Recent

I'm wrapping up my thesis in Amherst in Spring 2009.

Research

Diameter of Random Clusters with Jon Machta (UMass). I have been studying the critical behavior of the diameter of Potts Model clusters via numerical simulations. Here the diameter corresponds to the "graph theoretic" definition of diameter -- the longest of all the shortest paths in the cluster.

Melting Dynamics in Colloidal Crystallites with Alex Levine and Moumita Das (UCLA), Tony Dinsmore, John Savage, and Bob Guyer (all at UMass), and David Lacoste (ESPCI). Using simulation, theory, and experiment, we have been studying the melting and freezing dynamics of colloidal crystallites with both short- and long-ranged interparticle potentials.

Phase Transitions in Computational Complexity with Jon Machta (UMass). In recent years, the observation of what appear to be phase transitions in the computational complexity of "hard problems" in computer science (e.g. K-SAT) have led to the application of statistical physics techniques to these problems. The percolation model is a simple model with a well-understood phase transition at a critical value of the bond (or spin) occupation probability, p_c. We study the computational complexity of simulating the percolation model, and find that it also exhibits a phase transition at p_c.