Education

B.S. (Physics)
Hendrix College (2002)

Research Interest

I have had the good fortune of working on three separate topics during my graduate career. Presently with my advisor professor Allan MacDonald, I am investigating the effects of a strong magnetic field in graphite, i.e., the quantum Hall effect in a three dimensional system. As a start, we are studying real spin polarization in graphite at filling factor unity.

The first work deals with cold bosonic atoms in optical lattices. The main attraction of cold atoms systems is the possibility of simulating strongly correlated systems while avoiding complications that usually plague most solid state systems. Unfortunately even cold atoms have their own complications, mainly arising from the harmonic traps almost always present in these set-ups. To deal with this case, We have developed a quantum theory that is sophisticated enough to qualitatively describe the various phases of complicated inhomogenous systems and yet simple enough to be applied with relative ease. As a demonstration of its use, we apply it to the case of magnetically frustrated optical lattices and also to the experimentally important optical lattice plus harmonic trap set-up.

The second work was done with professor Gregory Fiete while I was a grad fellow at the KITP, and it dealt with the so-called spin-incoherent Luttinger liquids. These are one-dimensional systems with decoupled spin and charge modes where the temperature is much larger than the characteristic energy of the former (thus the spins are highly thermalized) while it is much smaller than the latter (thus the Luttinger liquid theory is still applicable to the charge mode). Our motivation was to explore some properties of these systems that can be used as clear experimental signatures. The results are presented here (arxiv: 0706.3418).

Personal

I went back home to Ethiopia the summer of 2005 for the first time in almost seven years, and I have to say it was quite something. This is an account of my day on St. Michael's Day (June 12th) soon after I arrived.

Here is a longer one, and the one I am most proud of, about my travels in rural Ethiopia, called Surviving the Highlands of Ethiopia. Hope you all enjoy it; i will be happy to hear what you think of it.

Recently there was a string of thefts in RLM, the physics-math-astronomy building at UT-Austin that culminated with armed robberies. This article called "How to Deal with an Armed Robbery" is my attempt to contribute to the discussion that followed. A quick disclaimer: not to be taken seriously.

Links

Allan H. MacDonald's Condensed Matter Theory Group
arXiv
PROLA
UT-Austin Physics Department