Physics 152B/232 : Final Project Topics

SUGGESTED TOPICS AND KEY CONCEPTS
Topic	Key Theory Concepts
Quantum Hall Effect	Landau levels, integer and fractional effects, quantum percolation, fractional charge and statistics, effects of disorder, metrology
Topological Insulators	Topological band structures, geometric phases, Chern numbers, surface states, time reversal invariance, quantum spin Hall effect, Kane-Mele model
Graphene	Tight binding model, Dirac points, transport, multilayers, quantum Hall effect, effects of disorder, interactions
Mesoscopic Transport	Landauer formula, multichannel Landauer-Buttiker formula, universal conductance fluctuations, weak localization, quantum dots, Coulomb blockade
Fermi Liquid Theory	Free energy functional, Landau parameters, thermodynamic stability, Landau-Boltzmann equation, zero and first sound
Density Functional Theory	The density functional, Hohenberg-Kohn theorem, local density approximation, exchange-correlation energy, applications to chemistry and physics
Physics of Glasses	Structural glasses, low temperature properties, glass transition, two level systems, spin glasses, replica symmetry breaking
Magnetic Impurities in Metals	Localized magnetic moments, Kondo effect, heavy fermions, mixed valency, Kondo insulators
Magnetic Textures	Magnetic energy: exchange, anisotropy, Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya, Zeeman; domains and domain walls, Skyrmions, magnetization dynamics, magnetic storage
Magnetic Resonance	Bloch equations, spin echo, spin-lattice relaxation, T1 vs. T2, motional narrowing, density matrices