists make no exception.

Curate your reading list and demonstrate good use of the bibliography. Readers will be grateful.

Appendix and others

Appendix is an additional part of the text. It is a good and sometimes necessary addition. Interesting derivations, ancillary results, additional content, can enrich the text and provide details for the not-so-average reader. In the main text you target the audience of examiner and fellow students, that need to understand the scientific contribution you made. The appendix will be reserved for the reader that want more details. The student that have to pick up the work. Someone that might want to implement something you derived. Who want to know the nitty gritty of your results in order to reproduce them.

Before my time, way back when dinosaur roamed the earth, codes used to be attached in the appendix. Today is not that useful to have a line-by-line printout of the code. It is way easier to provide a link to a public or semi-public repository (like the division’s gitlab ), and often codes are now too complicated to be printed out with ease. However, this is an excellent example of the content of an appendix: something perhaps not directly scientifically relevant, but informative for people that want to look closer and work it out for themselves.

As I described in the article Tools of the trade , physics and theoretical physics in particular use Latex for scientific writing. This comes from a general tendency to prefer opensource and Linux-based tools. Moreover, latex has the perfect equation typeset. To write Latex you can use whatever text editor, but I find Kile to be the easiest editor. Some people use Lyx or Overleaf .

Since the bibliography in a thesis is substantial, is useful to use the proper instrument to cite it. I suggest to use bibtex, since is the most automatic and complete way to reference literature in latex. You have to put bibtex references in a separate .bib file, and cite it with \cite{...} . Figures and equation can be labelled with \label{...} and \ref{...} . Here is a short introduction to Latex by A. Cottrell, and a short tutorial on overleaf.com .

When the thesis is done and delivered. You will have to present it (and sometimes defend it) in front of the examiners. This usually consists in a presentation, that in LU Physics consists in 30 minutes or less. If your thesis needs to have a clear scientific message, this is doubly true for the presentation. In a presentation everything needs to be purposefully presented with the objective of delivering a single, impactful, scientific message.

A good exercise is: think of you thesis, and summarize the conclusion in 10 simple words or less. Now question everything: “does this help me deliver this 10 word message?”. Build your presentation on this.

Reason by blocks: the single presentation needs to build up to a single message; the single slide needs to have a single message that helps the presentation; the single figure and text needs to convey a single message that helps the slide. You get the jist.

If you have to revolutionize the structure you use in your thesis, or cut out many results, so be it. A presentation have to be convincing and compelling, not a complete account of your work. In fact quite the opposite. In the most prestigious conferences often you have few minutes to summarise years of work.

Also in the presentation, the most important attribute is precision. Avoid touching subjects you are not sure of and employ a specific and correct vocabulary adequate for your subject.

It is fairly common that after the presentation, the examiners request some changes before agreeing on the final mark. Don’t be discouraged, scientific work and writing is a lifelong endavour and this is an excellent opportunity to polish your craft. Maybe your last opportunity to confront yourself with professionals in scientific writing.

If your work is particularly original and potentially impactful, your advisor can propose to publish it in a scientific journal. If that’s the case, you can use results, figures and paragraphs you have produced in the thesis. You will discuss with your supervisor the type of article and the style to adopt.

In most cases, substantial revision is needed, because the format of an article is quite different from a thesis. A scientific article has a lower degree of self-sufficiency and a higher reliance on external sources. For example, in your thesis you might need to define Hartree Fock, in an article is not necessary in most cases, since it is a well known method and can be referenced. This might imply also that the notation you used might need a revision.

In this case, your supervisor will guide you very closely. It is good practice to offer a first draft, revised as asked. This first draft will probably need extensive correction, but again this is common. Having a publication out of a thesis up to several factors not always under your control, but certainly does feel good to have a test of the scientific maturity you have reached in such a short amount of time, and definetly will help future PhD publications.

This concludes this guide. Don’t hesitate to contact me for more explanation and suggest modification. Sorry if it’s long, I did not have time to make it shorter. To compensate, you deserve a Seal of approval to have arrived here!

Nuclear Physics and other amenities

Constantly striving to disseminate science to wider audiences with questionable results

Department of Physics

PhD. Theses

Fpo pictures 2024.

Nicholas Quirk - FPO; Committee: Professors Phuan Ong, Biao Lian, and Lyman Page

Leander Thiele - FPO; Committee: Professors David Spergel, Jo Dunkley, and Lyman Page

Jingyao Wang- FPO; Committee: Professors Michael Romalis, Waseem Bakr, and (not pictured) Mariangela Lisanti

Remy Delva- FPO; Committee: Professors Jason Petta, David Huse, and Chris Tully

Saumya Shivam - FPO; Committee: Professors Shivaji Sondhi, Biao Lian and Frans Pretorius

Cheng-Li Chiu - FPO; Committee: Professors Ali Yazdani, Lawrence Cheuk, Sanfeng Wu, and Biao Lian

Charlie Guinn - FPO; Committee: Professors Andrew Houck, Lawrence Cheuk, and Sarang Gopalakrishnan

Kaiwen Zheng - FPO; Committee: Professors Suzanne Staggs, Jo Dunkley and Chris Tully

Stephanie Kwan - FPO; Committee: Professors Isobel Ojalvo, Mariangela Lisanti and Jim Olsen

Nicholas Haubrich - FPO; Committee: Professors Jim Olsen, Isobel Ojalvo, Mariangela Lisanti

Roman Kolevatov - FPO; Committee: Professors Lyman Page, Paul Steinhardt, Frans Pretorius, and Saptarshi Chaudhuri

Gillian Kopp - FPO; Committee: Professors Chris Tully, Isobel Ojalvo, Mariangela Lisanti, and Andrew Leifer

Zheyi Zhu - FPO; Committee: Professors Phuan Ong, Sanfeng Wu, and Silviu Pufu

Yuhan Wang- FPO; Committee: Professors Suzanne Staggs, Jo Dunkley, Isobel Ojalvo, and Lyman Page

Benjamin Spar - FPO; Committee: Professors Waseem Bakr, Lawrence Cheuk, and David Huse

Shuo Ma - FPO; Committee: Professors Jeffrey Thompson, Waseem Bakr, Lawrence Cheuk, and David Huse

Mike Onyszczak - FPO; Committee: Professors Sanfeng Wu, Phuan Ong, and Silviu Pufu

Maksim Litskevich - FPO; Committee: Professors Zahid Hasan, Saptarshi Chaudhuri and Sanfeng Wu

Wentao Fan - FPO; Committee: Professors Hakan Tureci, Jim Olsen, and Dima Abanin

PhD. Theses 2024

View past theses (2011 to present) in the Dataspace Catalog of Ph.D Theses in the Department of Physics

View past theses (1996 to present) in the ProQuest Database

How to Write Your Doctoral Thesis/Dissertation As a Physics Major

Full Chapter List - So You Want To Be A Physicist... Series

Part I: Early Physics Education in High schools Part II: Surviving the First Year of College Part III: Mathematical Preparations Part IV: The Life of a Physics Major Part V: Applying for Graduate School Part VI: What to Expect from Graduate School Before You Get There Part VII: The US Graduate School System Part VIII: Alternative Careers for a Physics Grad Part VIIIa: Entering Physics Graduate School From Another Major Part IX: First years of Graduate School from Being a TA to the Graduate Exams Part X: Choosing a Research area and an advisor Part XI: Initiating Research Work Part XII: Research work and The Lab Book Part XIII: Publishing in a Physics Journal Part XIV: Oral Presentations Part XIII: Publishing in a Physics Journal (Addendum) Part XIV: Oral Presentations – Addendum Part XV – Writing Your Doctoral Thesis/Dissertation Part XVI – Your Thesis Defense Part XVII – Getting a Job! Part XVIII – Postdoctoral Position Part XIX – Your Curriculum Vitae

At this stage, you have performed your doctoral research work, maybe even have published (or about to publish) a paper or two, and may have presented your work at a physics conference. It is time for you to think about finishing this part of your life. However, before you can do that, you have a couple more obstacles to get through – writing your thesis/dissertation and defending it. We will discuss the first one in this chapter.

You and your adviser should have narrowed down the main points that you will need to cover in your thesis. More often than not, you would have done more than you need during your graduate research work. It is not unusual that a graduate student has studied a number of different areas within his/her field of study, especially at the very beginning of his/her research work. However, it doesn’t mean that anything and everything needs to be included in the doctoral thesis. Your thesis must present a coherent research work that you have accomplished that no one else has done. So you and your adviser do need to be very clear on exactly what area should be included, and what shouldn’t. Chances are if you have published your work in a peer-reviewed journal, the area being covered by that paper would qualify as something that should be covered in your thesis.

Once you and your adviser have agreed on the general scope that should be in your thesis, it is time for you to organize your thoughts and figure out what to write. You should have plenty of practice already by now if you have published a few papers already. So all the advice on writing a paper applies here. Figure out the central points that you wish to convey and try to make your point as direct and as clear as possible. Note also that depending on your school’s requirement, you may have to explore the background of the issues/physics in general terms. This is because, in many schools, your thesis committee may comprise not just individuals who are familiar with your field of study, but also individuals from other fields or even other departments. So pay attention to what needs to be covered based on what kind of thesis committee that you will be facing.

When it comes to the actual writing process, this is where you will need (i) your institution’s thesis guidelines and (ii) copies of the thesis that have already been written. The first one should be available from the graduate school program at your school. Read it carefully. It will tell you a number of things you must follow, including (i) thesis formatting/typesetting requirement (ii) the format and order of the thesis (iii) thesis committee requirements. Pay attention to how your thesis should be written, especially in terms of figures(*), captions, bibliography format, section titles, etc. In some schools, they might even have a read-made template for you to use with your favorite word processor (or even Tex editor) that can make your life easier. Looking at older thesis from your department will give you specific examples of what can and cannot be done. Chances are, your adviser will give you examples of already-approved thesis, or you may even have been referring to one already. So look at all of those as guides. Do not relegate this as something trivial. Your thesis will be looked at by a thesis examiner, who can and will reject it if it does not conform to the format required, and thereby possibly delaying your graduation. Note also that in many schools, the graduate program often has a short briefing on those who intend to submit their thesis in that particular semester. This can be either a 1-hour class or an individual meeting with the thesis examiner. Make sure you attend this and be aware of what is required.

How long a thesis should be is highly subjective. I’ve seen advisers who don’t care how long it is, while others who don’t want it longer than, say 150 pages. I’d say that it should be as long as it needs to be. Don’t ramble on and on and turn it into War and Peace, but you also do not want it to be lacking in details, because these are the details that probably no one else has worked on.

As you are writing it, pay attention to the deadlines that your school has listed if you wish to graduate at the end of a particular year or semester. This is very important because missing it could mean that your graduation will be delayed. If you wish to graduate at the end of the semester, look at first and foremost, when your thesis is due for submission to the graduate program. Now work backward. Move that date two weeks earlier. Why? This is because you want to be sure that if there are unanticipated problems with your thesis, that there’s plenty of time to correct it. So that two-weeks-early date should be the latest you should hand it in. Note that this is your planned FINAL SUBMISSION. This should NOT be the first time you have shown your thesis to the thesis examiner. So you should plan on a meeting with the thesis examiner even earlier than this two-week-early date. For the sake of illustration, let’s put this like 4 weeks early than the final deadline. So 4 week’s before the graduate school’s published deadline, you should meet the thesis examiner for the very first examination of your thesis. There’s a very good chance that you will need to make modifications, hopefully, minor ones if you have paid close attention to the required format. This will give you two weeks left to make the correction and to make your final submission two weeks before the graduate school deadline. Confusing? Hopefully, not.

So it does mean that if you wish to have a completed form 4 weeks before the hard deadline, you need to already have done your thesis defense by then. This means you have incorporated comments you received during your thesis defense into your written thesis, AND have received final approval from all your thesis committee members [thesis defense process will be discussed in the next chapter]. This again takes time. This means that you should schedule your thesis defense at least 2 months before the graduate school’s hard deadline (I would even suggest a little longer). This will give you time to make changes, to send the corrected version to all the committee members, to allow for more changes, and then to get their approval. These things can be time-consuming, trust me!

So if you have to schedule your thesis defense 2 months before the hard deadline, then you should need to contact your thesis committee members before then to schedule your defense. Sometimes it can be a chore to get a suitable date, so plan ahead. It also means that you now have a good idea of when you should be done with the writing of your thesis! So pay attention to that date! It is the clearest indicator that, if you want to graduate at the end of that semester, you must be done writing by that date! Your thesis committee members will need to have your thesis in their hands at least a week before you can call for your defense. So if you work this backward again, you should have a good idea of the date where you should be all done. Knowing this, it will guide you on when you should start writing your thesis, and how fast you have to work to be done by that date.

Note that, depending on how involved your adviser wants to be, he or she may want to see the progress of your thesis as you are writing it. You may also want to consult with him/her along the way as you are progressing. This may save major revisions afterward especially if both you and your adviser don’t see eye-to-eye. Fine as this may be, you should always keep in mind that the thesis should be your own work and not expect your adviser or anyone else to write parts of it for you.

Hopefully, this guide will give you an idea of what to expect, especially on time management. The last thing you want to have is sleeping deprivation while writing your thesis simply because of things you haven’t anticipated, or you didn’t give yourself ample time.

(*) The issue of how figures can be displayed in a thesis can be a major headache. Most thesis requirements do not allow for color figures because your thesis will be sent to a service that will archive it as microfilm. This destroys all color effects. In some schools, they will allow you to make two versions of your thesis – one with a color figure that can be used as the distribution/department/library copies, while another for microfilm archive.

PhD Physics

Accelerator physics, photocathodes, field-enhancement. tunneling spectroscopy, superconductivity

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He corrected that spelling below. didn't you see "… writing your thesis/dessertation and defending it." It was a trifling mistake :-)

Desertation ?

"Desertation" is German for desertion. Interesting typo.

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Secondary Menu

• Dissertation

As you prepare your final master’s thesis or Ph.D. dissertation, it is vital that you follow all of The Graduate School’s policies and procedures to ensure that the publication of your research adheres to Duke University guidelines. Review the online dissertation guidelines.

Recent Dissertations

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Department of Physics

You are here, dissertation and completion, forming a dissertation committee, outside reader, dissertation defense, dissertation requirements.

• First Chapter

Reader Duties

Graduation checklist, continued research after graduation.

Access after Graduation

The Physics Department requires a 4-member Yale faculty committee plus an outside reader to approve a dissertation and defense for graduation. The core committee and DGS must approve the additional members prior to the student inviting the final faculty and outside reader to join their dissertation committee.

Typically, the Committee would include the members of the core thesis committee and one more faculty member. Two of the faculty members on the committee must have a primary or secondary appointment in physics, two must be from Yale, and two must be tenured. These requirements need not be satisfied by the same two people. A full list of faculty members can be found here . 

Usually, the make-up of the committee is as follows:

For students in an experimental field:

(1) Adviser and (2) another in the same experimental field; (3) another in the same field but theoretical; (4) another experimentalist (any field) and (5) approved outside reader

For students in a theoretical field:

(1) Adviser and (2) another in the same theoretical field; (3) another in the same field but experimental; (4) another theorist (any field) and (5) approved outside reader

The outside reader must be someone outside of Yale who has had no direct involvement with the student’s dissertation analysis, but who may be familiar with the student work and be someone who can be objective in their evaluation of the dissertation. The outside reader is usually selected by the student and their dissertation adviser and must be approved by the DGS. 

Dissertations should be sent electronically to outside readers and other committee members, prior to the defense, to provide ample time for readers to provide comments in a timely manner. Outside readers should be invited to the dissertation defense but their presence is not required.

Once the Dissertation Committee is chosen and approved by the DGS, it is the student’s responsibility to set the date, time, and place (online or in person) for the defense, at a time convenient to all members of the Committee. This information should be relayed to the graduate registrar and senior administrator via the Notification of Leave/Graduation form or directly through email. Copies of the dissertation should be given to the committee members at least two weeks in advance of the scheduled defense. 

The dissertation defense shall consist of two consecutive parts. The first part, which shall be open to anyone interested, will consist of an oral presentation of approximately one-hour in length, in the style of a research seminar. An announcement will appear in the weekly Seminar Notices. The second part will consist of detailed questioning of the candidate by the dissertation committee, at which attendance will be restricted to members of the committee.

Ideally, Dissertation Defenses should be scheduled before the University’s dissertation submission deadline to give committee readers time to review the dissertation, attend your defense and provide feedback before your official dissertation is submitted to the University.  Students must defend no later than November 1st or April 15th, one month after they defense dissertation has been submitted.  Please see the Graduation Checklist for deadlines and more detailed information below. 

The Graduate School has specific rules about formatting, etc. When you are preparing your final draft, you should consult their Dissertations page and Formatting Guide . Review the Dissertation section of Programs and Policies for the fine print about the dissertation process, reader committees, language requirements, and more. Sample LaTex templates can be found under the Department Forms section below. 

Dissertation First Chapter

The Physics Department recommends that the first chapter of the thesis be a succinct summary of the entire thesis, including in particular:

a brief review of the field prior to the thesis research to provide context

a presentation of the goals and motivations of the thesis research

a clear description of what the student has achieved in the thesis research (primarily written in the first person singular, but with due credit to others as appropriate). This description should refer back to (1) and clearly indicate the relation to prior work.

It may also make sense to add:

suggestions for how to best build upon the thesis research in future work.

Otherwise, these suggestions should appear in the conclusion of the thesis.

Submitting Your Dissertation

After the defense, the committee may ask the student to make some changes in the dissertation. These changes must be made before submission to the Graduate School. Alternatively, if you have already submitted your dissertation to the Dissertation office, you may replace single pages or chapters with minor edits. 

If major edits are required, the student will have two weeks to make the necessary revisions and have edits reviewed by their advisor before resubmission to the Graduate School. Your advisor will then have to send the dissertation office their approval of your revised dissertation. 

Submission guidelines are posted on-line at the Graduate School’s website: Dissertation Guidelines , Dissertation formatting , and Notification of Readers form . Remember to list your advisor as one of the 5 readers. Dissertations must be submitted to the Dissertation office by October 1st for December graduation or March 15th for May graduation.

Note: Students must be registered through the term of dissertation submission (unless they have already completed their sixth year).

Once a student is ready to submit their dissertation, they will enter their reader information into the NOR system. All five committee members’ information must be entered for DGS/ Registrar approval. The readers listed will receive a link from the Dissertation office giving them access to your submitted dissertation and asking them to complete the questions listed below within one month’s time but no later than the reader report deadline. The reader report deadline per graduation cycle is one month after the dissertation submission deadline.

These are the questions on the official Reader’s Report for the Graduate School of Yale University - 

1) Do you consider the substance of the dissertation acceptable for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy? If you found the dissertation acceptable, what is your estimate of the work as a whole?

2) Are there editorial errors (for example, problems with spelling, grammar, or references of such consequence or in insufficient number that they affect the substance of the dissertation and must be corrected before the faculty votes on this dissertation? If you answered yes, please list below the required changes (there is no limit to the length of your comments, text created in another document can also be copy/pasted below)

3) Please evaluate each of the following as Distinguished, Very Good, Good or Fair:

   a. Command of the literature of the subject

   b. Originality

   c. Insight and judgment

   d. Clearness

   e. Style

   f. Mastery of the method used in research

4) Without summarizing the dissertation, please state in detail the reason for your evaluation, indicating the strengths and weaknesses of the work and the way in which it makes an original contribution to its field (there is no limit to the length of your comments, text created in another document can also be copy/pasted below)

5) Dissertation Reader’s advice to the candidate (optional)

   a. Do you recommend eventual publication in print of part or all of this dissertation?

   b. If so, in what form?

      Articles:

         a. Which parts?

         b. What revision is needed?

      Book:

         What general suggestions for revision would you make?

If a reader requests edits to be made to your dissertation, the student must make the appropriate edits and receive their advisor’s approval of the edits before submitting an updated dissertation to the university.

Back to Top

Once a student is ready to graduate, there are departmental steps and university requirements to be followed by the dates listed below.

Due by February 15th for May Graduation or September 1st for December Graduation 

Complete the Notification of Leave/Graduation online form to notify the office of your defense date, your last day in the lab and your future contact information. Do not enter your current campus contact information unless you do not plan on moving for several months after graduation.

Students are responsible for scheduling a date, time and physical or virtual room location for their thesis defense. Please give your committee members adequate notice when trying to schedule your defense. Defense information can now be included in your Notification of Leave/Graduation form and will be announced in the weekly newsletter. 

With the assistance of your advisor, find an appropriate outside reader and submit their name and position to the DGS for approval.

Due by March 15th or October 1st

Provide the  Thesis Progress Report Form  to your dissertation committee members for signature during your defense. Forward your signed form(s) and a PDF copy of your Dissertation to the graduate registrar. See below for further Defense details.

Review and complete the Yale GSAS  Dissertation Submission Checklist .

Enter your reader information into the  Notification of Readers (NOR) portal, and notify the graduate registrar when done.

Submit your final dissertation to the Registrar’s Office. See above for further submission guidance. 

Due by April 15th or November 1st

• Students must complete their defense by April 15th for May graduation or November 1st for December graduation
• Reader reports are due one month after your dissertation is uploaded to NOR or by April 15th or November 1st

Prior to leaving

Schedule a 30-minute Exit Interview with the  Chair  or  DGS  to talk about your experience in the program. Sample Exit Interview Questions can be found here .

Update Notification of Leave/Graduation form with any new future employment or address changes.

Confirm last day of pay with the graduate registrar.

Notify the graduate registrar when you have returned your keys, coats, or other university provided equipment.

These deadlines have been established to allow sufficient time for readers to make careful evaluations and for the department to review those evaluations before making our recommendation to the Graduate School on degrees earned. No extensions of the deadlines will be granted. Dissertations submitted after the deadlines will be considered during the following term. 

Students are permitted to continue working as research assistants after they have graduated up to the start of a new academic semester. If the advisor is willing to continue their support, December graduates can be paid up to January 15th, and May graduates may continue to be paid until August 31st. It is important to note that student health insurance will end for December graduates on January 31st and July 31st for May graduates. The university does offer a one-month insurance rider for May Graduates requesting coverage for August.

IT Access after Graduation

After you graduate, your access to Yale accounts and information will change. Your Yale email account will stay active for a year, while other things, like VPN access will be removed six months after graduation. For a complete timeline of access changes, please see IT’s Graduating Students webpage .

Senior Thesis

Senior Theses must be submitted and approved by your advisor by the  last day of classes for the semester/term in which you need a grade for the thesis. Otherwise you can get a T grade until you complete it.

As a BS Physics or BS Physics & Astronomy major (not applied physics, though applied majors can do a thesis and take 498R or a capstone and take 492R), you are required to complete a senior thesis research project as part of your educational experience. You should start thinking about this experience early in your education. Here we've compiled answers to many of the questions that students ask about the senior thesis.

Why do I have to do a senior thesis?

Your work on a senior thesis is perhaps the closest thing to a "real-world" experience that you will have in college. Nobody solves textbook problems or takes exams for a living. Soon, others will judge you primarily by your creativity, initiative, and ability to obtain and communicate research results; your college grades will be superfluous. We designed the senior thesis requirement to prepare you for this new reality.

In your thesis, you will craft and define a problem (often with significant help from your advisor) which inevitably will be murky in the beginning. There will be no "answer at the back of the book" to lean on. You will have to find and explain the context for that problem, including a clear summary of the related works of others. You must justify why your research problem is worth pursuing. The research for a senior thesis will require initiative, imagination, and hard work to complete. Once completed, you will have the opportunity to develop a clear written description of your work and a coherent and concise argument for its conclusions.

You should know that the professors who made the senior thesis requirement added a significant burden to themselves by agreeing to mentor your research and edit your thesis. We are willing to do it because research and writing are essential to a successful career (even if you don't end up in physics), and they can only be mastered with practice.

How do I get started?

Read the first couple of chapters in these instructions for writing a senior thesis .  The document is formatted in the style of a senior thesis, and gives lots of good pointers for getting started on undergraduate research.

When should I start?

Get started right away. The most important first step is to get involved with a research group. Browse through the research opportunities listed on the research page and find something that interests you. Then contact the faculty member in charge of this research to see if they have space for you to join their group. Often faculty members have project ideas already thought of for you to work on. Usually there is a learning curve before you can do useful research, so you shouldn't expect to immediately start your senior thesis project. Join a group early so you can learn the ropes early in your program and have sufficient time and skills to complete a project that you find interesting.

What about an Honors thesis?

If you are working through the Honors Program, be aware that you can use the same thesis to satisfy the senior thesis requirement and the Honors thesis requirement. The research and writing process will be the same as for a regular senior thesis, but the Honors Program has a few additional requirements. Work with the Honors office to make sure you fulfill the honors requirements . You use the same formatting guidelines as the senior thesis for the Honors thesis, but you'll need to add a slightly different cover page. To fulfill the senior thesis requirement upload the thesis into the department online system. The only consideration here is that to fulfill the department requirement the honors thesis must have sufficient physics and astronomy material as determined by your advisor.

What is Phscs 498R?

You are required to take two credit hours of Phscs 498R to satisfy the senior thesis requirement. This course is the university's way of bookkeeping to make sure you finish your thesis before you graduate. There are no formal lectures or course materials for Phscs 498R (no class to attend), and you can register for the course any time during your research.  We recommend that you register for it during a semester when you are already paying full-time tuition so it won't cost you any extra money.  However, it can also be a convenient way to stay full-time without adding other classes.

To sign up for Phscs 498R please fill out this online form . For the senior thesis you may do research outside the department, but you must have a faculty member within the Department of Physics and Astronomy who will certify that there is a sufficient physics and/or astronomy content in the thesis to fulfill this requirement. You may sign-up for between 0.5-2 hours of Phscs 498R in a given semester, but you need to eventually take 2 total credits. If you need/want more credits than this for research, you can talk to your advisor about taking credits of 497R. Your 498R grade it based on your written document. You can earn a grade for research through 497R, though this is optional.

Your grade for Phscs 498R will be a "T" (which has no effect on your GPA) until you have submitted your final thesis. When you submit your final thesis a senior thesis coordinator will consult with your advisor and change the "T" to a normal letter grade reflecting your performance in the research and writing process. This is true for both Honors and Senior Theses.

How much work is involved?

This depends a lot on you, your advisor, and the project you choose. It's unrealistic to expect to complete a quality thesis in as little time as the minimum two credit hours of the 498R Senior Thesis requirement suggests. The research and writing typically take a few hundred hours (and students are often given financial support…see the student employment section). Talk in depth with your advisor to make sure you both have realistic expectations about the project.

Why so much focus on writing? This isn't English!

Good writing is foremost an exercise in clarity of thought. Everyone in physics at one time or another has experienced the frustration of being on the receiving end of a poor presentation, the natural result of insufficient attention paid to clear thought. No matter how well you understand physics and no matter how imaginative your research, if you cannot communicate your ideas clearly, they benefit no one. Good writing skills will be crucial in any career you choose. If you do not acquire them now, you will have to develop them later, most likely in an ad hoc fashion under embarrassing and unpleasant circumstances.

What is Physics 416?

Your senior thesis will probably be the most challenging writing that you do as an undergraduate. A thesis is much more involved than a final paper that you may write for other classes. The physics department has developed Physics 416 specifically to help you work through the thesis-writing process. We offer the course each Winter semester, and you need to have the research phase of your senior thesis essentially finished before you can enroll in the course. This class also fulfills the advanced writing requirement in GE, and will teach you many skills which will be directly useful in a physics career which are not covered in the general advanced writing classes.

Sometimes a student's research timetable doesn't lead to a finished result in time to allow participation in Physics 416. In these cases you can take the general advanced technical writing course through English (which is offered more frequently than Physics 416), and they will usually let you write a draft of your thesis as the final paper for the course. The following guide gives a good summary of how to write a senior thesis, which you should refer to whether taking Physics 416 or the general technical writing class:

• Instructions for writing a senior thesis

What format should I use for the written document?

The submitted PDF of your thesis will need to conform to the formatting standards illustrated by these sample documents:

• Minimal sample showing the format of a senior thesis
• Minimal sample showing the format of an honors thesis
• Thesis archive with many examples of theses

These example documents were created using the LaTeX typesetting system, and some of the instructions in the sample text are specific to that system. You may write the thesis using any software you choose, as long as you produce a correctly formatted PDF document for submission. LaTex may not be right for your thesis, but we recommend you at least take a look at the LaTex resources page to see what it is. We recommend that you discuss your choice of writing software with your advisor.

What is the deadline for submitting my thesis?

The deadline to submit your senior thesis to the department website (through the Submit a Thesis/Capstone link) and have it approved by your advisor is the last day of classes of the semester/term you need the grade in (for graduation) . You and your advisor need to be working on creating the final draft of your thesis before the last day of classes so that you can submit it and have your advisor approve it before the last day of classes. This deadline gives the coordinator enough time to review your document, possibly require you to make changes, and submit a grade before the grade submission deadline. If your senior thesis is doubling as an Honors thesis, please check with the Honors program as they have an earlier deadline.

How do I turn in my thesis?

• Complete research and be writing your thesis. The writing and revision process typically takes 40+ hours, so don't wait until the day before the final draft is due to start writing. The thesis should have gone through many revisions with your advisor before the first submission deadline.
• Create a PDF of your thesis that is less than 40 MB . A huge file size for a PDF usually comes from using raster images with very high resolution. You should use vector graphics or limit the resolution of your raster graphics to 600 dots per inch. If you don't want to limit your graphics size during the creation process, the student lab computers have Acrobat professional, which allows you to compress your PDF graphics appropriately via File -> Save As Other -> Optimized PDF...
• Before the first deadline listed above make all changes suggested by your advisor. Then upload your the latest version of the thesis using the electronic submission system .
• Work with your advisor to get them to electronically approve the thesis. Just having your thesis uploaded by the deadline is not enough. If the advisor doesn't grant their approval by the deadline, the thesis may not be considered for that semester's graduation.
• After your advisor approves your thesis, the department senior thesis coordinator will review it. You will likely receive a few corrections at this point. Make the corrections and upload the new PDF file into the electronic submission system . All changes requested by the research coordinator must be completed and approved before grades are due for that semester/term. Once again, if the approval is not completed by the deadline the thesis will not be processed for that semester's graduation.

Do I Need to Give an Oral Presentation?

A short oral presentation of your completed research project is strongly encouraged, but not required (a presentation is required for Honors theses).  For students graduating in April this requirement is most naturally satisfied by giving a 12-minute talk at the annual College Student Research Conference, usually held in March. Students can also arrange other times/locations with their faculty advisors.

Thesis Coordinators

The "Senior Thesis Coordinator" and the "Honors Coordinator" may be found on Advising .

How Will My Thesis be Graded?

You will initially receive a temporary T grade if your senior thesis is not completed during the term in which you registered for credit. Note that T grades do not count towards graduation (or to your GPA)! A letter grade, determined by the Thesis Coordinator in consultation with your project advisor/mentor, will only be assigned after the senior thesis is submitted in the Thesis/Capstone system and both the advisor and coordinator have reviewed it. A letter grade is required for graduation. The grading scale used to evaluate your senior thesis is as follows:

A-, A The student has completed a quality thesis.  The advisor is primarily responsible for deciding whether the thesis should receive this grade, although the Undergraduate Research Coordinator must agree. The thesis reflects on the advisor's reputation. It should be something that the advisor would be proud to show to an external reviewer.

B-, B, B+ The student has produced a significant written report on his or her research that falls short of a quality thesis. (A written report does not preclude the possibility of a lower grade if the quality of the research and/or writing is poor.) This grade range indicates a completed thesis that follows appropriate formatting guidelines, but is not a thesis the advisor feels should be considered a quality thesis.

C-, C, C+  The student has documented his or her research but failed to produce a thesis. This range of grade is justified for students who, for example, participate in the Spring Research Conference and who produce meaningful (and reasonably extensive) technical notes to be passed on to other students who continue the work.

D-, D, D+ The student has been involved in meaningful research, appropriate for the number of credit hours (i.e. 15 x 6 hrs = 90 hrs for 2 credits). However, the student has failed to produce a written report.

Your advisor and thesis coordinator will be using the following criteria in determining your grade.

• Conceptual understanding and explanations of the physics in the research topic is at the senior level of coursework
• Understanding and correct use of mathematical descriptions of the physics in the research topic is at the senior level of coursework.
• Good design of experimental, computational and/or theoretical approach
• Experimental, computational and/or theoretical skills appropriate for the research are demonstrated.
• Work was continued until a meaningful result was achieved
• Statistical significance of results is treated correctly.
• Significance of project is not exaggerated, and is demonstrated by its relation to previous work.
• Writing: clear and concise
• Writing: correct grammar, spelling
• Writing: appropriate style and tone
• Writing: credit and references given for work of others
• Graphics are clear and appropriate

Can I Get a Bound Copy of My Thesis?

You can purchase a bound printed copy of your thesis if you want one for your personal collection, but this is not required. If you want a bound copy of the thesis, go to  printandmail.byu.edu/gradWorks/ to submit a .pdf of your thesis and order it for printing.  That web site will give you an estimate of the cost before you order.

Thesis Deadlines

When you start planning to write your thesis, pay particular attention to the deadlines for defending and depositing your thesis in order to meet a particular graduation date. Also, you must apply for the degree by a certain deadline in order to be included on the degree list. All deadlines and a useful checklist are posted on the Thesis Office website .

Writing Your Thesis

The Ph.D. degree in Physics certifies your ability to carry out independent research. An essential requirement for the degree is a written thesis describing an original reseach project in physics.

Format of the Thesis

While the content of the thesis is approved by your adviser and the thesis defense committee, the format of the thesis is regulated by the Graduate College. The Graduate College is located at 507 East Green Street, Suite #101. A complete set of instructions for preparing your thesis is available online. Please keep in mind that prior to depositing your thesis with the Graduate College, you must provide a PDF copy of the thesis to the Physics Department Graduate Office, so that the Departmental Format Approval can be completed.

You can find links to thesis templates here .

Acknowledgments

You must acknowledge the supporters of your thesis research (e.g. the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Department of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, etc. in your thesis). Some federal agencies, such as the NSF and DOE, require specific language and disclaimers in the acknowledgment. Check with your thesis adviser for the proper language. In addition, please consult information from the Graduate College Thesis Office regarding very important information on the use of previously copyrighted material, including how to request permission to reprint previously copyrighted material.

Your Thesis Defense

The thesis defense consists of an oral presentation by the student on the motivations for the proposed project, the methods used in the project, and the key results obtained and conclusions drawn in the research. Please keep two things in mind when writing your presentation: First, the presentation should be no more than about 30 minutes in length when given without questions . Committee member questions during the thesis exam typically lengthen the presentation considerably, and the ensuing discussions usually comprise the main body of the 1.5 – 2 hour. Second, the presentation should be written so that members of the thesis committee who are not expert in your subfield can understand the motivations for, methods used in, and results obtained in your project.

Suggestions for writing a ~30 minute scientific presentation appropriate for the thesis defense can be found on the Prelim/Final Defense Workshop site.

It is the candidate's responsibility to contact each member of his or her thesis committee and to schedule a date and two-hour time slot for the exam that all the committee members can attend. The Physics Graduate Office must be notified of the agreed-upon time at least three weeks in advance. It is also the student's responsibility to ensure that any needed A/V equipment is reserved and working properly in advance of the thesis examination. Most conference rooms do have overhead projectors kept in them, but if you need to reserve a portable projector, staff members in Room 213/233 Loomis and Room 38 Loomis can assist with reserving A/V equipment.

After Your Dissertation Defense

After your thesis defense, you should read the following important information regarding depositing your thesis and resigning your appointment: The End Game . It is also important to schedule an Exit Interview with the Grad Programs Associate Head to discuss the proper procedures for resigning your appointment and depositing your thesis with the Graduate College. Please schedule an appointment by contacting the Grad Programs Office.

Depositing Your Thesis

"Depositing your thesis" means submitting the thesis and other mandatory documents to the Graduate College Thesis Office. You will not receive your Ph.D. from the University of Illinois without complying with the detailed instructions for depositing your thesis located at http://www.grad.illinois.edu/thesis/submit .

Posting Your Thesis On-Line

The doctoral dissertation is a published work that announces research results, and the University of Illinois, like other Ph.D.-granting institutions, holds to the tradition that there is an obligation to make research available to other scholars. Every doctoral candidate is required to complete the ProQuest Microfilm Agreement form whereby certain rights are assigned to ProQuest.

In addition, the IDEALS (Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship) Database is located at https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/5131 .

If you have any questions about thesis requirements, consult the Physics Department Graduate Programs Office.

Graduate Admissions Contact

Lance Cooper Associate Head for Graduate Programs 227 Loomis Laboratory (217) 333-3645 [email protected]

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School of Physics

College of sciences, search form, thesis template for ph.d. students.

LaTeX Thesis template (zip):  Download Word Thesis template (docx): Download

Dear soon-to-to-be Physics PhD,

If you reading this file, you are getting ready to graduate and move on to the next stage of your life.

This folder contains LaTex thesis templates modified to fullfil the GT thesis format. The intended users are those who are already somewhat familiar with LaTex. We hope you will find this template useful.

If you are an MS Windows user, a free compiler "MikTex" is available on  http://www.miktex.org .

A useful Windows text editor "WinEdt" (shareware, not freeware) is available on  http://www.winedt.com .

The text file "GT graduation FAQ.txt," contains the answers to frequency asked questions. Please take a look at this first.

The pdf document, "lshort.pdf," is the "Not So Short Introduction to LaTex 2e."

The text file "GT Thesis Template FAQ.txt" contains a list of LaTex tricks and modifications for "gatech-thesis.cls" in order to fullfil the GT thesis format requirements. We have implemented these modifications for you and the modified .cls file is saved as "gatech-thesis-physics.cls".

The file "msc_sty.bst" is the bibliography style file, which is modified to conform with the citation format of Physical Review Letters.

The folder "gatech-thesis-physics" contains a "toy'' PhD thesis as an example. Inside this folder, the main control tex file is "thesis.tex". As practice, just compile this file again. If the compilation is successful, you are qualified to use this template and you may start to fill-in your thesis in this format.

Enjoy your thesis writing, and good luck!

Jiang Xiao (PhD 2006) Ming-Shien Chang (PhD 2006) Andrew Zangwill (Graduate Coordinator)

External Links

• GT Graduate Studies:  Theses and Dissertations Page
• GT Graudate Studies:  Thesis templates

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Home > Sciences and Arts > Dept. of Physics > Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Dept. of Physics Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Explore our collection of dissertations, master's theses and master's reports from the Department of Physics below.

Theses/Dissertations/Reports from 2024 2024

APPLICATIONS OF INDEPENDENT AND IDENTICALLY DISTRIBUTED (IID) RANDOM PROCESSES IN POLARIMETRY AND CLIMATOLOGY , Dan Kestner

DEPENDENCE OF ENERGY TRANSFER ON CURVATURE SIMILARITY IN COLLISIONS INVOLVING CURVED SHOCK FRONTS , Justin Cassell

Study of Particle Accelerators in the Universe with the HAWC Observatory , Rishi Babu

Theses/Dissertations/Reports from 2023 2023

An exploration of cloud droplet growth by condensation and collision-coalescence in a convection-cloud chamber , Jacob T. Kuntzleman

A Search for Compact Object Dark Matter in the Universe Utilizing Gravitational Millilensing of Gamma-ray Bursts , Oindabi Mukherjee

Fabrication and Optical Properties of Two-Dimensional Transition Metal Dichalcogenides , Manpreet Boora

Large cloud droplets and the initiation of ice by pressure fluctuations: Molecular simulations and airborne in-situ observations , Elise Rosky

On Examining Solvation and Dielectric Constants of Polar and Ionic Liquids using the Stockmayer Fluid Model , Cameron J. Shock

PHYSICAL, OPTICAL, AND CHEMICAL PROPERTIES OF LIGHT ABSORBING AEROSOLS AND THEIR CLIMATIC IMPACTS , Susan Mathai

STUDY OF ELECTRONIC AND MAGNETIC PROPERTIES OF BILAYER GRAPHENE NANOFLAKES AND BIMETALLIC CHALCOGENIDES USING FIRST-PRINCIPLES DENSITY FUNCTIONAL THEORY AND MACHINE LEARNING , Dharmendra Pant

SURFACE RECONSTRUCTION IN IRON GARNETS , Sushree Dash

Tracing the Most Powerful Galactic Cosmic-ray Accelerators with the HAWC Observatory , Dezhi Huang

Theses/Dissertations/Reports from 2022 2022

A Combined Spectral and Energy Morphology Analysis of Gamma Ray Source HAWC J2031+415 in the Cygnus Constellation , Ian Herzog

APPLICATION OF ARGON PRESSURE BROADENED RUBIDIUM VAPOR CELLS AS ULTRA-NARROW NOTCH FILTERS , Sam Groetsch

A SURROGATE MODEL OF MOLECULAR DYNAMICS SIMULATIONS FOR POLAR FLUIDS: SUPERVISED LEARNING METHODS FOR MOLECULAR POLARIZATION AND UNSUPERVISED METHODS FOR PHASE CLASSIFICATION , Zackerie W. Hjorth

BORON NITRIDE NANOSTRUCTURES: SYNTHESIS, CHARACTERIZATION, AND APPLICATION IN PHOTOVOLTAICS AND BIOMEDICINE , Sambhawana Sharma

Machine Learning-Driven Surrogate Models for Electrolytes , Tong Gao

OPTICAL AND SINGLE PARTICLE PROPERTIES OF NORTH ATLANTIC FREE TROPOSPHERIC AEROSOLS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR AEROSOL DIRECT RADIATIVE FORCING , Megan Morgenstern

PRELIMINARY STUDIES OF BACKGROUND REJECTION CAPABILITIES FOR THE SOUTHERN WIDE−FIELD GAMMA−RAY OBSERVATORY , Sonali Mohan

SEARCHING FOR ANOMALOUS EXTENSIVE AIR SHOWERS USING THE PIERRE AUGER OBSERVATORY FLUORESCENCE DETECTOR , Andrew Puyleart

THEORETICAL INVESTIGATION ON OPTICAL PROPERTIES OF 2D MATERIALS AND MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF POLYMER COMPOSITES AT MOLECULAR LEVEL , Geeta Sachdeva

THE VARIABILITY OF THE SATURATION RATIO IN CLOUDS , Jesse C. Anderson

TOWARD DEEP LEARNING EMULATORS FOR MODELING THE LARGE-SCALE STRUCTURE OF THE UNIVERSE , Neerav Kaushal

Theses/Dissertations/Reports from 2021 2021

A COMPUTATIONAL STUDY OF PROPERTIES OF CORE-SHELL NANOWIRE HETEROSTRUCTURES USING DENSITY FUNCTIONAL THEORY , Sandip Aryal

ACTIVATION SCAVENGING OF AEROSOL : EFFECT OF TURBULENCE AND AEROSOL-COMPOSITION , Abu Sayeed Md Shawon

APPLICATION OF GRAPHENE-BASED 2D MATERIALS AND EXPLORATION OF LITHIUM POLYSULFIDES SOLID PHASES – FIRST-PRINCIPLES STUDY BASED ON DENSITY FUNCTIONAL THEORY , Qing Guo

Control of spontaneous emission dynamics in microcavities with chiral exceptional surfaces , Amin Hashemi

Investigating ice nucleation at negative pressures using molecular dynamics: A first order approximation of the dependence of ice nucleation rate on pressure , Elise Rosky

Modeling and Numerical Simulations Of The Michigan Tech Convection Cloud Chamber , Subin Thomas

PHYSICOCHEMICAL PROPERTIES OF ATMOSPHERIC AEROSOLS AND THEIR EFFECT ON ICE CLOUD FORMATION , Nurun Nahar Lata

RADIAL BASIS FUNCTION METHOD FOR COMPUTATIONAL PHOTONICS , Seyed Mostafa Rezaei

UNDERSTANDING THE EFFECTS OF WATER VAPOR AND TEMPERATURE ON AEROSOL USING NOVEL MEASUREMENT METHODS , Tyler Jacob Capek

Van der Waals Quantum Dots: Synthesis, Characterization, and Applications , Amit Acharya

Theses/Dissertations/Reports from 2020 2020

Cosmic-Ray Acceleration in the Cygnus OB2 Stellar Association , Binita Hona

OPTICAL DISPERSION RELATIONS FROM THREE-DIMENSIONAL CHIRAL GOLD NANOCUBES IN PERIODIC ARRAYS , Manpreet Boora

Phase Resolved Analysis of Pulsar PSR J2032.2+4126 , Aishwarya Satyawan Dahiwale

Theses/Dissertations/Reports from 2019 2019

Aerosol-Cloud Interactions in Turbulent Clouds: A Combined Cloud Chamber and Theoretical Study , Kamal Kant Chandrakar

Energy Transfer Between Eu2+ and Mn2+ for Na(Sr,Ba)PO4 and Ba2Mg(BO3)2 , Kevin Bertschinger

INVESTIGATION OF LIGHT TRANSPORT AND SCATTERING IN TURBULENT CLOUDS: SIMULATIONS AND LABORATORY MEASUREMENTS , Corey D. Packard

Laser Induced Phase Transformations and Fluorescence Measurements from Nanodiamond Particles , Nick Videtich

Light-matter interactions in plasmonic arrays, two dimensional materials and their hybrid nanostructures , Jinlin Zhang

LIGHT PROPAGATION THROUGH A TURBULENT CLOUD: COMPARISON OF MEASURED AND COMPUTED EXTINCTION , Eduardo Rodriguez-feo Bermudez

LOCATION, ORBIT AND ENERGY OF A METEOROID IMPACTING THE MOON DURING THE LUNAR ECLIPSE OF JANUARY 21, 2019 & TESTING THE WEAK EQUIVALENCE PRINCIPLE WITH COSMOLOGICAL GAMMA RAY BURSTS , Matipon Tangmatitham

Physics and applications of exceptional points , Qi Zhong

Synthetic Saturable Absorber , Armin Kalita

The Solvation Energy of Ions in a Stockmayer Fluid , Cameron John Shock

UNDERSTANDING THE VERY HIGH ENERGY γ-RAY EMISSION FROM A FAST SPINNING NEUTRON STAR ENVIRONMENT , Chad A. Brisbois

Theses/Dissertations/Reports from 2018 2018

ANGLE-RESOLVED OPTICAL SPECTROSCOPY OF PLASMONIC RESONANCES , Aeshah Khudaysh M Muqri

Effects of Ionic Liquid on Lithium Dendrite Growth , Ziwei Qian

EFFECTS OF MASS AND DISTANCE UNCERTAINTIES ON CALCULATIONS OF FLUX FROM GIANT MOLECULAR CLOUDS , Matt Coel

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Current Atmospheric Refraction Models in Predicting Sunrise and Sunset Times , Teresa Wilson

FIRST-PRINCIPLES INVESTIGATION OF THE INTERFACIAL PROPERTIES OF BORON NITRIDE , Kevin Waters

Investigation of microphysical properties of laboratory and atmospheric clouds using digital in-line holography , Neel Desai

MAGNETLESS AND TOPOLOGICAL EDGE MODE-BASED ON-CHIP ISOLATORS AND SPIN-ORBIT COUPLING IN MAGNETO-OPTIC MEDIA , Dolendra Karki

MORPHOLOGY AND MIXING STATE OF SOOT AND TAR BALLS: IMPLICATIONS FOR OPTICAL PROPERTIES AND CLIMATE , Janarjan Bhandari

Novel Faraday Rotation Effects Observed In Ultra-Thin Iron Garnet Films , Brandon Blasiola

PROBING QUANTUM TRANSPORT IN THREE-TERMINAL NANOJUNCTIONS , Meghnath Jaishi

STUDY OF THE CYGNUS REGION WITH FERMI AND HAWC , Andrew Robare

Synthesis and Applications of One and Two-Dimensional Boron Nitride Based Nanomaterials , Shiva Bhandari

SYNTHESIS, CHARACTERIZATION, AND APPLICATION OF 2D TRANSITION METAL DICHALCOGENIDES , Mingxiao Ye

Theses/Dissertations/Reports from 2017 2017

CVD SYNTHESIS, PROCESSING, QUANTIFICATION, AND APPLICATIONS OF BORON NITRIDE NANOTUBES , Bishnu Tiwari

Gamma/Hadron Separation for the HAWC Observatory , Michael J. Gerhardt

LABORATORY, COMPUTATIONAL AND THEORETICAL INVESTIGATIONS OF ICE NUCLEATION AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR MIXED PHASE CLOUDS , Fan Yang

LABORATORY STUDIES OF THE INTERSTITIAL AEROSOL REMOVAL MECHANISMS IN A CLOUD CHAMBER , Sarita Karki

QUANTUM INSPIRED SYMMETRIES IN LASER ENGINEERING , Mohammad Hosain Teimourpour

Search for High-Energy Gamma Rays in the Northern Fermi Bubble Region with the HAWC Observatory , Hugo Alberto Ayala Solares

Synthetic Saturable Absorber Using Non-Uniform Jx Waveguide Array , Ashfiqur Rahman

The Intrinsic Variability of the Water Vapor Saturation Ratio Due to Mixing , Jesse Anderson

Theses/Dissertations/Reports from 2016 2016

FIRST-PRINCIPLES STUDIES OF GROUP IV AND GROUP V RELATED TWO DIMENSIONAL MATERIALS , Gaoxue Wang

INVESTIGATION OF THE RESISTANCE TO DEMAGNETIZATION IN BULK RARE-EARTH MAGNETS COMPRISED OF CRYSTALLOGRAPHICALLY-ALIGNED, SINGLE-DOMAIN CRYSTALLITES WITH MODIFIED INTERGRANULAR PHASE , Jie Li

LABORATORY MEASUREMENTS OF CONTACT NUCLEATION BY MINERAL DUSTS, BACTERIA, AND SOLUBLE SALTS , Joseph Niehaus

Studies of invisibility cloak based on structured dielectric artificial materials , Ran Duan

Testing Lidar-Radar Derived Drop Sizes Against In Situ Measurements , Mary Amanda Shaw

Reports/Theses/Dissertations from 2015 2015

A METHOD FOR DETERMINING THE MASS COMPOSITION OF ULTRA-HIGH ENERGY COSMIC RAYS BY PREDICTING THE DEPTH OF FIRST INTERACTION OF INDIVIDUAL EXTENSIVE AIR SHOWERS , Tolga Yapici

BARIUM CONCENTRATIONS IN ROCK SALT BY LASER INDUCED BREAKDOWN SPECTROSCOPY , Kiley J. Spirito

FUNCTIONALIZED BORON NITRIDE NANOTUBES FOR ELECTRONIC APPLICATIONS , Boyi Hao

GEOMETRY INDUCED MAGNETO-OPTIC EFFECTS IN LPE GROWN MAGNETIC GARNET FILMS , Ashim Chakravarty

LABORATORY AND FIELD INVESTIGATION OF MIXING, MORPHOLOGY AND OPTICAL PROPERTIES OF SOOT AND SECONDARY ORGANIC AEROSOLS , Noopur Sharma

MULTISCALE EXAMINATION AND MODELING OF ELECTRON TRANSPORT IN NANOSCALE MATERIALS AND DEVICES , Douglas R. Banyai

RELATIVISTIC CONFIGURATION INTERACTION CALCULATIONS OF THE ATOMIC PROPERTIES OF SELECTED TRANSITION METAL POSITIVE IONS; NI II, V II AND W II , Marwa Hefny Abdalmoneam

SEARCH FOR LONG-LIVED WEAKLY INTERACTING PARTICLES USING THE PIERRE AUGER OBSERVATORY , Niraj Dhital

Search for TeV Gamma-Ray Sources in the Galactic Plane with the HAWC Observatory , Hao Zhou

STUDY OF NON-RECIPROCAL DICHROISM IN PHOTONIC STRUCTURES , Anindya Majumdar

UNDERSTANDING ELECTRONIC STRUCTURE AND TRANSPORT PROPERTIES IN NANOSCALE JUNCTIONS , Kamal B. Dhungana

Reports/Theses/Dissertations from 2014 2014

A THEORETICAL STUDY OF INTERACTION OF NANOPARTICLES WITH BIOMOLECULE , Chunhui Liu

INVESTIGATING THE ROLE OF THE CONTACT LINE IN HETEROGENEOUS NUCLEATION WITH HIGH SPEED IMAGING , Colin Gurganus

MORPHOLOGY AND MIXING STATE OF ATMOSPHERIC PARTICLES: LINKS TO OPTICAL PROPERTIES AND CLOUD PROCESSING , Swarup China

QUANTUM CORRELATIONS OF LIGHTS IN MACROSCOPIC ENVIRONMENTS , Yong Meng Sua

THE THREE DIMENSIONAL SHAPE AND ROUGHNESS OF MINERAL DUST , Xinxin Woodward

Reports/Theses/Dissertations from 2013 2013

ADVENTURES IN FRIEDMANN COSMOLOGIES---INTERACTION OF POSITIVE ENERGY DENSITIES WITH NEGATIVE ENERGY DENSITIES AND CURVATURE OF THE UNIVERSE , Ravi Joshi

ELECTRON TRANSPORT IN LOW-DIMENSIONAL NANOSTRUCTURES - THEORETICAL STUDY WITH APPLICATION , Xiaoliang Zhong

Investigations of Cloud Microphysical Response to Mixing Using Digital Holography , Matthew Jacob Beals

MAGNETO-PHOTONIC CRYSTALS FOR OPTICAL SENSING APPLICATIONS , Neluka Dissanayake

NONLINEAR EFFECTS IN MAGNETIC GARNET FILMS AND NONRECIPROCAL OPTICAL BLOCH OSCILLATIONS IN WAVEGUIDE ARRAYS , Pradeep Kumar

OPTIMAL SHAPE IN ELECTROMAGNETIC SCATTERING BY SMALL ASPHERICAL PARTICLES , Ajaree Mongkolsittisilp

QUADRUPOLE LEVITATION OF PARTICLES IN A THERMODYNAMICALLY REALISTIC CLOUD ENVIRONMENT , Nicholas A. Black

STOCHASTIC CHARGE TRANSPORT IN MULTI-ISLAND SINGLE-ELECTRON TUNNELING DEVICES , Madhusudan A. Savaikar

Reports/Theses/Dissertations from 2012 2012

Calibration of the HAWC Gamma-Ray Observatory , Nathan C. Kelley-Hoskins

Charge and spin transport in nanoscale junction from first principles , Subhasish Mandal

Measurements of ice nucleation by mineral dusts in the contact mode , Kristopher W. Bunker

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Home / academic-programs / Undergraduate / Senior Thesis

Senior Thesis

Changes for the senior thesis - effective 2020-2021:.

Starting with the 2020-2021 catalog, physics majors can satisfy their Disciplinary Communications (DC) requirement in one of two ways:

• Complete PHYS 182 “Scientific Communication” or
• Complete PHYS 195A “Senior Thesis I” and 195B “Senior Thesis II" 

This means that the senior thesis is optional for new students; you have the choice of taking PHYS 182 or writing a senior thesis in PHYS 195AB. If you are a continuing student, you can choose to graduate under these new catalog requirements as long as you will satisfy the other requirements. (Note that the new capstone courses are 134, 135, 135AB, or 136. You must take one of these lab courses to graduate under the new catalog requirements.)

What is the Senior Thesis?

The senior thesis is an option to satisfy the DC requirement for graduation in the Physics, Physics (Astrophysics), and Applied Physics majors. Students work on their senior thesis as coursework for PHYS 195A and PHYS 195B. The senior thesis is a clear, logical presentation of some independent, physics-related work done by the student under the supervision of a thesis advisor.  Possible forms of the thesis include: results of the student's experimental, theoretical, or numerical investigations (often in connection with on-going research at UCSC); a review of a particular topic in physics; or a significant extension of class material (for example a Physics 134 or 135 experiment). The thesis must display understanding of physics at the level of an upper-division physics course. In conclusion, the senior thesis may range between a literature review on a topic that the student will choose in agreement with an advisor and the representation of significant research effort. Examples of senior theses can be found here. These theses use LaTeX template files for the standard UC thesis format , with examples of figures, tables, references, etc.  The package has been tested with the graphical Web tool Overleaf ( overleaf.com ) but may also work with stand-alone LaTeX or other interfaces.  Please report errors to Prof. David Smith .

The Value to You of a Senior Thesis

The senior thesis is designed both as an option to complete the undergraduate physics experience and as an opportunity to develop writing and research skills that will be important for your career in physics and beyond. Complementing standard physics courses, the senior thesis emphasizes independent decision-making, activity-scheduling, and presenting of scientific material in a well-written form. It allows you to explore and develop subjects of your own choosing and develops your ability to communicate your work effective ly. Students considering graduate school are encouraged to complete a senior thesis. A reference letter from your thesis advisor will be a valuable addition to your graduate school application. Furthermore, yo ur transcript will reflect the fact that you completed the requirements by writing a senior thesis.

The Senior Thesis and PHYS 195A and PHYS 195B

The PHYS 195 course is designed to guide you through writing your senior thesis. The structure, format, and content of a senior thesis are discussed in detail. Grammatical skills, effective writing, and literature search techniques are developed. You will plan your topic and develop reference lists, outlines, and drafts. The thesis approved by your thesis advisor must be submitted before the end of PHYS 195B in order to pass the course. The se two courses should be taken in your thesis advisor’s section during the two quarters you intend to write your thesis. This means that you must identify a thesis advisor, who agrees to guide you in your thesis research and writing, before you enroll in Physics 195A. The Physics Department can help you find an advisor if you choose to write a senior thesis.

Timeline for the Senior Thesis:

Finding  a research project.

Students are encouraged to begin a thesis project between 1 and 2 years before their expected graduation. You should have identified a thesis advisor and research project at least 3 quarters before your expected graduation. As you choose a research project and begin your work, remember that unexpected results -- including null results -- are common in science. Even if your work does not yield the conclusion you first expected, there is great value in documenting and discussing your research work in the senior thesis. 

Enrolling in PHYS 195AB

Enroll in your thesis advisor’s section of PHYS 195A and PHYS 195B during the two consecutive quarters you plan to work on the thesis. For example, if you are graduating in Spring quarter, you can take PHYS 195A in Winter and PHYS 195B in Spring. (If you are graduating in Fall, enroll in PHYS 195A in Spring and PHYS 195B in Fall.) Make sure to leave enough room in your schedule for these 5-credit courses, as they reflect the amount of work you will need to do on your thesis.

Completing the Senior Thesis

The senior thesis must be submitted before the end of PHYS 195B in order to pass the course , and good progress must be made throughout the course, with first full drafts required in Week 7 of the quarter. If the thesis is not submitted in acceptable form by the end of the course, the instructor/advisor may decide to grade the work as Incomplete; in that case the usual policies apply for removing an Incomplete grade before it becomes a failing grade.

Physics Department Thesis Honors Procedure

The senior thesis of a physics, applied physics, or astrophysics major may be given an honors designation, an honor that will be mentioned in the graduation ceremony. In order that all of our majors have an opportunity to receive the thesis honors designation, we have adopted the following procedure:

1)  No later than June 3rd, 2022 the thesis advisor may provide a nomination of the honors designation to the chair.This is best done at the time the thesis advisor signs the thesis. It is important that all faculty be aware of the honors designation and give consideration to all theses that they sign.

2)  The Department Chair  or their designated assistants review the advisor’s recommendation within the context of the full set of senior theses received and either accept or reject the nomination.

3)  The honors designation is forwarded to the Physics Advisor at [email protected] to be recorded.

4)  Late theses, for example those completed over the summer, may still be given an honors designation, but no mention of that will be possible at the student’s graduation ceremony.

The following general criteria should be considered when nominating a thesis for honors:

• Academic Advising
• Major Information
• Frosh Information
• Transfer Student Information
• Scholarships and Awards
• Research, Internships and Jobs
• Academic Support and Resources
• Report an accessibility barrier
• Land Acknowledgment
• Accreditation

Last modified: December 4, 2023 185.80.151.9

Home > Arts and Sciences > Physics > PHYSICSETD

Physics Theses, Dissertations, and Masters Projects

Theses/dissertations from 2023 2023.

Ab Initio Computations Of Structural Properties In Solids By Auxiliary Field Quantum Monte Carlo , Siyuan Chen

Constraining Of The Minerνa Medium Energy Neutrino Flux Using Neutrino-Electron Scattering , Luis Zazueta

Experimental Studies Of Neutral Particles And The Isotope Effect In The Edge Of Tokamak Plasmas , Ryan Chaban

From The Hubbard Model To Coulomb Interactions: Quantum Monte Carlo Computations In Strongly Correlated Systems , Zhi-Yu Xiao

Theses/Dissertations from 2022 2022

Broadband Infrared Microspectroscopy and Nanospectroscopy of Local Material Properties: Experiment and Modeling , Patrick McArdle

Edge Fueling And Neutral Density Studies Of The Alcator C-Mod Tokamak Using The Solps-Iter Code , Richard M. Reksoatmodjo

Electronic Transport In Topological Superconducting Heterostructures , Joseph Jude Cuozzo

Inclusive and Inelastic Scattering in Neutrino-Nucleus Interactions , Amy Filkins

Investigation Of Stripes, Spin Density Waves And Superconductivity In The Ground State Of The Two-Dimensional Hubbard Model , Hao Xu

Partial Wave Analysis Of Strange Mesons Decaying To K + Π − Π + In The Reaction Γp → K + Π + Π − Λ(1520) And The Commissioning Of The Gluex Dirc Detector , Andrew Hurley

Partial Wave Analysis of the ωπ− Final State Photoproduced at GlueX , Amy Schertz

Quantum Sensing For Low-Light Imaging , Savannah Cuozzo

Radiative Width of K*(892) from Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics , Archana Radhakrishnan

Theses/Dissertations from 2021 2021

AC & DC Zeeman Interferometric Sensing With Ultracold Trapped Atoms On A Chip , Shuangli Du

Calculation Of Gluon Pdf In The Nucleon Using Pseudo-Pdf Formalism With Wilson Flow Technique In LQCD , Md Tanjib Atique Khan

Dihadron Beam Spin Asymmetries On An Unpolarized Hydrogen Target With Clas12 , Timothy Barton Hayward

Excited J-- Resonances In Meson-Meson Scattering From Lattice Qcd , Christopher Johnson

Forward & Off-Forward Parton Distributions From Lattice Qcd , Colin Paul Egerer

Light-Matter Interactions In Quasi-Two-Dimensional Geometries , David James Lahneman

Proton Spin Structure from Simultaneous Monte Carlo Global QCD Analysis , Yiyu Zhou

Radiofrequency Ac Zeeman Trapping For Neutral Atoms , Andrew Peter Rotunno

Theses/Dissertations from 2020 2020

A First-Principles Study of the Nature of the Insulating Gap in VO2 , Christopher Hendriks

Competing And Cooperating Orders In The Three-Band Hubbard Model: A Comprehensive Quantum Monte Carlo And Generalized Hartree-Fock Study , Adam Chiciak

Development Of Quantum Information Tools Based On Multi-Photon Raman Processes In Rb Vapor , Nikunjkumar Prajapati

Experiments And Theory On Dynamical Hamiltononian Monodromy , Matthew Perry Nerem

Growth Engineering And Characterization Of Vanadium Dioxide Films For Ultraviolet Detection , Jason Andrew Creeden

Insulator To Metal Transition Dynamics Of Vanadium Dioxide Thin Films , Scott Madaras

Quantitative Analysis Of EKG And Blood Pressure Waveforms , Denise Erin McKaig

Study Of Scalar Extensions For Physics Beyond The Standard Model , Marco Antonio Merchand Medina

Theses/Dissertations from 2019 2019

Beyond the Standard Model: Flavor Symmetry, Nonperturbative Unification, Quantum Gravity, and Dark Matter , Shikha Chaurasia

Electronic Properties of Two-Dimensional Van Der Waals Systems , Yohanes Satrio Gani

Extraction and Parametrization of Isobaric Trinucleon Elastic Cross Sections and Form Factors , Scott Kevin Barcus

Interfacial Forces of 2D Materials at the Oil–Water Interface , William Winsor Dickinson

Scattering a Bose-Einstein Condensate Off a Modulated Barrier , Andrew James Pyle

Topics in Proton Structure: BSM Answers to its Radius Puzzle and Lattice Subtleties within its Momentum Distribution , Michael Chaim Freid

Theses/Dissertations from 2018 2018

A Measurement of Nuclear Effects in Deep Inelastic Scattering in Neutrino-Nucleus Interactions , Anne Norrick

Applications of Lattice Qcd to Hadronic Cp Violation , David Brantley

Charge Dynamics in the Metallic and Superconducting States of the Electron-Doped 122-Type Iron Arsenides , Zhen Xing

Dynamics of Systems With Hamiltonian Monodromy , Daniel Salmon

Exotic Phases in Attractive Fermions: Charge Order, Pairing, and Topological Signatures , Peter Rosenberg

Extensions of the Standard Model Higgs Sector , Richard Keith Thrasher

First Measurements of the Parity-Violating and Beam-Normal Single-Spin Asymmetries in Elastic Electron-Aluminum Scattering , Kurtis David Bartlett

Lattice Qcd for Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay: Short Range Operator Contributions , Henry Jose Monge Camacho

Probe of Electroweak Interference Effects in Non-Resonant Inelastic Electron-Proton Scattering , James Franklyn Dowd

Proton Spin Structure from Monte Carlo Global Qcd Analyses , Jacob Ethier

Searching for A Dark Photon in the Hps Experiment , Sebouh Jacob Paul

Theses/Dissertations from 2017 2017

A global normal form for two-dimensional mode conversion , David Gregory Johnston

Computational Methods of Lattice Boltzmann Mhd , Christopher Robert Flint

Computational Studies of Strongly Correlated Quantum Matter , Hao Shi

Determination of the Kinematics of the Qweak Experiment and Investigation of an Atomic Hydrogen Møller Polarimeter , Valerie Marie Gray

Disconnected Diagrams in Lattice Qcd , Arjun Singh Gambhir

Formulating Schwinger-Dyson Equations for Qed Propagators in Minkowski Space , Shaoyang Jia

Highly-Correlated Electron Behavior in Niobium and Niobium Compound Thin Films , Melissa R. Beebe

Infrared Spectroscopy and Nano-Imaging of La0.67Sr0.33Mno3 Films , Peng Xu

Investigation of Local Structures in Cation-Ordered Microwave Dielectric a Solid-State Nmr and First Principle Calculation Study , Rony Gustam Kalfarisi

Measurement of the Elastic Ep Cross Section at Q2 = 0.66, 1.10, 1.51 and 1.65 Gev2 , YANG WANG

Modeling The Gross-Pitaevskii Equation using The Quantum Lattice Gas Method , Armen M. Oganesov

Optical Control of Multi-Photon Coherent Interactions in Rubidium Atoms , Gleb Vladimirovich Romanov

Plasmonic Approaches and Photoemission: Ag-Based Photocathodes , Zhaozhu Li

Quantum and Classical Manifestation of Hamiltonian Monodromy , Chen Chen

Shining Light on The Phase Transitions of Vanadium Dioxide , Tyler J. Huffman

Superconducting Thin Films for The Enhancement of Superconducting Radio Frequency Accelerator Cavities , Matthew Burton

Theses/Dissertations from 2016 2016

Ac Zeeman Force with Ultracold Atoms , Charles Fancher

A Measurement of the Parity-Violating Asymmetry in Aluminum and its Contribution to A Measurement of the Proton's Weak Charge , Joshua Allen Magee

An improved measurement of the Muon Neutrino charged current Quasi-Elastic cross-section on Hydrocarbon at Minerva , Dun Zhang

Applications of High Energy Theory to Superconductivity and Cosmic Inflation , Zhen Wang

A Precision Measurement of the Weak Charge of Proton at Low Q^2: Kinematics and Tracking , Siyuan Yang

Compton Scattering Polarimetry for The Determination of the Proton’S Weak Charge Through Measurements of the Parity-Violating Asymmetry of 1H(E,e')P , Juan Carlos Cornejo

Disorder Effects in Dirac Heterostructures , Martin Alexander Rodriguez-Vega

Electron Neutrino Appearance in the Nova Experiment , Ji Liu

Experimental Apparatus for Quantum Pumping with a Bose-Einstein Condensate. , Megan K. Ivory

Investigating Proton Spin Structure: A Measurement of G_2^p at Low Q^2 , Melissa Ann Cummings

Neutrino Flux Prediction for The Numi Beamline , Leonidas Aliaga Soplin

Quantitative Analysis of Periodic Breathing and Very Long Apnea in Preterm Infants. , Mary A. Mohr

Resolution Limits of Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry with Pulsed Source , Guangzhi Qu

Solving Problems of the Standard Model through Scale Invariance, Dark Matter, Inflation and Flavor Symmetry , Raymundo Alberto Ramos

Study of Spatial Structure of Squeezed Vacuum Field , Mi Zhang

Study of Variations of the Dynamics of the Metal-Insulator Transition of Thin Films of Vanadium Dioxide with An Ultra-Fast Laser , Elizabeth Lee Radue

Thin Film Approaches to The Srf Cavity Problem: Fabrication and Characterization of Superconducting Thin Films , Douglas Beringer

Turbulent Particle Transport in H-Mode Plasmas on Diii-D , Xin Wang

Theses/Dissertations from 2015 2015

Ballistic atom pumps , Tommy Byrd

Determination of the Proton's Weak Charge via Parity Violating e-p Scattering. , Joshua Russell Hoskins

Electronic properties of chiral two-dimensional materials , Christopher Lawrence Charles Triola

Heavy flavor interactions and spectroscopy from lattice quantum chromodynamics , Zachary S. Brown

Some properties of meson excited states from lattice QCD , Ekaterina V. Mastropas

Sterile Neutrino Search with MINOS. , Alena V. Devan

Ultracold rubidium and potassium system for atom chip-based microwave and RF potentials , Austin R. Ziltz

Theses/Dissertations from 2014 2014

Enhancement of MS Signal Processing for Improved Cancer Biomarker Discovery , Qian Si

Whispering-gallery mode resonators for nonlinear and quantum optical applications , Matthew Thomas Simons

Theses/Dissertations from 2013 2013

Applications of Holographic Dualities , Dylan Judd Albrecht

A search for a new gauge boson , Eric Lyle Jensen

Experimental Generation and Manipulation of Quantum Squeezed Vacuum via Polarization Self-Rotation in Rb Vapor , Travis Scott Horrom

Low Energy Tests of the Standard Model , Benjamin Carl Rislow

Magnetic Order and Dimensional Crossover in Optical Lattices with Repulsive Interaction , Jie Xu

Multi-meson systems from Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics , Zhifeng Shi

Theses/Dissertations from 2012 2012

Dark matter in the heavens and at colliders: Models and constraints , Reinard Primulando

Measurement of Single and Double Spin Asymmetries in p(e, e' pi(+/-,0))X Semi-Inclusive Deep-Inelastic Scattering , Sucheta Shrikant Jawalkar

NMR study of paramagnetic nano-checkerboard superlattices , Christopher andrew Maher

Parity-violating asymmetry in the nucleon to delta transition: A Study of Inelastic Electron Scattering in the G0 Experiment , Carissa Lee Capuano

Studies of polarized and unpolarized helium -3 in the presence of alkali vapor , Kelly Anita Kluttz

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Undergraduate Requirements

The undergraduate curriculum allows students to acquire a deep conceptual understanding of fundamental physics through its core requirements. Students then choose one of two options to complete the degree, the Flexible track or the Focus track. Both options lead to the same degree, a Bachelor of Science in Physics. And both options are superb preparation for any student planning on applying to graduate school in Physics.

Students may choose either option at any time in their undergraduate career, but many determine their choice during sophomore year in order to have enough time to craft a program that best suits their individual needs. Each option provides time for exploration through electives.

The Flexible Track

The Flexible track is based on a series of rigorous courses in fundamental physics topics, and its options enable many of our students to complete second majors in other disciplines.

The Flex track requires:

• 8.03 , 8.04 or 8.041, 8.044 , 18.03 (Differential Equations)
• 8.21 Physics of Energy or 8.223 Classical Mechanics II (choose one)
• 8.033 Relativity, 8.05 or 8.051 Quantum Physics II, or 8.20 Introduction to Special Relativity (choose one)
• 8.13 Experimental Physics (a similarly rigorous lab subject from another department can be substituted with permission, or less frequently, an experimental project or experimentally-oriented externship may substitute be allowed to substitute). Note that 8.13 satisfies the lab requirement that is part of the GIRs.
• At least one elective Physics subject beyond 8.02

In addition, students in the Flex track complete a group of three related subjects, similar to a concentration, subject to the approval of Flex Major Coordinator Dr. Sean Robinson . This group of subjects is known as a “focus area.” Examples of possible focus areas include, but are not limited to:

• biology / biophysics
• computer science / engineering
• electrical engineering
• history of science
• mathematics
• materials science
• science teaching
• quantum physics

The Focused Track

This option—which includes three terms of quantum mechanics, 36 units of laboratory experience, and a thesis—constitutes strong preparation for a career in physics. It is comprised of three required parts: specifically required subjects; restricted electives; and a research thesis.

The Focus track requires:

• 8.03 , 8.033 , 8.04 or 8.041 , 8.044 , 8.05 or 8.051 , 8.06 , 8.223 , 18.03 (Differential Equations)
• 8.13 and 8.14 Experimental Physics I and II; note that both 8.13 and 8.14 satisfy the lab requirement that is part of the GIRs.
• one subject given by the Mathematics Department beyond 18.03 ;
• two additional subjects given by the Physics Department beyond 8.02 including at least one of the following: 8.07 , 8.08 , 8.09
• Students should have an idea for a thesis topic by the middle of junior year; many thesis projects grow organically out of UROP projects. A thesis proposal must be submitted by Add Date of senior year, and students must register for units of 8.ThU (Undergraduate Thesis) in the senior year. See the Senior Thesis section below for more details.

Double Major in Physics

A frequent question of undergrads is whether a double major is possible with Physics. It definitely is, and in fact the majority of our undergraduates pursue major studies in Physics and another department, or a minor, or both. Popular second majors for our Physics students include: Mathematics, Computer Science, Earth and Planetary Sciences, and Nuclear Science and Engineering.

A second major can only be declared after three terms. Students with two majors must complete the requirements of both departments. More general information about double majoring .

To apply for a double major:

• Email Dr. Sean Robinson ( [email protected] ), the Physics Flex Plan Coordinator, and make an appointment to discuss how you will meet all the requirements of the Flex major.
• Fill out the double major petition and submit it by emailing [email protected] or by delivering it to the Academic Programs Office, 4-315, for a signature. Please note that we will not sign your petition until you’ve obtained your advisor’s signature first.
• After obtaining the necessary signatures, submit the signed petition to the Committee on Curricula ( [email protected] ) to be processed. Once approved, the Physics Undergraduate Program Coordinator will reach out to you with a welcome.

Minor in Physics

The Minor in Physics provides a solid foundation for the pursuit of a broad range of professional activities in science and engineering. The requirements for a minor in Physics are:

• 18.03 or 18.034, plus
• at least five Course 8 subjects beyond the General Institute Requirements that constitute at least 57 units.

While subjects completed via transfer credit are eligible to be counted towards a Physics minor, at least half of your minor subjects must be MIT subjects taken while you are enrolled at MIT.

Students thinking about a minor in Physics might also consider the alternative of obtaining a second major in Physics through the Flexible option.

To add a Physics minor, submit a completed Minor Application Form to Physics Academic Administrator Shannon Larkin after obtaining the permission of your academic advisor. Note that students are required to document the completion of the minor in addition to listing the intended courses on the initial application form.

Minor in Astronomy

The minor in Astronomy, offered jointly with the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), covers the observational and theoretical foundations of astronomy. The minor requires a selection of seven subjects distributed among five areas:

• Astronomy, Mathematics, and Physics Required Subjects: 8.03 ; 8.282J/12.402J ; 18.03 or 18.034
• Astrophysics Choose one: 8.284 or 8.286
• Planetary Astronomy Choose one: 12.008 , 12.400 , 12.420 , or 12.425
• Instrumentation and Observations Choose one: 8.287/12.410 , 12.43J , 12.431J , or 12.432J
• Independent Project in Astronomy Choose one: 8.UR , 8.ThU , 12.UR , 12.ThU , or 12.411

Four of the subjects used to satisfy the requirements for the astronomy minor may not be used to satisfy any other minor or major. For more information, contact Astronomy Minor Coordinator is Prof. Michael McDonald .

Communication Requirement for the Physics Major (CI-M 8)

Each MIT undergraduate must take two subjects within their major that have been designated as communications-intensive (CI-M). CI-Ms teach the specific forms of written, oral, and/or visual communication appropriate to the field’s professional and academic culture. Students may write in teams; prepare and present oral and visual research reports for different audiences; learn audience analysis and peer review; or go through the experience of proposing, writing, and extensively revising a professional journal article. Most students complete their CI-Ms during the junior and senior year.

The Physics Department offers the following CI-Ms for both Flex and Focus students:

• 8.06 Quantum Physics III
• 8.13 Experimental Physics I
• 8.14 Experimental Physics II
• 8.225J Einstein, Oppenheimer, Feynman: Physics in the 20 th Century
• 8.226 Forty-three Orders of Magnitude
• 8.S227 Special Subject: Technical Communication, Scientific Judgment, and Professional Preparation (pilot, spring 2021)
• 8.287J Observational Techniques of Optical Astronomy

Students occasionally petition to substitute a CI-M from another department in place of one of these subjects; the department may support such a petition if the proposed substitution forms a natural part of the student’s individual program. Petitions are approved by the MIT Subcommittee on the Communications Requirement (SOCR).

Senior Thesis

Research is an integral part of any student’s experience as an MIT Physics major. Students who have had the opportunity to delve deeply into an area of research over time are encouraged to write a Senior Thesis describing their work and their conclusions.

Senior Thesis Submission Dates

• Senior Thesis Proposal form (PDF) due by Add Date the term before you complete your thesis
• Senior Thesis Title form (PDF)
• Candidates on February 2024 degree list: Friday, January 12, 2024
• Candidates on May 2024 degree list: Friday, May 10, 2024

Senior Thesis Policies

• All Physics Focus students must write an undergraduate thesis; students on the Physics Flex track may choose to write a thesis, but are not required to.
• Any Physics Department faculty member or research staff member is an acceptable thesis supervisor.
• To write a thesis under the supervision of an MIT professor outside the Physics Department, or a non-MIT professor, you must have a departmental faculty member as a co-supervisor. Contact the Academic Programs Office for more information.
• You must be registered for thesis units (8.THU) in the term you plan to submit your thesis. The standard number of units is 12; a student with an unusual situation may register for up to 24 units, but should discuss with the thesis supervisor why this thesis requires more effort than a standard 12-unit subject.
• During the term you are enrolled in 8.THU, you may not also conduct a UROP project that contributes or relates to the thesis work, or vice versa (MIT UROP policy).
• For a list of formatting requirements and details for writing your senior thesis, see the MIT Libraries’ MIT Specifications for Thesis Preparation page , which contains links to several sections on thesis preparation, as well as MIT Thesis FAQs .
• Abstracts are not required for undergraduate theses.
• No ProQuest/UMI form is required.
• Copyright ownership depends on how your research was funded and what equipment was used.  Most likely, MIT will have funded/supplied equipment for your thesis, but be sure to read the policy in detail.
• Senior Thesis Title form (PDF):  use this template to format your title page.

Required Signatures and Submission Guidelines

Your thesis will be signed by you, your thesis supervisor, and the Associate Head of the Physics Department.  After your thesis supervisor has read your thesis completely, provided feedback or corrections, and approved the final version for submission:

• Submit your thesis in a PDF attachment via email to [email protected] .
• Copy your thesis supervisor(s) on the email.
• Your supervisor then provides a signature via Docusign . 
• Once this is done, the staff of the Academic Programs Office will be responsible for obtaining the signature of the Associate Head.

Digital Submission Guidelines

• Do not print OR physically sign and scan your thesis to us. Follow the signing instructions written below.
• When the final version of your thesis is completed, submit your thesis in a PDF attachment via email to [email protected] .
• You must copy your thesis supervisor(s) on the email.
• Once you’ve submitted your thesis and your supervisor has given their approval via Docusign , then the Associate Head will review it.

Each year, a group of faculty members are designated as academic advisors to an incoming cohort of sophomore Physics majors. In July, rising sophomores are provided information about the available advisors and are asked to indicate their top choices, and matches are then made by the Academic Administrator. Students who join the department after this initial set of assignments will then be matched with one of the advisors for the student’s class; these students may make specific requests which will be considered along with the current advising loads of each advisor.

Your advisor can assist with:

• Course selection and sequencing
• Changes to subject choices after Registration
• Academic progress
• Academic or personal support resources
• Advice about graduate school in physics or other disciplines
• Internship and career advice

Our advising program’s goal is for Physics majors to retain their advisor throughout the undergraduate program, but students are welcome to request a change of advisor if circumstances warrant by contacting the Academic Administrator Shannon Larkin .

FAQ for Prospective Undergraduate Students

Does the physics department accept ap credit.

Yes. The Physics Department awards credit for 8.01 to incoming students who score a 5 on both parts of the AP Physics C test. No credit is given for the Physics B test or for a qualifying score on only one part of the Physics C test.

Does the Physics Department grant credit for the International Baccalaureate or G.C.E. “A” Level Exams?

Entering students may receive 8.01 credit for qualifying scores on A-level exams, IB exams, the German Arbitur, and similar tests. For full details on Physics credit awarded for international exams and how to request it, see information on the website of the Office of the First Year.

If I have 8.01 credit already through an exam, do I have to take the Math Diagnostic Exam?

Yes. The Math Diagnostic Exam serves a dual purpose. In addition to providing advice for the appropriate level of Physics I for the majority of entering first-year students who must take a version of 8.01 , Math Diagnostic scores also validate AP credit for Mathematics courses.

How can I receive Physics transfer credit?

Requests for transfer credit for Physics courses taken at other institutions can be made through Physics Academic Administrator Shannon Larkin . Please read our Transfer Credit page for complete details on how to apply for credit. This page also has information on the scheduling of exams and on topics covered.

May I take 8.02 before passing 8.01?

No. All students must receive credit for 8.01 before registering for any version of 8.02. The sole exception to this policy is for second-semester seniors who have not yet completed either 8.01 or 8.02 . A senior who needs to complete both 8.01 and 8.02 in the final term should contact the Academic Administrator, Shannon Larkin .

Can I switch between the various versions of 8.01 or 8.02?

Yes. Students can switch between 8.01 and 8.01L , or 8.011 and 8.012 (as well as between 8.02 and 8.022 ) before Add Date. Instructors of the subject a student wishes to switch into can provide additional information on any written work to be submitted or tests to be taken to facilitate such a change.

Can I take graduate classes as an undergrad?

Yes, many undergrads take graduate courses, but we take prerequisites and appropriate preparation very seriously. Whether you are taking a first-year Physics course or an advanced graduate course, we want to be sure you are set up for success.

Are there any study-abroad programs?

Yes. Most study-abroad opportunities are handled by MIT’s Global Education and Career Development Office . The MISTI program is most specifically aimed towards science and technology initiatives.

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• Writing a Literature Review
• University of Washington Libraries
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Physics: Writing a Literature Review

Literature reviews.

A  literature review  surveys scholarly articles, books and other sources (e.g. dissertations, conference proceedings) relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory, providing a description, summary, and critical evaluation of each work. 

• Provide context for a research paper
• Explore the history and development of a topic
• Examine the scholarly conversation surrounding the topic
• Shows relationships between studies
• Examines gaps in research on the topic

Components 

Similar to primary research, development of the literature review requires four stages:

• Problem formulation—which topic or field is being examined and what are its component issues?
• Literature search—finding materials relevant to the subject being explored
• Data evaluation—determining which literature makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the topic
• Analysis and interpretation—discussing the findings and conclusions of pertinent literature

Conducting a Literature Review

1. choose a topic. define your research questions..

Your literature review should be guided by a central research question.  Remember, it is not a collection of loosely related studies in a field but instead represents background and research developments related to a specific research question, interpreted and analyzed by you in a synthesized way.

• Make sure your research question is not too broad or too narrow.  Is it manageable?
• Begin writing down terms that are related to your question. These will be useful for searches later.
• If you have the opportunity, discuss your topic with your professor.

2. Decide on the scope of your review. 

• How many studies do you need to look at?
• How comprehensive should it be?
• How many years should it cover? 

Tip: This may depend on your assignment.  How many sources does the assignment require?

3. Select the databases you will use to conduct your searches.  

Make a list of the databases you will search.  

Where to find databases:

• Find Databases by Subject
• T he Find Articles tab of this guide

This page contains a list of the most relevant databases for most Physics research. 

4. Conduct your searches and find the literature. Keep track of your searches! 

• Review the abstracts of research studies carefully. This will save you time.
• Write down the searches you conduct in each database so that you may duplicate them if you need to later (or avoid dead-end searches   that you'd forgotten you'd already tried).
• Use the bibliographies and references of research studies you find to locate others.
• Ask your professor or a librarian if you are missing any key works in the field.

5. Review the Literature 

Some questions to help you analyze the research: 

• What was the research question of the study you are reviewing? What were the authors trying to discover?
• Was the research funded by a source that could influence the findings?
• What were the research methodologies? Analyze its literature review, the samples and variables used, the results, and the conclusions. Does the research seem to be complete? Could it have been conducted more soundly? What further questions does it raise?
• If there are conflicting studies, why do you think that is?
• How are the authors viewed in the field? Has this study been cited?; if so, how has it been analyzed?

Tips: 

• Again, review the abstracts carefully.  
• Keep careful notes so that you may track your thought processes during the research process.

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Harvard phd theses in physics, 2001-.

BAILEY, STEPHEN JOHN, B.S. (Washington) 1995. A Study of B → J/y K (*)0 X Decays. (Huth)

CHEN, LESTER HAO-LIN, B.S. (Duke) 1995. (Harvard) 1999. Charge-Iimaging Field-Effect Transistors for Scanned Probe Microscopy. (Westervelt)

CHOU, YI, B.S. (National Tsing Hua University) 1988. (National Tsing Hua University) 1990. Developments of EXITE2 and Timing Analysis of Ultra-Compact X-ray Binaries. (Papaliolios/Grindlay)

ERSHOV, ALEXEY, B.S. (Moscow Institute of Physics & Technology) 1996. Beauty Meson Decays to Charmonium. (Feldman)

FOX, DAVID CHARLES, A.B. (Princeton) 1991. (Harvard) 1994. The Structure of Clusters of Galaxies. (Loeb)

FUKUTO, MASAFUMI, B.S. (Oregon) 1994. (Harvard) 1997). Two-Dimensional Structures and Order of Nano-Objects on the Surface of Water: Synchrotron X-ray Scattering Studies. (Pershan)

HILL, MARC, B.S. (Illinois) 1994. Experimental Studies of W-band Accelerator Structures at High Field. (Huth)

KANNAPPAN, SHEILA, A.B. (Harvard) 1991. (Harvard, History of Science) 2001. Kinematic Clues to the Formation and Evolution of Galaxies. (Horowitz)

LAU, CHUN-NING, B.A. (Chicago) 1994. (Harvard) 1997. Quantum Phase Slips in Superconducting Nanowires. (Tinkham)

OSWALD, JOSEPH ANTON, B.S. (Duke) 1992. (Harvard) 1995. Metallo-dielectric Photonic Crystal Filters for Infrared Applications. (Verghese/Tinkham)

SCHAFFER, CHRISTOPHER BRIAN, B.S. (Florida) 1995. Interaction of Femtosecond Laser Pulses with Transparent Materials. (Mazur)

SPRADLIN, MARCUS BENJAMIN, B.A. (Princeton) 1996. (Harvard) 1999. AdS 2 Black Holes and Soliton Moduli Spaces. (Strominger)

WU, CLAUDIA, Diplom (Hannover) 1991. (Harvard) 1995. Femtosecond Laser-Gas-Solid Interactions. (Mazur)

BOZOVIC, DOLORES, B.S. ( Stanford University ) 1995. (Harvard) 1997. Defect Formation and Electron Transport in Carbon Nanotubes. (Tinkham)

BRITTO-PACUMIO, RUTH ALEXANDRA, B.S. (MIT) 1996. (Harvard) 1998. Bound States of Supersymmetric Black Holes. (Strominger)

CACHAZO, FREDDY ALEXANDER, B.S. (Simon Bolivar University) 1996. Dualities in Field Theory from Geometric Transitions in String Theory. (Vafa)

CHOU, YI, B.S. ( National Tsing Hua University ) 1988. ( National Tsing Hua University ) 1990. Developments of EXITE2 and Timing Analysis of Ultra-Compact X-ray Binaries. (Papaliolios/Grindlay)

COLDWELL, CHARLES MICHAEL, A.B. (Harvard) 1992. A Search for Interstellar Communications at Optical Wavelengths. (Horowitz)

DUTTON, ZACHARY JOHN, B.A. (University of California Berkeley) 1996. (Harvard) 2002. Ultra-slow Stopped, and Compressed Light in Bose-Einstein Condensates. (Hau)

FOX, DAVID CHARLES, A.B. ( Princeton ) 1991. (Harvard) 1994. The Structure of Clusters of Galaxies. (Shapiro)

GOEL, ANITA, B.S. (Stanford) 1995. Single Molecule Dynamics of Motor Enzymes Along DNA. (Herschbach/ Wilson)

HALL, CARTER, B.S. (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State Univ.) 1996. Measurement of the isolated direct photon cross section with conversions in proton-antiproton collisions at sqrt (s) = 1.8 TeV. (Franklin)

JANZEN, PAUL HENRY, B. Sc., (University of Windsor) 1992. (Harvard) 1994. An Experiment to Measure Electron Impact Excitation of Ions that have Metastable States. (Horowitz/Kohl)

KIM, Daniel Young-Joon, AB/AM (Harvard) 1995. Properties of Inclusive B → psi Production. (Wilson/Brandenburg)

LANDHUIS, DAVID PAUL, B.S. (Stanford) 1994. (Harvard) 1997. Studies with Ultracold Metastable Hydrogen. (Gabrielse/Kleppner)  

LAU, CHUN-NING, B.A. ( Chicago ) 1994. (Harvard) 1997. Quantum Phase Slips in Superconducting Nanowires . (Tinkham)

LEE, CHUNGSOK, B.A. ( University of California , Berkeley ) 1995. ( Harvard University ) 2002. Control and Manipulation of Magnetic Nanoparticles and Cold Atoms Using Micro-electromagnets. (Westervelt)

 LUBENSKY, DAVID KOSLAN, A.B. ( Princeton University ) 1994. (Harvard) 1997. Theoretical Studies of Polynucleotide Biophysics. (Nelson)

MATTONI, CARLO EGON HEINRICH, A.B. ( Harvard College ) 1995. (Harvard University ) 1998. Magnetic Trapping of Ultracold Neutrons Produced Using a Monochromatic Cold Neutron Beam. (Doyle)

MCKINSEY, DANIEL NICHOLAS, B.S. (University of Michigan) 1995. (Harvard) 1998. Detecting Magnetically Trapped Neutrons: Liquid Helium As a Scintillator. (Doyle)

OZEL, FERYAL, B.S. (Columbia University) 1996. The Effects of Strong Magnetic and Gravitational Fields on Emission Properties of Neutron Stars. (Narayan)

PAUTOT, SOPHIE, B.S. (University of Bordeaux I and II) 1995. (University of Bordeaux I and II) 1996. Lipids behavior at dodecane-water interface. (Weitz)  

PRASAD, VIKRAM, B. Tech. (Indian Institute of Technology) 1996. ( University of Pennsylvania ) 1999. Weakly interacting colloid-polymer mixtures. (Weitz)

SALWEN, NATHAN KALMAN, A.B. (Harvard) 1994. Non-perturbative Methods in Modal Field Theory. (Coleman)

SCHWARZ, JENNIFER MARIE, B.S., B.A. (University of Maryland) 1994. Depinning with Elastic Waves: Criticality, Hysteresis, and Even Pseudo-Hysteresis. (Fisher)

SHAW, SCOT ELMER JAMES, B.A. (Lawrence University) 1998. Propagation in Smooth Random Potentials. [PDF: ~7.44MB] ( Heller)

SQUIRES, TODD MICHAEL, B.S. (UCLA) 1995. Hydrodynamics and Electrokinetics in Colloidal and Microfluidic Systems. (Fisher/Brenner)

VOLOVICH, ANASTASIA, A.M. (Moscow State) 1998. Holography for Coset Spaces and Noncommutative Solitions. (Strominger)

WEINSTEIN, JONATHAN DAVID, B.S. (Caltech) 1995. (Harvard) 1998. Magnetic Trapping of Atomic Chromium and Molecular Calcium Monohydride. (Doyle)  

 WONG, GLENN PATRICK, B.S. (Stanford) 1993. (Harvard) 1995. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Experiments Using Laser-Polarized Noble Gas . (Shapiro)

YESLEY, PETER SPOOR, B.S. (MIT) 1995. The Road to Antihydrogen. (Gabrielse)

 *YOUNKIN, REBECCA JANE, A.B. ( Mt. Holyoke ) 1993. (Harvard) 1996. Surface Studies and Microstructure Fabrication Using Femtosecond. (Mazur)

ASHCOM, JONATHAN BENJAMIN, B.S. (Brown University) 1996. (Harvard) 2000. The role of focusing in the interaction of femtosecond laser pulses with transparent materials. (Mazur)

CHAN, IAN HIN-YUN , B.S. ( Sanford University ) 1994. Quantum dot circuits: single-electron switch and few-electron quantum dots . (Westervelt)

CREMERS, JACOB NICO HENDRIK JAN, B.S. (MIT) 1994. (Harvard) 2002. Pumping and Spin-Orbit Coupling in Quantum Dots. (Halperin)

deCARVALHO, ROBERT, B.S. (University of Arizona) 1996. (Harvard) 1999. Inelastic Scattering of Magnetically Trapped Atomic Chromium. (Doyle)

D’URSO, BRIAN RICHARD, B.S. (California Institute of Technology) 1998. Cooling and Self-Excitation of a One-Electron Oscillator. (Gabrielse)

FIETE, GREGORY ALAN, B.S. (Purdue University) 1997. (Harvard) 1999. Theory of Kondo Effect in Nanoscale Systems and Studies of III-V Diluated Magnetic Semiconductors. (Heller)

GABEL, CHRISTOPHER VAUGHN, A.B. (Princeton University) 1996. The speed of the flagellar rotary motor of Escherichia coli varies linearly with protonmotive force. (Berg)

GORDON, VERNITA DIANE, B.S. (Vanderbilt University) 1996. (Harvard) 2001. Measuring and Engineering Microscale Mechanical Responses and Properties of Bio-Relevant Materials. (Weitz)

HAILU, GIRMA, B.S. (Addis Ababa University). (Addis Ababa University) 1992. (Harvard) 1999. Chiral orbifold Construction of Field Theories with Extra Dimensions. (Georgi)

HEADRICK, MATTHEW PETER, B.A. (Princeton University) 1994. (Harvard) 1998. Noncummutative Solitons and Closed String Tachyons. (Minwalla)

HUMPHREY, MARC ANDREW, B.S. (Western Michigan University). 1997 (Harvard) 2000. Precision measurements with atomic hydrogen masers. (Walsworth)

LEPORE, NATASHA, B.S. (University of Montreal) Diffraction and Localization in Quantum Billiards. [Postscript: ~5.8MB] (Heller)

LEROY, BRIAN JAMES, Imaging Coherent Electron Flow Through Semiconductor Nanostructures. [PDF: ~10.17MB] (Westervelt)

LOPATNIKOVA, ANNA, B.S. (MIT) 1997. Spontaneously symmetry-broken states in the quantum Hall regime. (Halperin/Wen)

MADRAK, ROBYN LEIGH, B.A. (Cornell University) 1995 Measurement of the LambdaB Lifetime in the Decay Mode LambdaB-> Jpsi Lambda . (Franklin)

MALONEY, ALEXANDER DEWITT, Time-Dependent Backgrounds of String Theory . [PDF: ~6.73MB] (Strominger)

MAOZ, LIAT, B.S. (Hebrew University) 1995. Supersymmetric Configurations in the Rotating D1-D5 System and PP-Waves. [PDF: ~7.16 MB] (Maldacena/ Strominger)

MARINELLI, LUCA, Laurea ( University of Genova ) 1995. ( Harvard University ) 1997. Analysis of quasiparticles in the mixed state of a d-wave superconductor and NMR in pores with surface relaxation. (Halperin)

REFAEL, GIL, B.S. (Tel Aviv University) 1997. (Harvard) 2001. Randomness, Dissipation, and Quantum Fluctuations in Spin Chains and Mesoscopic Superconductor Arrays. (Fisher/Demler)

SHEN, NAN, B.A. (Rhode Island College) 1996. Photodisruption in biological tissues using femtosecond laser pulses . (Mazur)

TSERKOVNYAK, YAROSLAV, (University of British Columbia) 1999. (Harvard) 2001. Spin and Charge Transfer in Selected Nanostructures. [PDF: ~6.96MB] (Halperin)

VALENTINE, MEGAN THERESA, B.S. (Leigh University) 1997. (University of Pennsylvania) 1999. Mechanical and Microstructural Properties of Biological Materials . [PDF: ~3.5 MB] (Weitz)

VANICEK, JIRI JOSEPH LADISLAV, A.B. (Harvard College). (Harvard) 2000. Uniform semiclassical approximations and their applications . [PDF: 936 KB] (Heller)

WIJNHOLT, MARTIJN PAUL, B.S. (University of Warwick) 1996. Investigations in the physics of solitons in string theory. (Vafa)

ZABOW, GARY, B.S. (University of Cape Town) 1994. Charged-particle optics for neutral particles. (Prentiss)

ZIELINSKI, LUKASZ JOZEF, B.S. (Stanford University) 1997. Restriction and inhomogeneous magnetic fields in the nuclear magnetic resonance study of diffusion. (Halperin/Sen)

ABRAHAM, MATHEW CHEERAN, B.S. (Haverford College) 1997 (Harvard University) 2000. Hot Electron Transpoort and Current Sensing. (Westervelt)

BOWDEN, NATHANIEL SEAN, B.S., M.S. (University of Auckland) 1996. Production of Cold Antihydrogen During the Positron Cooling of Antiprotons. (Gabrielse)

CHANG, SPENCER, B.S. (Stanford University) 1999. (Harvard) 2001. Topics in Little Higgs Physics . [PDF: 467 KB] (Georgi)

DZHOSYUK, SERGEI N., B.S.(Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology)1995.(Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology)1997. M agnetic trapping of neutrons for measurement of the neutron lifetime. (Doyle)

EGOROV, DMITRO MIKHAILOVICH, B.S. (Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology) 1998. Buffer-Gas Cooling of Diatomic Molecules . [PDF: ~4.1 MB] (Doyle)

FIETE, ILA RANI, B.S. (University of Michigan) 1997. (Harvard University) 2000. Learning and coding in biological neural networks . (Fisher/Seung)

GARDEL, MARGARET LISE, B.A. (Brown University) 1998. (Harvard University) 2003. Elasticity of F-actin Networks. (Weitz)

HSU, MING F., A.B. ( Princeton University) 1999. Charged Colloidal Particles in Non-polar Solvents and Self-assembled Colloidal Model Systems . (Weitz)

KING, GAVIN MCLEAN, B.S. (Bates College) 1997 (Dartmouth college) 2001. Probing the Longitudinal Resolution of a Solid State nanopore Microscope with Nanotubes. (Golovchenko)

MANLEY, SULIANA, B.A.(Rice University) 1997. (Harvard University) 2001. Mechanical stability of fractal colloid gels. (Weitz)

MICHNIAK,JR.,ROBERT ALLEN, B.S. (University of Michigan) 1997. (Harvard University) 2001. Enhanced Buffer Gas Loading: Cooling and Trapping of Atoms with Low Effective Magnetic Moments. (Doyle)

MODY, AREEZ MINOO, B.S. (Caltech) 1994. Thermodynamics of ultracold singly charged particles. (Heller)

ODOM, BRIAN CARL, B.S. (Stanford University) 1995. (Harvard University) 1999. Measurement of the Electron g-Factor in a Sub-Kelvin Cylindrical Cavity . (Gabrielse)

OXLEY, PAUL KEVIN, B.A. (Oxford University) 1994. Production of Slow Antihydrogen from Cold Antimatter Plasmas . [PDF: ~5.9 MB](Gabrielse)

ROESER, CHRISTOPHER ALLAN DEWALD, B.A. (University of Chicago) 1998. Ultrafast Dynamics and Optical Control of Coherent Phonons in Tellurium. (Mazur)

SHPYRKO, OLEG GRIGORY, B.S. (Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology) 1995. Experimental X-Ray Studies of Liquid Surfaces. (Pershan)

SON, JOHN SANG WON, B.A. (Columbia University) 1996. Superstring Theory in AdS_3 and Plane Waves . [PDF: ~450 KB](Minwalla)

ZELEVINSKY, TANYA, S.B. (MIT) 1999. (Harvard University) 2001. Helium 2^3 P Fine Structure Measurement in a Discharge Cell. (Gabrielse)

ZUMBÜHL, DOMINIK MAX, Diploma, M.S. (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), 1998. Coherence and Spin in GaAs Quantum Dots . [PDF: ~2.7 MB] (Marcus)

ANDRÉ, AXEL PHILIPPE, M.S. (Imperial College) 1997. (HarvardUniversity) 1999. Nonclassical States of Light and Atomic Ensembles: Generation and New Applications. (Lukin)

BIERCUK, MICHAEL JORDAN, Local Gate Control in Carbon Nanotube Quantum Devices. (Marcus)

CHEN, HAOYU HENRY, (University Maryland) 1998. (Harvard University) 2000. Surfaces in Solid Dynamics and Fluid Statics . [PDF: ~2.5 MB] (Brenner)

CONRAD, JACINTA CARMEL, S.B. (University of Chicago) 1999. ( Harvard University) 2002. Mechanical Response and Dynamic Arrest in Colloidal Glasses and Gels. (Weitz)

DASGUPTA, BIVASH R., B.S.C. (Presidency College) 1995. (Indian Institute of Technology) 1997. Microrheology and Dynamic Light Scattering Studies of Polymer Solutions. (Weitz)

HANCOX, CINDY IRENE, B.A. (University of California, Berkeley) 1997. ( Harvard University) 2002. Magnetic trapping of transition-metal and rare-earth atoms using buffer-gas loading. (Doyle)

HOUCK, ANDREW A., B.S.E. (Princeton University) 2000. Novel Techniques Towards Nuclear Spin Detection. (Marcus/Chuang)

LEE, HAK-HO, B.S. (Seoul National University) 1998. Microelectronic/Microfluidic Hybrid System for the Manipulation of Biological Cells. (Westervelt).

NEITZKE, ANDREW M., A.B. (Princeton University) 1998. Toward a Nonperturbative Topological String. (Vafa)

PODOLSKY, DANIEL, B.S. ( Stanford University) 1998. (Harvard University) 2000. Interplay of Magnetism and Superconductivity in Strongly Correlated Electron Systems. (Demler)  

RAPPOCCIO, SALVATORE ROCCO, B.A. (Boston University ) 2000. Measurement of the ttbar Production Cross Section in ppbar Collisions at sqrt (s) = 1.96 TeV. (Foland)

SPECK, ANDREW J., (Williams College) 2000. (Harvard) 2002. Two Techniques Produce Slow Antihydrogen . [PDF: ~9.2 MB] (Gabrielse)

TEE, SHANG YOU, B.S. ( Columbia University) 1995. (Stevens Institute of Technology) 1997. Velocity Fluctuations in Sedimentation and Fluidized Beds. (Weitz)

THOMPSON, DAVID MATTOON, (Yale) 1999 B.S./M.S. Holography and Related Topics in String Theory . [PDF: ~440 KB] (Strominger)

ZHU, CHENG, B.S. ( Tsinghua University) 1996. (Chinese Science and Technology University) 1997. Gas phase atomic and molecular process . (Lukin/Dalgarno)

BABICH, DANIEL MICHAEL, A.B. ( Princeton University) 2002. ( Harvard University) 2005. Cosmological Non-Gaussianity and Reionization . (Loeb)

BARNETT, RYAN LEE, B.S. ( Ohio State University) 2000. ( Harvard University) 2002. Studies of Strongly correlated Systems: From First Principles Computations to Effective Hamiltonians and Novel Quantum Phases. (Demler)

BOWLES, ANITA MARIE, B.S. ( University of Colorado) 1996. ( Harvard University) 1998. Stress Evolution in Thin Films of a Polymer . (Weitz/Spaepen)

CHIJIOKE, AKOBUIJE DOUGLAS EZIANI, B.S.E. ( Duke University) 1996. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 1998. Infrared absorption of compressed hydrogen deuteride and calibration of the ruby pressure gauge . [PDF: ~2.6 MB](Silvera)  

CYRIER, MICHELLE CHRISTINE, B.S. ( University of California , Berkeley) 2000. Physics From Geometry: Non-Kahler Compactifications, Black Rings and dS/CFT. (Strominger)

DESAI, MICHAEL MANISH, B.A. ( Princeton University ) 1999. ( University of Cambridge ) 2000. Evolution in Large Asexual Populations. (Murray/Fisher)

EISAMAN, MATTHEW D, A.B. (Princeton) 2000. (Harvard University) 2004. Generation, Storage and Retrieval of Nonclassical States of Light Using Atomic Ensembles . [PDF: ~7 MB] (Lukin)

HOLLOWAY, AYANA TAMU, A.B. ( Princeton University) 1998. The First Direct Limit on the t Quark Lifetime. ( Franklin)

HOWARD, ANDREW WILLIAM, S.B. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 1998. (Harvard University) 2001. Astronomical Searches for Nanosecond Optical Pulses. (Horowitz)

HUANG, JIAN, BS (Jilin University, P.R.China)1998. Theories of Imaging Electrons in Nanostructures . [PDF: ~8.4 MB] (Heller)

JONES, GREGORY CHAPMAN, B.S. (University of Missouri, Columbia) 2001. Time-dependent solutions in gravity . (Strominger)

KILIC, CAN, B.S. ( Bogazici University) 2000. Naturalness of Unknown Physics: Theoretical Models and Experimental Signatures. (Arkani-Hamed)  

 LAKADAMYALI, MELIKE, B.S. ( University of Texas , Austin ) 2001. Real-Time Imaging of Viral Infection and Intracellular Transport in Live Cells. (Zhuang)

MAHBUBANI, RAKHI, MSci (University of Bristol) 2000. Beyond the Standard Model: The Pragmatic Approach to the Gauge Hierarchy Problem . [PDF: ~1.5 MB] (Arkani-Hamed)

MARSANO, JOSEPH DANIEL, B.S. (University of Michigan) 2001. (Harvard University) 2004. The Phase Structure of Yang-Mills Theories and their Gravity Duals. (Minwalla)

NGUYEN, SCOTT VINH, B.S. (University of Texan, Austin) 2000. Buffer gas loading and evaporative cooling in the multi-partial-wave regeime. (Doyle)  

PAPADODIMAS, KYRIAKOS, B.A. ( University of Athens ) 2000. Phase Transitions in Large N Gauge Theories and String Theory Duals. (Minwalla)

PARROTT, ROBERT ELLIS, B.A. (Dartmouth College) 1997. (Dartmouth College) 1999. Topics in Electron Dynamics in Moderate Magnetic Fields . (Heller)  

POTOK, RONALD MICHAEL, B.S. ( University of Texas Austin) 2000. Probing Many Body Effects in Semiconductor Nanostructures. (Goldhaber-Gordon/Marcus)

RUST, MICHAEL JOSEPH, B.S. ( Harvey Mudd College ). Fluorescence Techniques for Single Virus Particle Tracking and Sub-Diffraction Limit Imaging. (Zhuang)

SAGE, JENNIFER NICOLE FUES, B.A. ( Washington University ) 1997. ( Harvard University ) 2000. Measurements of Lateral Boron Diffusion in Silicon and Stress Effects on Epitaxial Growth . (Aziz/Kaxiras)

TAYLOR, JACOB MASON, A.B. ( Harvard College ) 2000. Hyperfine Interactions and Quantum Information Processing in Quantum Dots. (Lukin)

THALER, JESSE KEMPNER, S.B. (Brown University). ( Harvard University) 2004. Symmetry Breaking at the Energy Frontier . (Arkani-Hamed)

THAMBYAHPILLAI, SHIYAMALA NAYAGI, M.S. (Imperial College) 1999. Brane Worlds and Deconstruction. (Randall)

VAISHNAV, JAY Y., B.S. (University of Maryland) 2000. ( Harvard University) 2002. Topics in Low Energy Quantum Scattering Theory. [PDF:  ~3.8 MB] (Heller)

VITELLI, VINCENZO, B.S. (Imperial College) 2000. Crystals , Liquid Crystals and Superfluid Helium on Curved Surfaces. (Nelson)  

WALKER, DEVIN GEORGE EDWARD, B.S. (Hampton University) 1998. ( Harvard University ) 2001. Theories on the Origin of Mass and Dark Matter. (Arkani-Hamed/Georgi)

WHITE, OLIVIA LAWRENCE, B.S. ( Stanford University ) 1997. Towards Real Spin Glasses: Ground States and Dynamics. (Fisher)

YIN, XI, B.S. (University of Science and Technology of China) 2001. Black Holes, Anti de Sitter Space, and Topological Strings. (Strominger)

YANG, LIANG, B.S. (Yale University) 1999. ( Harvard University) 2002. Towards Precision Measurement of the Neutron Lifetime using Magnetically Trapped Neutrons. (Doyle)

YAVIN, ITAY, B. Sc. (York University, Ontario) 2002. Spin Determination at the Large Hadron Collider. [PDF: ~662 KB] (Arkani-Hamed)

CHILDRESS, LILIAN ISABEL, B.A. (Harvard College) 2001. Coherent manipulation of single quantum systems in the solid state . (Lukin)

CLARK, DAMON ALISTAIR Biophysical Analysis of Thermostatic Behavior in C. elegans . (Samuel) 

ERNEBJERG, MORTEN, MPhys (University of Oxford) 2002. Field Theory Methods in Two-Dimensional and Heterotic String Theories . (Strominger)

FARKAS, DANIEL MARTIN, B.S. (Yale University) 2000. An Optical Reference and Frequency Comb for Improved Spectroscopy of Helium . (Gabrielse)

GINSBERG, NAOMI SHAUNA, B.A. (University of Toronto) 2000. (Harvard University) 2002. Manipulations with spatially compressed slow light pulses in Bose-Einstein condensates. (Hau)

HOFFMAN, LAUREN K., B.S. (California Institute of Technology) 2002. Orbital Dynamics in Galaxy Mergers . (Loeb)

HUANG, LISA LI FANG, B.S. (UCLA) 1999. Black Hole Attractors and Gauge Theories . (Strominger)

HUNT, THOMAS PETER, B.S. (Stanford University) 2000. Integrated Circuit / Microfluidic Chips for Dielectric Manipulation . (Westervelt)

IMAMBEKOV, ADILET, B.S. (Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology) 2002. Strongly Correlated Phenomena with Ultracold Atomic Gases . (Demler)

JAFFERIS, DANIEL LOUIS, B.S. (Yale) 2001. Topological String Theory from D-Brane Bound States . (Vafa)

JENKS, ROBERT A., B.A. (Williams College) 1998. Mechanical and neural representations of tactile information in the awake behaving rat somatosensory system . (Stanley/Weitz)

LEBEDEV, ANDRE, B.S. (University of Virginia) 1999. Ratio of Pion Kaon Production in Proton Carbon Interactions . (Feldman) 

LIU, JIAYU, B.S. (Nanjing University of China) 2002. (Harvard) 2004. Microscopic origin of the elasticity of F-actin networks . (Weitz)

MATHEY, LUDWIG GUENTER, Vordiplom (University of Heidelberg) 1998. Quantum phases of low-dimensional ultra-cold atom systems. (Castro-Neto/Halperin)

MAXWELL, STEPHEN EDWARD Buffer Gas Cooled Atoms and Molecules: Production, Collisional Studies, and Applications. (Doyle)

MO, YINA, B.S. (University of Science and Technology China) 2002. Theoretical Studies of Growth Processes and Electronic Properties of Nanostructures on Surfaces. (Kaxiras)

PARUCHURI, SRINIVAS S., B. S. (Cornell) 2000. (Harvard University) 2002. Deformations of Free Jets . (Brenner//Weitz)

QIAN, JIANG Localization in a Finite Inhomogeneous Quantum Wire and Diffusion through Random Spheres with Partially Absorbing Surfaces. (Halperin)

RITTER, WILLIAM GORDON, B.A. (University of Chicago) 1999. Euclidean Quantum Field Theory: Curved Spacetimes and Gauge Fields. (Jaffe)

SARAIKIN, KIRILL ANATOLYEVICH, B.S. (Moscow Institute for Physics and Technology) 1999. Black Holes, Entropy Functionals, and Topological Strings. (Vafa)

SCHULZ, ALEXIA EIRINN, B.A. (Boston University ) 1998. (Harvard University) 2000. Astrophysical Probes of Dark Energy. (White/Huth)

SCHUSTER, PHILIP CHRISTIAN, S.B. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 2003. ( Harvard University ) 2006. Uncovering the New Standard Model at the LHC . (Arkani-Hamed)

SEUN, SIN MAN, B.A. (Smith College) 2000.  B.E. (Dartmouth College) 2000. Measurement of p-K Ratios from the NuMI Target . (Feldman)

SHERMAN, DANIEL JOSEPH, B.A. (University of Pennsylvania ) 2001. Measurement of the Top Quark Pair Production Cross Section with 1.12 fb -1 of pp Collisions at sqrt (s) = 1.96 TeV. ( Franklin )

SIMONS, AARON, B.S. (California Institute of Technology) 2002. Black Hole Superconformal Quantum Mechanics. (Strominger)

SLOWE, CHRISTOPHER BRIAN, AB/AM (Harvard University). Experiments and Simulations in Cooling and Trapping of a High Flux Rubidium Beam. (Hau)

STRIEHL, PIERRE SEBASTIAN, Diploma (University of Heidelberg) 2004. A high-flux cold-atom source for area-enclosing atom interferometry. (Prentiss)

TORO, NATALIA, S.B. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 2003. Fundamental Physics at the Threshold of Discovery . (Arkani-Hamed) 

WISSNER-GROSS, ALEXANDER DAVID, S.B. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 2003. (Harvard University ) 2004. Physically Programmable Surfaces. (Kaxiras)

WONG, WESLEY PHILIP, B.S. (University of British Columbia) 1999. Exploring single-molecule interactions through 3D optical trapping and tracking: from thermal noise to protein refolding . (Evans/Nelson)

ZAW, INGYIN, B.A. (Harvard College) 2001.  (Harvard University) 2003. Search for the Flavor Changing Neutral Current Decay t → qZ in  pp Collisions at √s = 1.96 TeV. (Franklin)

BRAHMS, NATHANIEL CHARLES, Sc.B. (Brown University) 2001. Trapping of 1 μ β Atoms Using Buffer Gas Loading . (Doyle, Greytak)

BURBANK, KENDRA S., B.A. (Bryn Mawr College) 2000. (Harvard University) 2004. Self-organization mechanisms in the assembly and maintenance of bipolar spindles. (Fisher/Mitchison)

CAMPBELL, WESLEY C., B.S. (Trinity University) 2001. Magnetic Trapping of Imidogen Molecules . (Doyle)

CHAISANGUANTHUM, KRIS SOMBOON, B.S. (Harvard University ) 2001. An Enquiry Concerning Charmless Semileptonic Decays of Bottom Mesons . (Morii)

CHANG, DARRICK, B.S. (Stanford University) 2001. Controlling atom-photon interactions in nano-structured media. (Lukin)

CHOU, JOHN PAUL, A.B. (Princeton University) 2002. (Harvard University) 2006. Production Cross Section Measurement using Soft Electron Tagging in pp Collisions at √s  = 1.96 TeV . (Franklin)

DEL MAESTRO, ADRIAN GIUSEPPE, B.S. (University of Waterloo) 2002,  (University of Waterloo) 2003. The Superconductor-Metal Quantum Phase Transition in Ultra-Narrow Wires . (Sachdev)

DI CARLO, LEONARDO, B.S. (Stanford University) 1999. (Stanford University) 2000. Mesocopic Electronics Beyond DC Transport . (Marcus)

DUNKEL, EMILY REBECCA, B.S. (University of California Los Angeles) 2001. Quantum Phenomena in Condensed Phase Systems . (Sachdev/Coker)

FINKLER, ILYA GRIGORYEVICH, B.S. (Ohio State University) 2001. Nonlinear Phenomena in Two-Dimensional and Quasi-Two-Dimensional Electron Systems. (Halperin)

FITZPATRICK, ANDREW LIAM, B.S. (University of Chicago) 2004. (Harvard University) 2005. Broken Symmetries and Signatures . (Randall)

GARG, ARTI, A.B., B.S. (Stanford University) 2000. (Stanford University) 2001. (University of Washington) 2002. Microlensing Candidate Selection and Detection Efficiency for the Super MACHO Dark Matter Search . (Stubbs)

GERSHOW, MARC HERMAN, B.S. (Stanford University) 2001. Trapping Single Molecules with a Solid State Nanopore . (Golovchenko)

GRANT, LARS, B.S. (McGill University) 2001. Aspects of Quantization in AdS/CFT . (Vafa/Minwalla)

GUICA, MONICA MARIA, B.A. (University of Chicago) 2003. Supersymmetric Attractors, Topological Strings, and the M5-Brane CFT . (Strominger)

HANNEKE, DAVID ANDREW, B.S. (Case Western) 2001. (Harvard University) 2003. Cavity Control in a Single-Electron Quantum Cyclotron: An Improved Measurement of the Electron Magnetic Moment. (Gabrielse) 

HATCH, KRISTI RENEE, B.S. (Brigham Young University) 2004 Probing the mechanical stability of DNA by unzipping and rezipping the DNA at constant force. (Prentiss)

HOHLFELD, EVAN BENJAMIN, B.S. (Stanford University) 2001. Creasing, Point-bifurcations, and the Spontaneous Breakdown of Scale-invariance . (Weitz/Mahadevan)

KATIFORI, ELENI, Ptichion (University of Athens) 2002.  (Harvard University) 2004. Vortices, rings and pollen grains: Elasticity and statistical physics in soft matter .  (Nelson)

LAPAN, JOSHUA MICHAEL, B.S. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 2002.  (Harvard University) 2006. Topics in Two-Dimensional Field Theory and Heterotic String Theory .  (Strominger)

LE SAGE, DAVID ANTHONY, B.S. (University of California Berkeley) 2002. First Antihydrogen Production within a Combined Penning-Ioffe Trap . (Gabrielse)

LI, WEI, B.S. (Peking University) 1999. (Peking University) 2002. Gauge/Gravity Correspondence and Black Hole Attractors in Various Dimensions . (Strominger)

LU, PETER JAMES, B.A. (Princeton University) 2000.  (Harvard University) 2002. Gelation and Phase Separation of Attractive Colloids . (Weitz)

MUNDAY, JEREMY NATHAN, B.S. (Middle Tennessee State University) 2003.  (Harvard University) 2005. Attractive, repulsive, and rotational QED forces: experiments and calculations . (Hau/Capasso)

RAJU, SUVRAT, B.S. (St. Stephen’s College) 2002.  (Harvard University) 2003. Supersymmetric Partition Functions in the AdS/CFT Conjecture . (Arkani-Hamed/Denef/Minwalla)

RISTROPH, TRYGVE GIBBENS, B.S. (University of Texas at Austin) 1999. Capture and Ionization Detection of Laser-Cooled Rubidium Atoms with a Charged Suspended Carbon Nanotube . (Hau)

SVACHA, GEOFFRY THOMAS, B.S. (University of Michigan) 2002. Nanoscale nonlinear optics using silica nanowires . (Mazur)

TURNER, ARI M., B.A. (Princeton University) 2000. Vortices Vacate Vales and other Singular Tales . (Demler)

BAUMGART, MATTHEW TODD, B.S. (University of Chicago) 2002.  The Use of Effective Variables in High Energy Physics . (Georgi/Arkani-Hamed)

BOEHM, JOSHUA ADAM ALPERN, B.S.E. (Case Western Reserve University) 2003. (Harvard University) 2005. A Measurement of Electron Neutrino Appearance with the MINOS Experimen t. (Feldman)

CHEUNG, CLIFFORD WAYNE, B.S. (Yale University) 2004. (Harvard University) 2006. From the Action to the S-Matrix . (Georgi/Arkani-Hamed)

DORET, STEPHEN CHARLES B.A. (Williams College) 2002, A.M. (Harvard University) 2006. A buffer-gas cooled Bose-Einstein condensate . (Doyle)

FALK, ABRAM LOCKHART, B.A. (Swarthmore College) 2003. (Harvard University) 2004. Electrical Plasmon Detection and Phase Transitions in Nanowires . (Park)

HAFEZI, MOHAMMAD, (Sharif University of Technology, Tehran - Ecole Polytechnique, Paris) 2003. (Harvard University) 2005, Strongly interacting systems in AMO physics . (Lukin)

HECKMAN, JONATHAN JACOB, A.B. (Princeton University) 2004. (Harvard University) 2005 F-theory Approach to Particle Physics . (Vafa)

HICKEN, MALCOLM STUART, B.S. (Brigham Young University) 1999. (Harvard University) 2001. Doubling the Nearby Supernova Type Ia Sample . (Stubbs/Kirshner)

HOHENSEE, MICHAEL ANDREW, B.A. (New York University) 2002. (Harvard University) 2004. Testing Fundamental Lorentz Symmetries of Light . (Walsworth)

JIANG, LIANG, B.S. (California Institute of Technology) 2004.  T owards Scalable Quantum Communication and Computation: Novel Approaches and Realizations . (Lukin)

KAPLAN, JARED DANIEL, B.S. (Stanford University) 2005. Aspects of Holography . (Georgi/Arkani-Hamed)

KLEIN, MASON JOSEPH, B.S. (Calvin College) 2002. Slow and Stored Light in Atomic Vapor Cells . (Walsworth)

KRICH, JACOB JONATHAN, B.A. (Swarthmore College) 2000, MMath (Oxford University) 2003. (Harvard University) 2004. Electron and Nuclear Spins in Semiconductor Quantum Dots . (Halperin)

LAHIRI, SUBHANEIL, M.A. (Oxford University) 2003. Black holes from fluid mechanics. (Yin/Minwalla)

LIN, YI-CHIA, B.S. (National Taiwan Normal University) 1999. (National Tsing Hua University) 2001. Elasticity of Biopolymer Networks. (Weitz)

LUO, LINJIAO, B.S. (University of Science and Technology China) 2003. Thermotactic behavior in C. elegans and Drosophila larvae. (Samuel)

PADI, MEGHA, B.S. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 2003. A Black Hole Quartet: New Solutions and Applications to String Theory. (Strominger)

PASTRAS, GEORGIOS, DIPLOMA (University of Patras) 2002. (Harvard University) 2004. Thermal Field Theory Applications in Modern Aspects of High Energy Physics.  (Denef/Arkani-Hamed)

PEPPER, RACHEL E., B.S. (Cambridge) 2004. Splashing, Feeding, Contracting: Drop impact and fluid dynamics of Vorticella (Stone)

SHAFEE, REBECCA, B.S. (California Institute of Technology) 2002. (Harvard University) 2004. Measuring Black Hole Spin. (Narayan/McClintock)

WANG, CHRISTINE YI-TING, B.S. (National Taiwan University) 2002. (Harvard University) 2004. Multiode dynamics in Quantum Cascade Lasers: from coherent instability to mode locking. (Hoffman/Capasso)

ZHANG, YIMING, B.S. (Peking University) 2003. (Harvard University) 2006. Waves, Particles, and Interactions in Reduced Dimensions . (Marcus)

BARTHEL, CHRISTIAN, Diploma (University of Kaiserslautern) 2005. Control and Fast Measurement of Spin Qubits . (Marcus)

CAVANAUGH, STEVEN, B.S. (Rutgers College) 2005. (Harvard University) 2006. A Measurement of Electron Neutrino Appearance in the MINOS Experiment after Four Years of Data . (Feldman)

CHERNG, ROBERT, WEN-CHIEH, B.S. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 2004. Non-Equilibrium Dynamics and Novel Quantum Phases of Multicomponent Ultracold Atoms . (Demler)

FOLETTI, SANDRA ELISABETTA, Diploma (Federal Institute of Technology Zurich) 2004. Manipulation and Coherence of a Two-Electron Logical Spin Qubit Using GaAs Double Quantum Dots . (Yacoby)

GIRASH, JOHN ANDREW, B.S. (University of Western Ontario) 1990. (University of Western Ontario) 1993. A Fokker-Planck Study of Dense Rotating Stellar Clusters . (Stubbs/Field)

GOODSELL, ANNE LAUREL, B.A. (Bryn Mawr College) 2002. (Harvard University) 2004. Capture of Laser-Cooled Atoms with a Carbon Nanotube . (Hau)

GORSHKOV, ALEXEY VYACHESLAVOVICH, A.B. (Harvard College) 2004. (Harvard University) 2006. Novel Systems and Methods for Quantum Communication, Quantum Computation, and Quantum Simulation . (Lukin)

GUISE, NICHOLAS DAMIEN SUN-WO, B.S. (California Institute of Technology) 2003. Spin-Flip Resolution Achieved with a One-Proton Self-Excited Oscillator. (Gabrielse)

HARTMAN, THOMAS EDWARD, A.B. (Princeton University) 2004. Extreme Black Hole Holography. (Strominger)

HIGH, FREDRICK WILLIAM, B.A. (University of California Berkeley) 2004. The Dawn of Wide-Field Sunyaev-Zel’dovich Cluster Surveys: Efficient Optical Follow-Up. (Stubbs)

HOOGERHEIDE, DAVID PAUL, B.S. (Western Michigan University) 2004. Stochastic Processes in Solid State Nanoporers. (Golovchenko)

HUMMON, MATTHEW TAYLOR, B.A. (Amherst College) 2002, (Harvard University) 2005. Magnetic trapping of atomic nitrogen and cotrapping of NH. (Doyle)

KATS, YEVGENY, B.S. (Bar-Ilan University) 2003. (Bar-Ilan University) 2005. Physics of Conformal Field Theories. (Georgi/Arkani-Hamed)

KOROLEV, KIRILL SERGEEVICH, B.S. (Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology) 2004. Statistical Physics of Topological Emulsions and Expanding Populations. (Nelson)

LAIRD, EDWARD ALEXANDER, M.Phys (University of Oxford) 2002. (Harvard University) 2005. Electrical Control of Quantum Dot Spin Qubits . (Marcus)

LAROCHELLE, PHILIPPE, B.S. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 2003. Machines and Methods for Trapping Antihydrogen. (Gabrielse)

LI, GENE-WEI, B.S. (National Tsinghua University) 2004. Single-Molecule Spatiotemporal Dynamics in Living Bacteria. (Nelson/Xie)

MAZE RIOS, JERONIMO, B.S. (Pont Catholic University), 2002. (Pont Catholic University) 2004. Quantum Manipulation of Nitrogen-Vacancy Centers in Diamond: from Basic Properties to Applications. (Lukin)

PATTERSON, DAVID, A.B. (Harvard College) 1997. Buffer Gas Cooled Beams and Cold Molecular Collisions. (Doyle)  

PENG, AMY WAN-CHIH, B.Sc. (University of Auckland), (Australian National University) 2005. Optical Lattices with Quantum Gas Microscope . (Greiner)

QI, YANG, B.S. (Tsinghua University) 2005. Spin and Charge Fluctuations in Strongly Correlated Systems . (Sachdev)

ROJAS, ENRIQUE ROBERTSON, B.A. (University of Pennsylvania) 2003. The Physics of Tip-Growing Cells. (Nelson/Dumais)

SEO, JIHYE, B.S. (Korea Adv. Inst. of Science & Technology) 2003. (Harvard University) 2010. D-Branes, Supersymmetry Breaking, and Neutrinos . (Vafa)

SIMON, JONATHAN, B.S. (California Institute of Technology) 2004. Cavity QED with Atomic Ensembles. (Lukin/Vuletic)

SLATYER, TRACY ROBYN, Ph.B. (Australian National University) 2005. (Harvard University) 2008. Signatures of a New Force in the Dark Matter Sector. (Finkbeiner)

TAFVIZI, ANAHITA, B.S. (Sharif University of Technology) 2004. Single-Molecule and Computational Studies of Protein-DNA Interactions. (Cohen/Mirny/van Oijen)

WINKLER, MARK THOMAS, B.S.E. (Case Western Reserve) 2004. Non-Equilibrium Chalcogen Concentrations in Silicon: Physical Structure, Electronic Transport, and Photovoltaic Potential. (Mazur)

ANNINOS, DIONYSIOS Theodoros,B.A. (Cornell University) 2006, (Harvard University) 2008. Classical and Quantum Symmetries of de Sitter Space . (Strominger) >

BAKR, WASEEM S., B.S. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 2005. Microscopic studies of quantum phase transitions in optical lattices . (Greiner)

BARAK, GILAD, B.S. (Hebrew University) 2000, (Tel Aviv University) 2006. Momentum resolved tunneling study of interaction effects in ID electron systems .(Yacoby)

BARANDES, JACOB AARON, B.A. (ColumbiaUniversity) 2004. Exploring Supergravity Landscapes . (Denef)

BISWAS, RUDRO RANA, B.S. (Calcutta University) 2003, (Harvard University) 2011. Explorations in Dirac Fermions and Spin Liquids . (Sachdev)

CHEN, PEIQIU, B.S. (University of Science and Technology China) 2004, (Harvard University) 2005. Molecular evolution and thermal adaptation . (Nelson/Shakhnovich)

FREUDIGER, CHRISTIAN WILHELM, Diploma (Technische Universitat of München) 2005, (Harvard University) 2007. Stimulated Raman Scattering (SRS) Microscopy . (Zhuang/Xie)

GALLICCHIO, JASON RICHARD, B.S. (University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign) 1999, (University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign) 2001. A Multivariate Approach to Jet Substructure and Jet Superstructure . (Schwartz)

GLENDAY, ALEXANDER, B.A. (Williams College) 2002. Progress in Tests of Fundamental Physics Using  a 3He and 129Xe Zeeman Maser . (Stubbs/Walsworth)

GOLDMAN, JOSHUA DAVID, A.B. (Cornell University) 2002, (University of Cambridge) 2003, (Imperial College London) 2004. Planar Penning Traps with Anharmonicity Compensation for Single-Electron Qubits. (Gabrielse)

HUH, YEJIN, B.S. (Yale University) 2006, (Harvard University) 2008. Quantum Phase Transitions in d-wave Superconductors and Antiferromagnetic Kagome Lattices . (Sachdev)

KASHIF, LASHKAR, B.S. (Yale University) 2003. Measurement of the Z boson cross-section in the dimuon channel in pp collisions at sqrt{s} = 7 TeV . (Huth)

KAZ, DAVID MARTIN, B.S. (University of Arizona) 2003, (Harvard University) 2008. Colloidal Particles and Liquid Interfaces: A Spectrum of Interactions. (Manoharan)

KOLTHAMMER, WILLIAM STEVEN, B.S. (Harvey Mudd College) 2004, (Harvard University) 2006. Antimatter Plasmas Within a Penning-Ioffe Trap . (Gabrielse)

LEE-BOEHM, CORRY LOUISE, B.S.E. (University of Colorado) 2004, (Harvard University) 2011. B0 Meson Decays to rho0 K*0, f0 K*0, and rho- K*+, Including Higher K* Resonances . (Morii)

MARTINEZ-OUTSCHOORN, VERENA INGRID, B.A. (Harvard University) 2004, (Harvard University) 2007. Measurement of the Charge Asymmetry of W Bosons Produced in pp Collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS Detector . (Guimaraes da Costa)

MCCONNELL, ROBERT PURYEAR, B.S. (Stanford University) 2005, (Harvard University) 2007. Laser-Controlled Charge-Exchange Production of Antihydrogen . (Gabrielse)

MCGORTY, RYAN, B.S. (University of Massachusetts) 2005, (Harvard University) 2008. Colloidal Particles at Fluid Interfaces and the Interface of Colloidal Fluids . (Manoharan)

METLITSKI, MAXIM A., B.Sc. (University of British Columbia) 2003, (University of British Columbia) 2005. Aspects of Critical Behavior of Two Dimensional Electron Systems . (Sachdev)

MOON, EUN GOOK, B.S. (Seoul National University) 2005 Superfluidity in Strongly Correlated Systems . (Sachdev)

PETERSON, COURTNEY MARIE, B.S. (Georgetown University) 2002,(University of Cambridge) 2003, (Imperial College London) 2004, (Harvard University) 2007. Testing Multi-Field Inflation . (Stubbs/Tegmark)

PIELAWA, SUSANNE, Diploma (UNIVERSITY OF ULM) 2006, (Harvard University) 2009. Metastable Phases and Dynamics of Low-DimensionalStrongly-Correlated Atomic Quantum Gases . (Sachdev)

PRASAD, SRIVAS, A.B. (Princeton University) 2005, (Harvard University) 2007. Measurement of the Cross-Section of W Bosons Produced in pp Collisions at √s=7 TeV With the ATLAS Detector . (Guimaraes da Costa)

ROMANOWSKY, MARK, B.A. (Swarthmore College) 2003. High Throughput Microfluidics for Materials Synthesis . (Weitz)

SMITH, BEN CAMPBELL, B.A. (Harvard University) 2005. Measurement of the Transverse Momentum Spectrum of W Bosons Produced at √s = 7 TeV using the ATLAS Detector . (Morii)

TANJI, HARUKA, B.S. (University of Tokyo) 2002, (University of Tokyo) 2005, (Harvard University) 2009. Few-Photon Nonlinearity with an Atomic Ensemble in an Optical Cavity . (Lukin/Vuletic)

TRODAHL, HALVAR JOSEPH, B. Sc. (Victoria University) 2005, (Harvard University) 2008. Low Temperature Scanning Probe Microscope for Imaging Nanometer Scale Electronic Devices. (Westervelt)

WILLIAMS, TESS, B.Sc. (Stanford University) 2005. Nanoscale Electronic Structure of Cuprate Superconductors Investigated with Scanning Tunneling Spectroscopy. (Hoffman)

ANDERSEN, JOSEPH, B.S. (Univ. of Queensland) 1999. Investigations of the Convectively Coupled Equatorial Waves and the Madden-Julian Oscillation. (Huth)

BREDBERG, IRENE, M.PHYS., M.Sc. (Univ. of Oxford) 2006, 2007. The Einstein and the Navier-Stokes Equations:  Connecting the Two . (Strominger)

CHURCHILL, HUGH, B.A., B.M. (Oberlin College) 2006. Quantum Dots in Gated Nanowires and Nanotubes. (Marcus)

CONNOLLY, COLIN Inelastic Collisions of Atomic Antimony, Aluminum, Eerbium and Thulium Below . (Doyle)

CORDOVA, CLAY, B.A. (Columbia University) 2007. Supersymmetric Spectroscopy. (Vafa)

DILLARD, COLIN, S.B. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 2006. Quasiparticle Tunneling and High Bias Breakdown in the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect. (Kastner/Silvera)

DOWD, JASON, A.B. (Washington Univ.) 2006;(Harvard Univ.) 2008. Interpreting Assessments of Student Learning in the Introductory Physics Classroom and Laboratory. (Mazur)

GOLDSTEIN, GARRY Applications of Many Body Dynamics of Solid State Systems to Quantum Metrology and Computation (Chamon/Sachdev)

GUREVICH, YULIA, B.S. (Yale University) 2005. Preliminary Measurements for an Electron EDM Experiment in ThO. (Gabrielse)

KAGAN, MICHAEL, B.S. (Univ. of Michigan) 2006; (Harvard Univ.) 2008. Measurement of the W ± Z production cross section and limits on anomalous triple gauge couplings at √S = 7 TeV using the ATLAS detector. (Morii)

LIN, TONGYAN, S.B. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 2007; (Harvard Univ.) 2009. Signals of Particle Dark Matter. (Finkbeiner)

McCLURE, DOUGLAS, B.A. (Harvard University) 2006; (Harvard University) 2008. Interferometer-Based Studies of Quantum Hall Phenomena. (Marcus)

MAIN, ELIZABETH, B.S.(Harvey Mudd College) 2004; (Harvard Univ.) 2006. Investigating Atomic Scale Disordered Stripes in the Cuprate Superconductors with Scanning Tunneling Microscopy. (Hoffman)

MASON, DOUGLAS Toward a Design Principle in Mesoscopic Systems . (Heller/Kaxiras)

MULUNEH, MELAKU, B.A. (Swarthmore College) 2003. Soft colloids from p(NIPAm-co-AAc): packing dynamics and structure. (Weitz)

PIVONKA, ADAM Nanoscale Imaging of Phase Transitions with Scanning Force Microscopy . (Hoffman)

REAL, ESTEBAN, A.B. (Harvard University) 2002; (Harvard University) 2007. Models of visual processing by the retina. (Meister/Franklin)

RICHERME, PHILIP, S.B. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 2006; (Harvard University) 2008. Trapped Antihydrogen in Its Ground State. (Gabrielse)

SANTOS, LUIZ, B.S. (Univ. Fed. Do Espito Santo) 2004. Topological Properties of Interacting Fermionic Systems. (Chamon/Halperin)

SCHLAFLY, EDWARD, B.S. (Stanford University) 2007; (Harvard University) 2011. Dust in Large Optical Surveys. (Finkbeiner)

SETIAWAN, WIDAGDO, B.S. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 2007. Fermi Gas Microscope . (Greiner)

SHUVE, BRIAN, B.A.Sc. (University of Toronto) 2007; (Harvard University) 2011. Dark and Light: Unifying the Origins of Dark and Visible Matter. (Randall)

SIMMONS-DUFFIN, DAVID, A.B., A.M. (Harvard University) 2006. Carving Out the Space of Conformal Field Theories. (Randall)

TEMPEL, DAVID, B.A. (Hunter College) 2007. Time-dependent density functional theory for open quantum systems and quantum computation. (Aspuru-Guzik/Cohen)  

VENKATCHALAM, VIVEK, S.B. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 2006. Single Electron Probes of Fractional Quantum Hall States. (Yacoby)  

VLASSAREV, DIMITAR, B.S. (William and Mary) 2005; (Harvard University) 2007. DNA Characterization with Solid-State Nanopores and Combined Carbon Nanotube across Solid-State Nanopore Sensors . (Golovchenko)  

WANG, WENQIN, B.S. (Univ. of Science and Technology of China) 2006. Structures and dynamics in live bacteria revealed by super-resolution fluorescence microscopy. (Zhuang)

WANG, YIHUA Laser-Based Angle-Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy of Topological Insulators. (Gedik / Hoffman)

WISSNER-GROSS, ZACHARY Symmetry Breaking in Neuronal Development. (Yanik /Levine)

YONG, EE HOU, B.Sc. (Stanford University) 2003. Problems at the Nexus of Geometry and Soft Matter: Rings, Ribbons and Shells. (Mahadevan)

ANOUS, TAREK Explorations in de Sitter Space and Amorphous Black Hole Bound States in String Theory . (Strominger)

BABADI, MEHRTASH Non-Equilibrium Dynamics of Artificial Quantum Matter . (Demler)

BRUNEAUX, LUKE Multiple Unnecessary Protein Sources and Cost to Growth Rate in E.coli. (Prentiss)

CHIEN, YANG TING Jet Physics at High Energy Colliders Matthew . (Schwartz)

CHOE, HWAN SUNG Choe Modulated Nanowire Structures for Exploring New Nanoprocessor Architectures and Approaches to Biosensing. (Lieber/Cohen)

COPETE, ANTONIO BAT Slew Survey (BATSS): Slew Data Analysis for the Swift-BAT Coded Aperture Imaging Telescope . (Stubbs)

DATTA, SUJIT Getting Out of a Tight Spot: Physics of Flow Through Porous Materials . (Weitz)

DISCIACCA, JACK First Single Particle Measurements of the Proton and Antiproton Magnetic Moments . (Gabrielse)

DORR, JOSHUA Quantum Jump Spectroscopy of a Single Electron in a New and Improved Apparatus . (Gabrielse )

DZYABURA, VASILY Pathways to a Metallic Hydrogen . (Silvera)

ESPAHBODI, SAM 4d Spectra from BPS Quiver Dualities. (Vafa)

FANG, JIEPING New Methods to Create Multielectron Bubbles in Liquid Helium . (Silvera)

FELDMAN, BEN Measurements of Interaction-Driven States in Monolayer and Bilayer Graphene . (Yacoby)

FOGWELL HOOGERHEIDE, SHANNON Trapped Positrons for High-Precision Magnetic Moment Measurements . (Gabrielse)

FUNG, JEROME Measuring the 3D Dynamics of Multiple Colloidal Particles with Digital Holographic Microscopy . (Manoharan)

GULLANS, MICHAEL Controlling Atomic, Solid-State and Hybrid Systems for Quantum Information Processing. (Lukin)

JAWERTH, LOUISE MARIE The Mechanics of Fibrin Networks and their Alterations by Platelets . (Weitz)

JEANTY, LAURA Measurement of the WZ Production Cross Section in Proton-Proton Collision at √s = 7 TeV and Limits on Anomalous Triple Gauge Couplings with the ATLAS Detector . (Franklin)

JENSEN, KATHERINE Structure and Defects of Hard-Sphere Colloidal Crystals and Glasses . (Weitz)

KAHAWALA, DILANI S Topics on Hadron Collider Physics . (Randall)

KITAGAWA, TAKUYA New Phenomena in Non-Equilibrium Quantum Physics . (Demler)

KOU, ANGELA Microscopic Properties of the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect . (Halperin)

LIN, TINA Dynamics of Charged Colloids in Nonpolar Solvents . (Weitz)

MCCORMICK, ANDREW Discrete Differential Geometry and Physics of Elastic Curves . (Mahadevan)

REDDING, JAMES Medford Spin Qubits in Double and Triple Quantum Dots . (Marcus/Yacoby)

NARAYAN, GAUTHAM Light Curves of Type Ia Supernovae and Preliminary Cosmological Constraints from the ESSENCE Survey . (Stubbs)

PAN, TONY Properties of Unusually Luminous Supernovae . (Loeb)

RASTOGI, ASHWIN Brane Constructions and BPS Spectra . (Vafa)

RUEL, JONATHAN Optical Spectroscopy and Velocity Dispersions of SZ-selected Galaxy Clusters . (Stubbs)

SHER, MENG JU Intermediate Band Properties of Femtosecond-Laser Hyperdoped Silicon . (Mazur)

TANG, YIQIAO Chirality of Light and Its Interaction with Chiral Matter . (Cohen)

TAYCHATANAPAT, THITI From Hopping to Ballistic Transport in Graphene-Based Electronic Devices . (Jarillo-Herrero/Yacoby)

VISBAL, ELI  Future Probes of Cosmology and the High-Redshift Universe . (Loeb)

ZELJKOVIC, ILIJA Visualizing the Interplay of Structural and Electronic Disorders in High-Temperature Superconductors using Scanning Tunneling Microscopy . (Hoffman)

ZEVI DELLA PORTA, GIOVANNI Measurement of the Cross-Section for W Boson Production in Association With B-Jets in Proton-Proton Collisions at √S = 7 Tev at the LHC Using the ATLAS Detector . (Franklin)

AU, YAT SHAN LinkInelastic collisions of atomic thorium and molecular thorium monoxide with cold helium-3. (Doyle)

BARR, MATTHEW Coherent Scattering in Two Dimensions: Graphene and Quantum Corrals . (Heller)

CHANG, CHI-MING Higher Spin Holography. (Yin)

CHU, YIWEN Quantum optics with atom-like systems in diamond. (Lukin)

GATANOV, TIMUR Data-Driven Analysis of Mitotic Spindles . (Needleman/Kaxiras)

GRINOLDS, MICHAEL Nanoscale magnetic resonance imaging and magnetic sensing using atomic defects in diamond. (Yacoby)

GUERRA, RODRIGO Elasticity of Compressed Emulsions . (Weitz)

HERRING, PATRICK LinkLow Dimensional Carbon Electronics. (Jarillo-Herrero/Yacoby)

HESS, PAUL W. LinkImproving the Limit on the Electron EDM: Data Acquisition and Systematics Studies in the ACME Experiment. (Gabrielse)

HOU, JENNIFER Dynamics in Biological Soft Materials . (Cohen)

HUBER, FLORIAN Site-Resolved Imaging with the Fermi Gas Microscope. (Greiner)

HUTZLER, NICHOLAS A New Limit on the Electron Electric Dipole Moment . (Doyle)

KESTIN, GREG Light-Shell Theory Foundations. (Georgi)

LYSOV, VYACHESLAV From Petrov-Einstein to Navier-Stokes. (Strominger)

MA, RUICHAO Engineered Potentials and Dynamics of Ultracold Quantum Gases under the Microscope. (Greiner)

MAURER, PETER Coherent control of diamond defects for quantum information science and quantum sensing. (Lukin)

NG, GIM SENG Aspects of Symmetry in de Sitter Space. (Strominger)

NICOLAISEN, LAUREN Distortions in Genealogies due to Purifying Selection. (Desai)

NURGALIEV, DANIYAR A Study of the Radial and Azimuthal Gas Distribution in Massive Galaxy Clusters. (Stubbs)

RUBIN, DOUGLAS Properties of Dark Matter Halos and Novel Signatures of Baryons in Them . (Loeb)

RUSSELL, EMILY Structure and Properties of Charged Colloidal Systems. (Weitz)

SHIELDS, BRENDAN Diamond Platforms for Nanoscale Photonics and Metrology. (Lukin)

SPAUN, BENJAMIN A Ten-Fold Improvement to the Limit of the Electron Electric Dipole Moment. (Gabrielse)

YAO, NORMAN Topology, Localization, and Quantum Information in Atomic, Molecular and Optical Systems. (Lukin)

YEE, MICHAEL Scanning Tunneling Spectroscopy of Topological Insulators and Cuprate Superconductors. (Hoffman)

BENJAMIN, DAVID ISAIAH Impurity Physics in Resonant X-Ray Scattering and Ultracold Atomic Gases . (Demler)

BEN-SHACH, GILAD Theoretical Considerations for Experiments to Create and Detect Localised Majorana Modes in Electronic Systems. (Halperin/Yacoby)

CHANG, WILLY Superconducting Proximity Effect in InAs Nanowires . (Marcus/Yacoby)

CHUNG, HYEYOUN Exploring Black Hole Dynamics . (Randall)

INCORVIA, JEAN ANNE CURRIVAN Nanoscale Magnetic Materials for Energy-Efficient Spin Based Transistors. (Westervelt)

FEIGE, ILYA ERIC ALEXANDER Factorization and Precision Calculations in Particle Physics. (Schwartz)

FRENZEL, ALEX Terahertz Electrodynamics of Dirac Fermions in Graphene. (Hoffman)

HSU, CHIA WEI Novel Trapping and Scattering of Light in Resonant Nanophotonic Structures. (Cohen)

JORGOLLI, MARSELA Integrated nanoscale tools for interrogating living cells. (Park)

KALRA, RITA RANI An Improved Antihydrogen Trap. (Gabrielse)

KOLKOWITZ, SHIMON JACOB Nanoscale Sensing with Individual Nitrogen-Vacancy Centers in Diamond. (Lukin)

LAVRENTOVICH, MAXIM OLEGOVICH Diffusion, Absorbing States, and Nonequilibrium Phase Transitions in Range Expansions and Evolution. (Nelson)

LIU, BO Selected Topics in Scattering Theory: From Chaos to Resonance. (Heller)

LOCKHART, GUGLIELMO PAUL Self-Dual Strings of Six-Dimensional SCFTs . (Vafa)

MAGKIRIADOU, SOFIA Structural Color from Colloidal Glasses. (Manoharan)

MCIVER, JAMES W. Nonlinear Optical and Optoelectronic Studies of Topological Insulator Surfaces. (Hoffman)

MEISNER, AARON MICHAEL Full-sky, High-resolution Maps of Interstellar Dust. (Finkbeiner)

MERCURIO, KEVIN MICHAEL A Search for the Higgs Boson Produced in Association with a Vector Boson Using the ATLAS Detector at the LHC. (Huth)

NOWOJEWSKI, ANDRZEJ KAZIMIERZ Pathogen Avoidance by Caenorhabditis Elegans is a Pheromone-Mediated Collective Behavior. (Levine)

PISKORSKI, JULIA HEGE Cooling, Collisions and non-Sticking of Polyatomic Molecules in a Cryogenic Buffer Gas Cell. (Doyle)

SAJJAD, AQIL An Effective Theory on the Light Shell. (Georgi)

SCHADE, NICHOLAS BENJAMIN Self-Assembly of Plasmonic Nanoclusters for Optical Metafluids. (Manoharan)

SHULMAN, MICHAEL DEAN Entanglement and Metrology with Singlet-Triplet Qubits. (Yacoby)

SPEARMAN, WILLIAM R. Measurement of the Mass and Width of the Higgs Boson in the H to ZZ to 4l Decay Channel Using Per-Event Response Information. (Guimaraes da Costa)

THOMPSON, JEFFREY DOUGLAS A Quantum Interface Between Single Atoms and Nanophotonic Structures. (Lukin)

WANG, TOUT TAOTAO Small Diatomic Alkali Molecules at Ultracold Temperatures. (Doyle)

WONG, CHIN LIN Beam Characterization and Systematics of the Bicep2 and Keck Array Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization Experiments. (Kovac)

AGARWAL, KARTIEK Slow Dynamics in Quantum Matter: the Role of Dimensionality, Disorder and Dissipation. (Demler)

ALLEN, MONICA Quantum electronic transport in mesoscopic graphene devices. (Yacoby)

CHAE, EUNMI Laser Slowing of CaF Molecules and Progress towards a Dual-MOT for Li and CaF. (Doyle)

CHOTIBUT, THIPARAT Aspects of Statistical Fluctuations in Evolutionary and Population Dynamics. (Nelson)

CHOWDHURY, DEBANJAN Interplay of Broken Symmetries and Quantum Criticality in Correlated Electronic Systems. (Sachdev)

CLARK, BRIAN Search for New Physics in Dijet Invariant Mass Spectrum. (Huth)

FARHI, DAVID Jets and Metastability in Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Field Theory. (Schwartz)

FORSYTHE, MARTIN Advances in Ab Initio Modeling of the Many-Body Effects of Dispersion Interactions in Functional Organic Materials. (Aspuru-Guzik/Ni)

GOOD, BENJAMIN Molecular evolution in rapidly evolving populations. (Desai)

HART, SEAN Electronic Phenomena in Two-Dimensional Topological Insulators. (Yacoby)

HE, YANG Scanning Tunneling Microscopy Study on Strongly Correlated Materials. (Hoffman)

HIGGINBOTHAM, ANDREW Quantum Dots for Conventional and Topological Qubits. (Marcus/Westervelt)

HUANG, DENNIS Nanoscale Investigations of High-Temperature Superconductivity in a Single Atomic Layer of Iron Selenide. (Hoffman)

ISAKOV, ALEXANDER The Collective Action Problem in a Social and a Biophysical System. (Mahadevan)

KLALES, ANNA A classical perspective on non-diffractive disorder. (Heller)

KOBY, TIMOTHY Development of a Trajectory Model for the Analysis of Stratospheric Water Vapor. (Anderson/Heller)

KOMAR, PETER Quantum Information Science and Quantum Metrology: Novel Systems and Applications. (Lukin)

KUCSCKO, GEORG Coupled Spins in Diamond: From Quantum Control to Metrology and Many-Body Physics. (Lukin)

LAZOVICH, TOMO Observation of the Higgs boson in the WW* channel and search for Higgs boson pair production in the bb ̅bb ̅ channel with the ATLAS detector. (Franklin)

LEE, JUNHYUN Novel quantum phase transitions in low-dimensional systems. (Sachdev)

LIN, YING-HSUAN Conformal Bootstrap in Two Dimensions. (Yin)

LUCAS, ANDREW Transport and hydrodynamics in holography, strange metals and graphene. (Sachdev)

MACLAURIN, DOUGAL Modeling, Inference and Optimization with Composable Differentiable Procedures. (Adams/Cohen)

PARSONS, MAXWELL Probing the Hubbard Model with Single-Site Resolution. (Greiner)

PATEJ, ANNA Distributions of Gas and Galaxies from Galaxy Clusters to Larger Scales. (Eisenstein/Loeb/Finkbeiner)

PITTMAN, SUZANNE The Classical-Quantum Correspondence of Polyatomic Molecules. (Heller)

POPA, CRISTINA Simulating the Cosmic Gas: From Globular Clusters to the Most Massive Haloes. (Randall)

PORFYRIADIS, ACHILLEAS Gravitational waves from the Kerr/CFT correspondence . (Strominger)

PREISS, PHILIPP Atomic Bose-Hubbard systems with single-particle control. (Greiner)

SHAO, SHU-HENG Supersymmetric Particles in Four Dimensions. (Yin)

YEN, ANDY Search for Weak Gaugino Production in Final States with One Lepton, Two b-jets Consistent with a Higgs Boson, and Missing Transverse Momentum with the ATLAS detector. (Huth)

BERCK, MATTHEW ELI Reconstructing and Analyzing the Wiring Diagram of the Drosophila Larva Olfactory System. (Samuel)

COUGHLIN, MICHAEL WILLIAM Gravitational Wave Astronomy in the LSST Era. (Stubbs)

DIMIDUK, THOMAS Holographic Microscopy for Soft Matter and Biophysics. (Manoharan)

FROST, WILLIAM THOMAS Tunneling in Quantum Field Theory and the Fate of the Universe. (Schwartz)

JERISON, ELIZABETH Epistasis and Pleiotropy in Evolving Populations. (Desai)

KAFKA, GARETH A Search for Sterile Neutrinos at the NOνA Far Detector. (Feldman)

KOSHELEVA, EKATERINA Genetic Draft and Linked Selection in Rapidly Adapting Populations. (Desai)

KOSTINSKI, SARAH VALERIE Geometrical Aspects of Soft Matter and Optical Systems. (Brenner)

KOZYRYEV, IVAN Laser Cooling and Inelastic Collisions of the Polyatomic Radical SrOH. (Doyle)

KRALL, REBECCA Studies of Dark Matter and Supersymmetry. (Reece)

KRAMER, ERIC DAVID Observational Constraints on Dissipative Dark Matter. (Randall)

LEE, LUCY EUNJU Network Analysis of Transcriptome to Reveal Interactions Among Genes and Signaling Pathways. (Levine)

LOVCHINSKY, IGOR Nanoscale Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy Using Individual Spin Qubits. (Lukin)

LUPSASCA, ALEXANDRU The Maximally Rotating Black Hole as a Critical Point in Astronomy. (Strominger)

MANSURIPUR, TOBIAS The Effect of Intracavity Field Variation on the Emission Properties of Quantum Cascade Lasers. (Capasso/Yacoby)

MARANTAN, ANDREW WILLIAM The Roles of Randomness in Biophysics: From Cell Growth to Behavioral Control. (Mahadevan)

MASHIAN, NATALIE Modeling the Constituents of the Early Universe. (Loeb/Stubbs)

MAZURENKO, ANTON Probing Long Range Antiferromagnetism and Dynamics in the Fermi-Hubbard Model. (Greiner)

MITRA, PRAHAR Asymptotic Symmetries in Four Dimensional Gauge and Gravity Theories. (Strominger)

NEAGU, IULIA ALEXANDRA Evolutionary Dynamics of Infection. (Nowak/Prentiss)

PETRIK WEST, ELIZABETH A Thermochemical Cryogenic Buffer Gas Beam Source of ThO for Measuring the Electric Dipole Moment of the Electron. (Doyle)

RUDELIUS, THOMAS Topics in the String Landscape and the Swampland. (Vafa)

SAKLAYEN, NABIHA Laser-Activated Plasmonic Substrates for Intracellular Delivery. (Mazur)

SIPAHIGIL, ALP Quantum Optics with Diamond Color Centers Coupled to Nanophotonic Devices. (Lukin)

SUN, SIYUAN Search for the Supersymmetric Partner to the Top Quark Using Recoils Against Strong Initial State Radiation. (Franklin)

TAI, MING ERIC Microscopy of Interacting Quantum Systems. (Greiner)

TOLLEY, EMMA Search for Evidence of Dark Matter Production in Monojet Events with the ATLAS Detector. (Morii)

WILSON, ALYSSA MICHELLE New Insights on Neural Circuit Refinement in the Central Nervous System: Climbing Fiber Synapse Elimination in the Developing Mouse Cerebellum Studied with Serial-Section Scanning Electron Microscopy. (Lichtman/Samuel)

BAUCH, ERIK Optimizing Solid-State Spins in Diamond for Nano- to Millimeter scale Magnetic Field Sensing. (Walsworth)

BRACHER, DAVID OLMSTEAD Development of photonic crystal cavities to enhance point defect emission in silicon carbide. (Hu: SEAS)

CHAN, STEPHEN KAM WAH Orthogonal Decompositions of Collision Events and Measurement Combinations in Standard Model $VH\left(b\bar{b}\right)$ Searches with the ATLAS Detector. (Huth)

CHATTERJEE, SHUBHAYU Transport and symmetry breaking in strongly correlated matter with topological order. (Sachdev)

CHOI, SOONWON Quantum Dynamics of Strongly Interacting Many-Body Systems. (Lukin)

CONNORS, JAKE Channel Length Scaling in Microwave Graphene Field Effect Transistors. (Kovac)

DAHLSTROM, ERIN KATRINA Quantifying and modeling dynamics of heat shock detection and response in the intestine of Caenorhabditis elegans. (Levine)

DAYLAN, TANSU A Transdimensional Perspective on Dark Matter. (Finkbeiner)

DOVZHENKO, YULIYA Imaging of Condensed Matter Magnetism Using an Atomic-Sized Sensor. (Yacoby)

EVANS, RUFFIN ELEY An integrated diamond nanophotonics platform for quantum optics. (Lukin)

FLEMING, STEPHEN Probing nanopore - DNA interactions with MspA. (Golovchenko)

FRYE, CHRISTOPHER Understanding Jet Physics at Modern Particle Colliders. (Schwartz)

FU, WENBO The Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model and matter without quasiparticles. (Sachdev)

GOLDMAN, MICHAEL LURIE Coherent Optical Control of Atom-Like Defects in Diamond: Probing Internal Dynamics and Environmental Interactions. (Lukin)

HE, TEMPLE MU On Soft Theorems and Asymptotic Symmetries in Four Dimensions. (Strominger)

HOYT, ROBERT Understanding Catalysts with Density Functional Theory and Machine Learning. (Kaxiras)

KAPEC, DANIEL STEVEN Aspects of Symmetry in Asymptotically Flat Spacetimes. (Strominger)

LEE, ALBERT Mapping the Relationship Between Interstellar Dust and Radiation in the Milky Way. (Finkbeiner)

LEE, JAEHYEON Prediction and Inference Methods for Modern Astronomical Surveys (Eisenstein, Finkbeiner)

LUKIN, ALEXANDER Entanglement Dynamics in One Dimension -- From Quantum Thermalization to Many-Body Localization (Greiner)

NOVITSKI, ELISE M. Apparatus and Methods for a New Measurement of the Electron and Positron Magnetic Moments. (Gabrielse)

PATHAK, ABHISHEK Holography Beyond AdS/CFT: Explorations in Kerr/CFT and Higher Spin DS/CFT. (Strominger)

PETERMAN, NEIL Sequence-function models of regulatory RNA in E. coli. (Levine)

PICK, ADI Spontaneous Emission in Nanophotonics. (Johnson: MIT)

PO, HOI CHUN Keeping it Real: An Alternative Picture for Symmetry and Topology in Condensed Matter Systems. (Vishwanath)

REN, HECHEN Topological Superconductivity in Two-Dimensional Electronic Systems. (Yacoby)

ROXLO, THOMAS Opening the black box of neural nets: case studies in stop/top discrimination. (Reece)

SHTYK, OLEKSANDR Designing Singularities in Electronic Dispersions (Chamon, Demler)

TONG, BAOJIA Search for pair production of Higgs bosons in the four b quark final state with the ATLAS detector. (Franklin)

WHITSITT, SETH Universal non-local observables at strongly interacting quantum critical points. (Sachdev)

YAN, KAI Factorization in hadron collisions from effective field theory. (Schwartz)

AMATOGRILL, JESSE A Fast 7Li-based Quantum Simulator (Ketterle, Greiner)

BARON, JACOB Tools for Higher Dimensional Study of the Drosophila Larval Olfactory System (Samuel)

BUZA, VICTOR Constraining Primordial Gravitational Waves Using Present and Future CMB Experiments (Kovac)

CHAEL, ANDREW Simulating and Imaging Supermassive Black Hole Accretion Flows (Narayan, Dvorkin)

CHIU, CHRISTIE Quantum Simulation of the Hubbard Model (Greiner)

DIPETRILLO, KARRI Search for Long-Lived, Massive Particles in Events with a Displaced Vertex and a Displaced Muon Using sqrt{s} = 13 TeV pp-Collisions with the ATLAS Detector (Franklin)

FANG, SHIANG Multi-scale Theoretical Modeling of Twisted van der Waals Bilayers (Kaxiras)

GAO, PING Traversable Wormholes and Regenesis (Jafferis)

GONSKI, JULIA Probing Natural Supersymmetry with Initial State Radiation: the Search for Stops and Higgsinos at ATLAS (Morii)

HARVEY, SHANNON Developing Singlet-Triplet Qubits in Gallium Arsenide as a Platform for Quantum Computing (Yacoby)

JEFFERSON, PATRICK Geometric Deconstruction of Supersymmetric Quantum Field Theories (Vafa)

KANG, MONICA JINWOO Two Views on Gravity: F-theory and Holography (Jafferis)

KATES-HARBECK, JULIAN Tackling Complexity and Nonlinearity in Plasmas and Networks Using Artificial Intelligence and Analytical Methods  (Desai, Nowak)

KLEIN, ELLEN Structure and Dynamics of Colloidal Clusters (Manoharan)

LEVIN, ANDREI Single-Electron Probes of Two-Dimensional Materials (Yacoby)

LIU, XIAOMENG Correlated Electron States in Coupled Graphene Double-Layer Heterostructures (Kim)

LIU, LEE Building Single Molecules – Reactions, Collisions, and Spectroscopy of Two Atoms (Ni)

MARABLE, KATHRYN Progress Towards a Sub-ppb Measurement of the Antiproton Magnetic Moment (Gabrielse)

MARSHALL, MASON New Apparatus and Methods for the Measurement of the Proton and Antiproton Magnetic Moments (Gabrielse)

MCNAMARA, HAROLD Synthetic Physiology: Manipulating and Measuring Biological Pattern Formation with Light (Cohen)

MEMET, EDVIN Parking, Puckering, and Peeling in Small Soft Systems (Mahadevan)

MUKHAMETZHANOV, BAURZHAN Bootstrapping High-Energy States in Conformal Field Theories (Jafferis)

OLSON, JOSEPH Plasticity and Firing Rate Dynamics in Leaky Integrate-and-Fire Models of Cortical Circuits (Kreiman)

PANDA, CRISTIAN Order of Magnitude Improved Limit on the Electric Dipole Moment of the Electron (Gabrielse)

PASTERSKI, SABRINA Implications of Superrotations (Strominger)

PATE, MONICA Aspects of Symmetry in the Infrared (Strominger)

PATEL, AAVISHKAR Transport, Criticality, and Chaos in Fermionic Quantum Matter at Nonzero Density (Sachdev)

PHELPS, GREGORY A Dipolar Quantum Gas Microscope (Greiner)

RISPOLI, MATTHEW Microscopy of Correlations at a Non-Equilibrium Phase Transition (Greiner)

ROLOFF, JENNIFER Exploring the Standard Model and beyond with jets from proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s)=13 TeV with the ATLAS Experiment (Huth)

ROWAN, MICHAEL Dissipation of Magnetic Energy in Collisionless Accretion Flows (Narayan and Morii)

SAFIRA, ARTHUR NV Magnetic Noise Sensing and Quantum Information Processing, and Llevitating Micromagnets over Type-II Superconductors (Lukin)

SHI, YICHEN Analytical Steps Towards the Observation of High-Spin Black Holes (Strominger)

THOMSON, ALEXANDRA Emergent Dapless Fermions in Strongly-Correlated Phases of Matter and Quantum Critical Points (Sachdev)

WEBB, TATIANA The Nanoscale Structure of Charge Order in Cuprate Superconductor Bi2201 (Hoffman)

WESSELS, MELISSA Progress Toward a Single-Electron Qubit in an Optimized Planar Penning Trap (Gabrielse)

WILLIAMS, MOBOLAJI Biomolecules, Combinatorics, and Statistical Physics (Shakhnovich, Manoharan)

XIONG, ZHAOXI Classification and Construction of Topological Phases of Quantum Matter (Vishwanath)

ZOU, LIUJUN An Odyssey in Modern Quantum Many-Body Physics (Todadri, Sachdev)

ANDEREGG, LOÏC Ultracold molecules in optical arrays: from laser cooling to molecular collisions (Doyle)

BALTHAZAR, BRUNO 2d String Theory and the Non-Perturbative c=1 Matrix Model (Yin)

BAUM, LOUIS Laser cooling and 1D magneto-optical trapping of calcium monohydroxide (Doyle)

CARR, STEPHEN Moiré patterns in 2D materials (Kaxiras)

COLLIER, SCOTT Aspects of local conformal symmetry in 1+1 dimensions (Yin)

DASGUPTA, ISHITA Algorithmic approaches to ecological rationality in humans and machines (Mahadevan)

DILLAVOU, SAMUEL Hidden Dynamics of Static Friction (Manoharan)

FLAMANT, CEDRIC Methods for Converging Solutions of Differential Equations: Applying Imaginary Time Propagation to Density Functional Theory and Unsupervised Neural Networks to Dynamical Systems (Kaxiras)

HUANG, KO-FAN (KATIE) Superconducting Proximity Effect in Graphene (Kim)

JONES, NATHAN Toward Antihydrogen Spectroscopy (Gabrielse)

KABCENELL, AARON Hybrid Quantum Systems with Nitrogen Vacancy Centers and Mechanical Resonators (Lukin)

KATES-HARBECK, JULIAN Tackling complexity and nonlinearity in plasmas and networks using artificial intelligence and analytical methods (Desai)

KIVLICHAN, IAN Faster quantum simulation of quantum chemistry with tailored algorithms and Hamiltonian s (Aspuru-Guzik, Lukin)

KOSOWSKY, MICHAEL Topological Phenomena in Two-Dimensional Electron Systems (Yacoby)

KUATE DEFO, RODRICK Modeling Formation and Stability of Fluorescent Defects in Wide-Bandgap Semiconductors (Kaxiras)

LEE, JONG YEON Fractionalization, Emergent Gauge Dynamics, and Topology in Quantum Matter (Vishwanath)

MARABLE, KATHRYN Progress towards a sub-ppb measurement of the antiproton magnetic moment (Gabrielse)

MCNAMARA, HAROLD Synthetic Physiology: Manipulating and measuring biological pattern formation with light (Cohen)

MEMET, EDVIN Parking, puckering, and peeling in small soft systems (Mahadevan)

NGUYEN, CHRISTIAN Building quantum networks using diamond nanophotonics (Lukin)

OLSON, JOSEPH Plasticity and Firing Rate Dynamics in Leaky Integrate-and-Fire Models of Cortical Circuits (Samuel)

ORONA, LUCAS Advances In The Singlet-Triplet Spin Qubit (Yacoby)

RACLARIU, ANA-MARIA On Soft Symmetries in Gravity and Gauge Theory (Strominger)

RAVI, AAKASH Topics in precision astrophysical spectroscopy (Dvorkin)

SHI, JING Quantum Hall Effect-Mediated Josephson Junctions in Graphene (Kim)

SHI, ZHUJUN Manipulating light with multifunctional metasurfaces (Capasso, Manoharan)

STEINBERG, JULIA Universal Aspects of Quantum-Critical Dynamics In and Out of Equilibrium  (Sachdev)

WILD, DOMINIK Algorithms and Platforms for Quantum Science and Technology (Lukin)

WU, HAI-YIN Biophysics of Mitotic Spindle Positioning in Caenorhabditis elegans Early Embryos (Needleman)

YU, LI Quantum Dynamics in Various Noise Scenarios (Heller)

BARKLEY, SOLOMON Applying Bayesian Inference to Measurements of Colloidal Dynamics (Manoharan)

BHASKAR, MIHIR Diamond Nanophotonic Quantum Networks (Lukin)

BINTU, BOGDAN Genome-scale imaging: from the subcellular structure of chromatin to the 3D organization of the peripheral olfactory system (Dulac,  Zhuang,  Nelson)

CHEN, MINGYUE On knotted surfaces in R 4   (Taubes,  Vafa)

CHO, MINJAE Aspects of string field theory (Yin)

DIAZ RIVERO, ANA Statistically Exploring Cracks in the Lambda Cold Dark Matter Model (Dvorkin)

DWYER, BO NV centers as local probes of two-dimensional materials (Lukin)

GATES, DELILAH Observational Electromagnetic Signatures of Spinning Black Holes (Strominger)

HANNESDOTTIR, HOFIE Analytic Structure and Finiteness of Scattering Amplitudes (Schwartz)

HART, CONNOR Experimental Realization of Improved Magnetic Sensing and Imaging in Ensembles of Nitrogen Vacancy Centers in Diamond (Walsworth, Park)

HÉBERT, ANNE A Dipolar Erbium Quantum Gas Microscope (Greiner)

JI, GEOFFREY Microscopic control and dynamics of a Fermi-Hubbard system (Greiner)

JOE, ANDREW Interlayer Excitons in Atomically Thin van der Waals Semiconductor Heterostructures (Kim)

KEESLING, ALEXANDER Quantum Simulation and Quantum Information Processing with Programmable Rydberg Atom Arrays (Lukin)

KRAHN, AARON Erbium gas quantum microscope (Greiner)

LANGELLIER, NICHOLAS Analytical and Statistical Models for Laboratory and Astrophysical Precision Measurements (Walsworth, Dvorkin)

LEMMA, BEZIA Hierarchical phases of filamentary active matter  (Dogic, Needleman)

LEVINE, HARRY Quantum Information Processing and Quantum Simulation with Programmable Rydberg Atom Arrays (Lukin)

LEVONIAN, DAVID A Quantum Network Node Based on the Silicon Vacancy Defect in Diamond (Lukin)

LIN, ALBERT Characterizing chemosensory responses of C. elegans with multi-neuronal imaging (Samuel)

LIU, SHANG Symmetry, Topology and Entanglement in Quantum Many-Body Systems (Vishwanath)

LIU, YU Bimolecular chemistry at sub-microkelvin temperatures (Ni)

MACHIELSE, BART Electronic and Nanophotonic Integration of a Quantum Network Node in Diamond (Lukin)

MELISSA, MATTHEW Divergence and diversity in rapidly evolving populations (Desai)

MILBOURNE, TIMOTHY All Features Great and Small: Distinquishing the effects of specific magnetically active features on radial-velocity exoplanet detections  (Walsworth)

MITCHELL, JAMES Investigations into Resinicolous Fungi (Pfister, Samuel)

MONDRIK, NICHOLAS Calibration Hardware and Methodology for Large Photometric Surveys (Stubbs)

NANDE, ANJALIKA Mathematical modeling of drug resistance and the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 (Hill, Desai)

PLUMMER, ABIGAIL Reactions and instabilities in fluid layers and elastic sheets (Nelson)

RODRIGUEZ, VICTOR Perturbative and Non-Perturbative Aspects of Two-Dimensional String Theory (Yin)

ROSENFELD, EMMA Novel techniques for control and transduction of solid-state spin qubits (Lukin)

SAMUTPRAPHOOT, POLNOP A quantum network node based on a nanophotonic interface for atoms in optical tweezers (Lukin)

SCHITTKO, ROBERT A method of preparing individual excited eigenstates of small quantum many-body systems  (Greiner)

SCHNEIDER, ELLIOT Stringy ER = EPR (Jafferis)

SONG, XUE-YANG Emergent and topological phenomena in many-body systems: Quantum spin liquids and beyond  (Vishwanath)

ST. GERMAINE, TYLER Beam Systematics and Primordial Gravitational Wave Constraints from the BICEP/Keck Array CMB Experiments (Kovac)

TORRISI, STEVEN Materials Informatics for Catalyst Stability & Functionality (Kaxiras, Kozinsky)

TURNER, MATTHEW Quantum Diamond Microscopes for Biological Systems and Integrated Circuits (Walsworth)

URBACH, ELANA Nanoscale Magnetometry with Single Spin Qubits in Diamond  (Lukin)

VENKAT, SIDDHARTH Modeling Excitons in Transition Metal Dichalcogenide Monolayers (Heller)

VENKATRAMANI, ADITYA Quantum nonlinear optics: controlling few-photon interactions (Lukin, Vuletić)

WANG, ANN A search for long-lived particles with large ionization energy loss in the ATLAS silicon pixel detector using 139 fb^{−1} of sqrt{s} = 13 TeV pp collisions (Franklin)

WILBURN, GREY An Inverse Statistical Physics Method for Biological Sequence Analysis (Eddy, Nelson)

XU, LINDA Searching for Dark Matter in the Early and Late Universe (Randall)

YI, KEXIN Neural Symbolic Machine Reasoning in the Physical World (Mahadevan, Finkbeiner)

YIN, JUN Improving our view of the Universe using Machine Learning  (Finkbeiner)

YU, YICHAO Coherent Creation of Single Molecules from Single Atoms (Ni)

ZHANG, JESSIE Assembling an array of polar molecules with full quantum-state control (Ni)

ZHAO, FRANK The Physics of High-Temperature Superconducting Cuprates in van der Waals Heterostructures (Kim)

ZHOU, LEO Complexity, Algorithms, and Applications of Programmable Quantum Many-Body Systems (Lukin)

ANDERSEN, TROND Local electronic and optical phenomena in two-dimensional materials (Lukin)

ANDERSON, LAUREL Electrical and thermoelectric transport in mixed-dimensional graphitic mesoscopic systems (Kim)

AUGENBRAUN, BENJAMIN Methods for Direct Laser Cooling of Polyatomic Molecules (Doyle)

BALL, ADAM Aspects of Symmetry in Four Dimensions (Strominger)

BOETTCHER, CHARLOTTE New avenues in circuit QED: from quantum information to quantum sensing (Yacoby)

BORGNIA, DAN The Measure of a Phase (Vishwanath)

BROWNSBERGER, SASHA Modest Methods on the Edge of Cosmic Revolution: Foundational Work to Test Outstanding Peculiarities in the ΛCDM Cosmology (Randall, Stubbs)

BULLARD, BRENDON The first differential cross section measurements of tt̅ produced with a W boson in pp collisions (Morii)

CANATAR, ABDULKADIR Statistical Mechanics of Generalization in Kernel Regression and Wide Neural Networks (Pehlevan)

CESAROTTI, CARI Hints of a Hidden World (Reece)

CHALUPNIK, MICHELLE Quantum and photonic information processing with non-von Neumann architectures (Lončar)

CHEN, YU-TING A Platform for Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics with Rydberg Atom Arrays (Vuletić)

CONWAY, WILL Biophysics of Kinetochore Microtubules in Human Mitotic Spindles (Needleman)

DIETERLE, PAUL Diffusive waves, dynamic instability, and chromosome missegregation: dimensionality, discreteness, stochasticity (Amir)

DORDEVIC, TAMARA A nanophotonic quantum interface for atoms in optical tweezers (Lukin)

ENGELKE, REBECCA Structure and Properties of Moiré Interfaces in Two Dimensional Materials (Kim)

FAN, XING An Improved Measurement of the Electron Magnetic Moment (Gabrielse)

FOPPIANI, NICOLÒ Testing explanations of short baseline neutrino anomalies (Guenette)

GHEORGHE, ANDREI Methods for inferring dynamical systems from biological data with applications to HIV latency and genetic drivers of aging (Hill)

HAEFNER, JONATHAN Improving Kr-83m Calibration and Energy Resolution in NEXT Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay Detectors (Guenette)

KOLCHMEYER, DAVID Toy Models of Quantum Gravity (Jafferis)

MCNAMARA, JAKE The Kinematics of Quantum Gravity (Vafa)

MENKE, TIM Classical and quantum optimization of quantum processors (Aspuru-Guzik, Oliver)

MICHAEL, MARIOS Parametric resonances in Floquet materials (Demler)

OBIED, GEORGES String Theory and its Applications in Cosmology and Particle Physics (Dvorkin, Vafa)

PARIKH, ADITYA Theoretical & Phenomenological Explorations of the Dark Sector (Reece)

PATTI, TAYLOR Quantum Systems for Computation and Vice Versa (Yelin)

PIERCE, ANDREW Local thermodynamic signatures of interaction-driven topological states in graphene (Yacoby)

PIRIE, HARRIS Interacting quantum materials and their acoustic analogs (Hoffman)

REZAI, KRISTINE Probing dynamics of a two-dimensional dipolar spin ensemble (Sushkov)

SAMAJDAR, RHINE Topological and symmetry-breaking phases of strongly correlated systems: From quantum materials to ultracold atoms (Sachdev)

SCURI, GIOVANNI Quantum Optics with Excitons in Atomically Thin Semiconductors (Park)

SHEN, YINAN Mechanics of Interpenetrating Biopolymer Networks in the Cytoskeleton and Biomolecular Condensates (Weitz)

SON, HYUNGMOK Collisional Cooling and Magnetic Control of Reactions in Ultracold Spin-polarized NaLi+Na Mixture (Ketterle)

SUSHKO, ANDREY Structural imaging and electro-optical control of two dimensional semiconductors (Lukin)

TANTIVASADAKARN, NATHANAN Exploring exact dualities in lattice models of topological phases of matter (Vishwanath)

VANDERMAUSE, JONATHAN Active Learning of Bayesian Force Fields (Kozinsky)

ZHOU, HENGYUN Quantum Many-Body Physics and Quantum Metrology with Floquet-Engineered Interacting Spin Systems (Lukin)

ZHU, ZOE Multiscale Models for Incommensurate Layered Two-dimensional Materials (Kaxiras)

AGMON, NATHAN D-instantons and String Field Theory (Yin)

ANG, DANIEL Progress towards an improved measurement of the electric dipole moment of the electron (Gabrielse)

BADEA, ANTHONY Search for massive particles producing all hadronic final states in proton-proton collisions at the LHC with the ATLAS detector (Huth)

BEDROYA, ALEK The Swampland: from macro to micro (Vafa)

BURCHESKY, SEAN Engineered Collisions, Molecular Qubits, and Laser Cooling of Asymmetric Top Molecules (Doyle)

CONG, IRIS Quantum Machine Learning, Error Correction, and Topological Phases of Matter (Lukin)

DAVENPORT, IAN Optimal control and reinforcement learning in simple physical systems (Mahadevan)

DEPORZIO, NICK Dark Begets Light: Exploring Physics Beyond the Standard Model with Cosmology (Dvorkin, Randall)

FAN, RUIHUA Quantum entanglement and dynamics in low-dimensional quantum many-body systems (Vishwanath)

FORTMAN, ANNE Searching for heavy, charged, long-lived particles via ionization energy loss and time-of-flight in the ATLAS detector using 140.1 fb-1 of √s = 13 TeV proton-proton collision data (Franklin)

GABAI, BARAK From the S-matrix to the lattice: bootstrapping QFTs (Yin)

GARCIA, ROY Resource theory of quantum scrambling (Jaffe)

GELLY, RYAN Engineering the excitonic and photonic properties of atomically thin semiconductors (Park)

GUO, HAOYU Novel Transport Phenomena in Quantum Matter (Sachdev)

HIMWICH, MINA Aspects of Symmetry in Classical and Quantum Gravity (Strominger)

HU, YAOWEN Coupled-resonators on thin-film lithium niobate: Photonic multi-level system with electro-optic transition (Lončar)

KHABIBOULLINE, EMIL Quantum Communication and Thermalization, From Theory to Practice (Lukin)

KIM, SOOSHIN Quantum Gas Microscopy of Strongly Correlated Bosons (Greiner)

KING, ELLA Frankenstein's Tiniest Monsters: Inverse Design of Bio-inspired Function in Self-Assembling Materials (Brenner)

LIN, ROBERT Finding and building algebraic structures in finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces for quantum computation and quantum information (Jaffe)

LIU, YU Spin-polarized imaging of interacting fermions in the magnetic phases of Weyl semimetal CeBi (Hoffman)

LU, QIANSHU Cosmic Laboratory of Particle Physics (Reece)

MEISENHELDER, COLE Advances in the Measurement of the Electron Electric Dipole Moment (Gabrielse)

MENDOZA, DOUGLAS Optimization Algorithms for Quantum and Digital Annealers (Aspuru-Guzik)

MILLER, OLIVIA Measuring and Assessing Introductory Students' Physics Problem-Solving Ability (Mazur)

MORRISON, THARON Towards antihydrogen spectroscopy and CW Lyman-alpha via four-wave mixing in mercury (Gabrielse)

NARAYANAN, SRUTHI Soft Travels to the Celestial Sphere (Strominger)

NIU, LAUREN Patterns and Singularities in Elastic Shells (Mahadevan)

OCOLA, PALOMA A nanophotonic device as a quantum network node for atoms in optical tweezers (Lukin)

RABANAL BOLAÑOS, GABRIEL Measuring the production of three massive vector bosons in the four-lepton channel in pp collisions at √s= 13 TeV with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC (Franklin)

SENGUL, CAGAN Studying Dark Matter at Sub-Galactic Scales with Strong Gravitational Lensing (Dvorkin)

SHU, CHI Quantum enhanced metrology in the optical lattice clock (Vuletić)

SPITZIG, ALYSON Using non-contact AFM to study the local doping and damping through the transition in an ultrathin VO2 film (Hoffman)

TARAZI, HOURI UV Completeness: From Quantum Field Theory to Quantum Gravity (Vafa)

WILLIAMS, LANELL What goes right and wrong during virus self assembly? (Manoharan)

YODH, JEREMY Flow of colloidal and living suspensions in confined geometries (Mahadevan)

ZHANG, GRACE Fluctuations, disorder, and geometry in soft matter (Nelson)

AGIA, NICHOLAS On Low-Dimensional Black Holes in String Theory (Jafferis)

BAO, YICHENG Ultracold molecules in an optical tweezer array: From dipolar interaction to ground state cooling (Doyle)

BLOCK, MAXWELL Dynamics of Entanglement with Applications to Quantum Metrology (Yao)

CONTRERAS, TAYLOR Toward Tonne-Scale NEXT Detectors: SiPM Energy-Tracking Planes and Metalenses for Light Collection (Guenette)

DOYLE, SPENCER From Elements to Electronics: Designing Thin Film Perovskite Oxides for Technological Applications (Mundy)

EBADI, SEPEHR Quantum simulation and computation with two-dimensional arrays of neutral atoms (Greiner)

FRASER, KATIE Probing Undiscovered Particles with Theory and Data-Driven Tools (Reece)

GHOSH, SOUMYA Nonlinear Frequency Generation in Periodically Poled Thin Film Lithium Niobate (Lončar)

HAO, ZEYU Emergent Quantum Phases of Electrons in Multilayer Graphene Heterostructures (Kim)

HARTIG, KARA Wintertime Cold Extremes: Mechanisms and Teleconnections with the Stratosphere (Tziperman)

LEE, SEUNG HWAN Spin Waves as New Probes for Graphene Quantum Hall Systems (Yacoby)

LEEMBRUGGEN, MADELYN Buckling, wrinkling, and crumpling of simulated thin sheets (Rycroft)

LI, CHENYUAN Quantum Criticality and Superconductivity in Systems Without Quasiparticles (Sachdev)

MILLER, NOAH Gravity and Lw_{1 + infinity} symmetry (Strominger)

OZTURK, SUKRU FURKAN A New Spin on the Origin of Biological Homochirality (Sasselov)

PAN, GRACE Atomic-scale design and synthesis of unconventional superconductors (Mundy)

POLLACK, DANIEL Synthesis, characterization, and chemical stability analysis of quinones for aqueous organic redox flow batteries (Gordon)

SAYDJARI, ANDREW Statistical Models of the Spatial, Kinematic, and Chemical Complexity of Dust (Finkbeiner)

SHACKLETON, HENRY Fractionalization and disorder in strongly correlated systems (Sachdev)

SKRZYPEK, BARBARA The Case of the Missing Neutrino: Astrophysical Messengers of Planck-Scale Physics (Argüelles-Delgado)

TSANG, ARTHUR Strong Lensing, Dark Perturbers, and Machine Learning (Dvorkin)

XU, MUQING Quantum phases in Fermi Hubbard systems with tunable frustration (Greiner)

YE, BINGTIAN Out-of-equilibrium many-body dynamics in Atomic, Molecular and Optical systems (Yao)

ZAVATONE-VETH, JACOB Statistical mechanics of Bayesian inference and learning in neural networks (Pehlevan)

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Particle theory

Research group

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• Fields, strings, and quantum dynamics
• Fundamental particles and interactions
• Particle astrophysics & cosmology

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• Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics
• Publications
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Related research groups

• Beecroft Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology

Theses written by recent former students of the group, listed by main supervisor

Joseph Conlon Searches for Axion-Like Particles with X-ray astronomy Nicholas Jennings (2018) Astrophysical signatures of axion and axion-like particles Francesca Day (2017) Cosmology & Astrophysics of Dark Radiation Andrew Powell (2016) Phenomenology of Dark Radiation & String Compactifications Stephen Angus (2014)

Andre Lukas Aspects of string model-building and heterotic/F-theory duality Callum Brodie (2019) Calabi-Yau Manifolds, Discrete Symmetries & String Theory Challenger Mishra (2017) Heterotic string compactification & quiver gauge theory on toric geometry Chuang Sun (2016) Heterotic Compactification on Spaces of General 6-Structures Eirik Eik Svanes (2014) (with Prof Xenia de la Ossa Maths) Elementary Particle Physics from String Theory Compactifications, Michael Klaput (2014) Heterotic string models on smooth Calabi-Yau threefolds Andrei Constantin (2013)

John March Russell Radiation from Black Holes George Johnson (2020) Aspects of massive spin-2 effective field theories James Bonifacio (2017) (with Prof Pedro Ferreira Astro) Multimetric theories of gravity James Scargill (2016)  (with Prof Pedro Ferreira Astro) Searching for New Particles at the Large Hadron Collider: Theory and Methods for Extradimensional Supersymmetry James Scoville (2015)  (with Prof Alan Barr PP) New Phenomenology from Asymmetric Dark Matter Robert Lasenby (2015) Supersymmetry and Electroweak Fine Tuning Edward Hardy (2014) Aspects of Asymmetric Dark Matter James Unwin (2013) (with Prof Philip Candelas   Maths) The String Axiverse and Cosmology David Marsh (2012)

Gavin Salam Precision fits for the LHC and beyond Emma Slade (2020) (with Juan Rojo, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam) Precision Physics at the Large Hadron Collider Frederic Dreyer (2016) (with Matteo Cacciari, LPTHE, Paris Diderot University) Theoretical & experimental study of electroweak corrections for inclusive production of jets and development of methods for detecting extreme topologies Nicolas Meric (2013)  (with Philippe Schwemling, LPNHE, Paris Diderot University)

Subir Sarkar

On the impact of new, light states in some astrophysical and laboratory systems Giacomo Marocco (2022) (with John Wheater ) Investigating new physics with high power lasers  Konstantin Beyer (2021) (with Gianluca Gregori , ALP)

Inhomogeneities in Cosmology David Kraljic (2016) From the LHC to IceCube Jim Talbert (2016) (with Dr Guido Bell) The Standard Model to the Planck scale Kyle Allison (2015) (with Prof Graham Ross) Phenomenology of Asymmetric Dark Matter Felix Kahlhoefer (2014)

Andrei Starinets Holographic Approaches to Strongly-Interacting Systems Nikola Gushterov (2018)  (with  Dr Andrew O'Bannon Southampton) Applications of the gauge/gravity duality Jonas Probst (2017) Gauge/Gravity Duality & Non-Equilibrium Dynamics of Strongly Coupled Quantum Systems Philip Kleinert (2017) Hidden structures in scattering amplitudes & correlation functions in supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories Jakub Sikorowski (2015) (with Prof Luis Fernando Alday Maths) Hydrodynamics: from effective field theory to holography Saso Grozdanov (2014) Holographic quantum liquids Nikolaos Kaplis (2013) Excitations in holographic quantum liquids Richard Davison (2012)

John Wheater

On the impact of new, light states in some astrophysical and laboratory systems Giacomo Marocco (2022) (with Subir Sarkar )

Topics in quantum gravity and quantum field theory Dennis Praveen Xavier (2022) Spin systems and boundary conditions on random planar graphs Aravinth Kulanthaivelu (2020) Naturalness in beyond the standard model physics Isabel Garcia Garcia (2017) Random Matrices, Boundaries and Branes Benjamin Niedner (2015) Spectral dimension in graph models of causal quantum gravity Georgios Giasemidis (2013)

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MS in Physics (without Thesis)

Without thesis.

This is not a common degree path because most MS students graduate with thesis. Under special circumstances, a student may take this degree path, however, a pre-approval by the graduate coordinator has to be given.

Course requirement : 

The following 5 courses (PHYS 8011, PHYS 8101, PHYS 8102, PHYS 8201, and PHYS 8301), the scientific presentation course (PHYS 8950), 7 hours of 6000-level and/or 8000-level PHYS or ASTR courses (these will constitute the student’s area of concentration), and 2 courses at the 6000-level and/or 8000-level that are outside of the department but are in a related field.

Grade requirement

For both MS and Ph.D. degrees, a GPA of 3.0 or better has been maintained in all graduate courses taken. No course with grade below 'C' or lower can be used in the Program of Study.

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Exploring the invisible universe, physics dissertation defense: jingjing pan, yale university, “exploring the standard model and beyond through the lens of jet substructure and deep learning with the atlas experiment”.

The prevalence of hadronic jets at the LHC requires a deep understanding of jet formation both experimentally and theoretically. The microscopic dynamics of hadronic collisions is faithfully imprinted in the radiation patterns within jets, the study of which goes under the name jet substructure. This thesis documents two analyses performed using the 140 fb-1 full run data of pp-collions at √s = 13 TeV taken with the ATLAS detector. Part I presents the first measurement of jet track functions, which is a class of universal non-perturbative objects that cannot be calculated from first-principles and therefore must be precisely extracted from data. The data are corrected for detector effects using Iterative Bayesian Unfolding (IBU) as well a machine learning-based method named OmniFold. Publication of this measurement will enable theoretical predictions of track-based jet substructure observables, opening up a new class of opportunities to study jet formation with unprecedented precision and to broadly improve the sensitivity of new physics searches at the LHC. The second part of this thesis lays the foundation for a new search for a dark vector boson Zd, which was proposed as the mediator of an U(1)d extension to the Standard Model. The new Zd boson is presumed to exist within the mass range 65 ~ 115 GeV and searched for in the H → Z* Zd → 4l (l = e, μ) decay channel, which is an uncharted region of phase space and take advantage of clean environment and precise Monte Carlo simulations of the four-lepton channel. Preliminary upper limits on the H → Z* Zd → 4l (l = e, μ) cross section was set using Asimov dataset, paving the way for future development of the study. Thesis committee: Keith Baker (advisor), Sarah Demers, Helen Caines, Ian Moult

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Physics PhD Thesis Defense: Ouail Kitouni

Tuesday, August 06, 2024 at 3:00pm

Building 26, Kolker Room #26-414  60 VASSAR ST, Cambridge, MA 02139

Dear Colleagues,

You are cordially invited to attend the following thesis defense.

’’Exploring the Intersection of Physics Modeling and Representation Learning’’ Presented by Ouail Kitouni Abstract is below Date: Tuesday, August 6, 2024 Time: 3 pm Location: Kolker Room #26-414  Also on Zoom at  https://mit.zoom.us/j/93736030885 Committee:   Michael Williams, Jesse Thaler, Philip Coleman Harris Best of luck to Ouail! ______________________________________________________________________________________ Abstract: Representation Learning has evolved into a multi-purpose tool capable of solving arbitrary problems provided enough data.  This thesis focuses on two primary directions: (1) Harnessing the power of deep learning for applications in fundamental physics and (2) using physics-inspired tools to improve and shed some light on otherwise large-scale, inscrutable black-box algorithms. We explore a collection of applications that improve different aspects of nuclear and particle physics research across its many stages, from online data selection to offline data analysis. We also tease out how deep learning can open up entirely new avenues of research through the lens of mechanistic interpretability to (re)derive fundamental theory as well as new ways to reinterpret physics measurements. Lastly, we study how physics tools can be useful to better understand the dynamics of deep learning as well as provide a solid foundation for algorithms and training paradigms that expand the frontier of machine learning. Committee:   Maxim Metlitski, Liang Fu, Michael Williams

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WFU Physics

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Dominique Itanze completes his Ph. D. Thesis and is set to become Assistant Professor of Chemistry

On June 26 th 2024 Dominique S. Itanze defended his Ph. D. thesis “First-Principles Simulations for Catalysis for Sustainable Production of Fuels and Chemicals” and is scheduled to officially receive his Ph. D. from the Wake Forest University Department of Chemistry in August, 2024. Dominique’s work is interdisciplinary; mentored by Professors Scott Geyer and Patricia Dos Santos in Chemistry and Natalie Holzwarth in Physics. His committee also included Professors Akbar Salam and Elham Gadhiri in Chemistry and Stephen Winters in Physics. From the beginning of his graduate career, Dominique contributed to various projects in the Geyer laboratory through computer analysis and simulation, gradually increasing the sophistication of the computations. His most recent modeling work, some of which was presented to the Electrochemical Society shown in the picture, used newly available computational formalisms and codes which incorporate the effects of solvation and voltage at each step of the catalytic process. The manuscript “On the Mechanism of Butanol Formation from the Electrochemical Reduction of CO 2 on Phosphorus-Rich CuP 2 without *CO Dimerization: A Computational Study” was submitted to the Journal of Physical Chemistry C for consideration for publication. Based on an experimental report in the recent published literature, Dominique’s simulations provide insight into the detailed mechanisms of this complex multi-step process. Dominique is looking forward to continuing his research and to teaching and mentoring students in chemistry at Winthrop University.

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• Dominique Itanze completes his Ph. D. Thesis and is set to become Assistant Professor of Chemistry July 30, 2024