Focus Magazine, Boise State UniversityRESEARCH
HANNA RECEIVES NSF GRANT TO STUDY
CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS
Physics professor Charles Hanna, right, and student Juan Carlos Díaz-Vélez discuss condensed matter theory in a Boise State classroom.
By Janelle Brown
Physics professor Charles Hanna is the recipient of a three-year $104,000 National Science Foundation grant that is the first of its kind for Boise State University.
The grant, awarded by the NSF’s Division of Materials Research, enables Hanna to pursue research in the area of physics called condensed matter theory, a field of study that includes the physics of semiconductors, superconductors, polymers and advanced materials. The field has many practical applications in the semiconductor industry, including the invention of the transistor.
“Condensed matter physics is the largest area of physics research,” says Hanna, adding that this is the first time Boise State has received NSF funding to pursue basic research in this field. “It’s an exciting project and a great opportunity for our students to get hands-on research experience at the undergraduate level.”
Hanna wants to discover exactly how layers of electrons, separated by only atomic distances, interact or “talk” to each other under various conditions.
His project, “Correlated Electrons in Multilayer Semiconductors,” involves developing mathematical models to describe and predict the effects of the forces between electrons in layered semiconductors.
Hanna’s NSF proposal developed in part from research he carried out in recent years with two Boise State undergraduate students — Dylan Haas, who graduated in physics in 1998 and is now attending the University of Arizona, and Juan Carlos Díaz-Vélez, a junior physics major and former professional ballet dancer.
Working with Haas, Hanna found that at very low densities, the laws of quantum mechanics allowed electrons in different layers to combine in unexpected ways. After a series of exhaustive calculations, Hanna and Díaz-Vélez discovered a three-component state of electrons in double-layer systems that had been missed by earlier researchers. These two discoveries led them to realize that the current scientific understanding of closely spaced layers of electrons is incomplete, and helped determine the future direction of Hanna’s research program.
Hanna previously received a nationally competitive Cottrell College Science Award from the Research Corp. and was selected as an ITP Scholar for 1997-2000 by the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has a Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University and joined Boise State’s faculty in 1996. His Ph.D. adviser at Stanford, Robert Laughlin, received the 1998 Nobel Prize in physics.
