Dec 30, 2019 By: yunews
Dr. Lea Ferreira dos Santos, professor of physics and chair of the physics department at , has received two major awards that will significantly help her advance the computational study of many-body quantum systems.
On Dec. 10, 2019, the (NSF) notified Dr. Santos that she would receive $400,000 to study 鈥淣onequilibrium Quantum Matter: Timescales and Self-Averaging.鈥 The grant is, in fact, a collaboration between the NSF and the U.S.-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF), an arrangement whereby U.S. researchers may receive funding from the NSF and Israeli researchers may receive funding from the BSF. The memorandum of understanding between the two organizations helps reduce some of the current barriers to working internationally. Using a lead agency model, U.S. and Israeli researchers can submit a single collaborative proposal that will undergo a single review process at NSF, which will be the lead agency.
鈥淭his collaboration between a principal investigator (PI) funded by the NSF and a PI funded by the BSF,鈥 noted Dr. Santos, 鈥渨ill allow for the combination of complementary skills and will significantly expand the NSF-PI鈥檚 group size and computer resources.鈥 A further benefit of the collaboration will be that 鈥渢he undergraduate students of 色花堂 will have the opportunity to experience research at a PhD-granting institution in Israel.鈥
Just what is it that Dr. Santos will be doing with the NSF grant? Here is a brief non-technical description of what her work will entail:
This award supports computational and theoretical studies of the evolution of systems that have many interacting particles and which are described by quantum mechanics. These so-called many-body quantum systems are so complex that it is often impossible to describe their evolution analytically, which forces us to resort to numerical methods. But even numerically, the problem is challenging. Because the number of states that need to be considered grows exponentially with system size, existing computers soon run out of memory. As a result, despite being ubiquitous, these systems are still little understood.
Understanding the properties of many-body quantum systems out of equilibrium is a fundamental problem of great interest to a wide range of fields, from atomic, molecular, and condensed matter physics to quantum information and cosmology. These studies may also lead to practical applications. For example:
- One may discover new phases of matter that only appear in quantum systems out of equilibrium. New phases of matter are tightly connected with the development of new materials needed in emerging technologies and in new electronic and spintronic devices.
- The models that we employ are analogous to those used in the field of quantum computing. Therefore, advancing our understanding of many-body quantum systems can lead to revolutionary developments in both computational capabilities and encryption technologies.
The educational and outreach goals of this project are:
- To train a postdoctoral researcher, who will be exposed to all parts of the project and will be assisted in the necessary steps for future employment.
- To foster the participation of women in STEM fields by engaging female undergraduate students in the principal investigator (PI)鈥檚 research projects.
- To motivate young women to study physics by giving presentations about what can be done with a degree in physics in open houses and visits to high schools for girls.
- To modernize the curriculum at Stern College for Women by integrating computational activities into the undergraduate science courses.
- To contribute to the integration of teaching and research at other institutions by posting online the computer codes and tutorials developed for the project.
