(last updated on September 23, 2010)

   Below you will find proposals made by faculty and/or students for senior projects for the class of 2011. In some cases, the students working on these projects are already identified but in general they are not. Many faculty have rough ideas for projects but have not submitted them for publication on this page, or believe that adequate information is available from prior projects they have supervised so students should feel free to approach any physics faculty member to investigate the possibility of working with him or her.  Prior Projects of a potential advisor can be found by clicking on their name below. Physics majors are also free to pursue senior project opportunities with research scientists or engineers from outside the physics department or even outside the university. Students are welcome to develop their own ideas for a senior project, as long as they identify a faculty advisor. This advisor need not be in the physics department.

Here are all previous and current projects, by year.

To find previous and current projects by a given advisor click on their name. If an advisor's name is not a hyperlink, then we don't have record of earlier projects

Here are projects since academic year 2007-2008, by physics department advisor.

Here are projects since academic year 2007-2009, with out-of-department advisors

All Proposals in BLACK type are thought to be current

Dan Akerib- Lux / Liquid Xenon dark matter detector R&D

Our group is carrying out a 350-kg liquid-xenon-based detector to search for dark matter, as well as carrying out R&D for larger detectors. Interested students should contact one of us directly to discuss possible topics ranging from software projects in particle backgrounds and light collection modeling to laboratory projects in xenon purification techniques

Jesse Berezovsky

By confining an electron within a nanoscale semiconductor structure, we can study its quantum behavior in a controlled environment, which may lead to new types of computing based on quantum phenomena.  We are currently planning several experiments to understand and control the coherent dynamics of electron spins in these types of systems, and to explore the interaction of these spins with photons.  Possible projects would include: 1. Controlling the spin/photon interaction with optical resonators; 2. Developing new techniques for measuring the coherent dynamics of electron spins; 3. Studying the coupling of confined spins with a magnetic environment.

Robert Brown

A series of possibilities arises from our present and past work, with emphasis on interdisciplinary collaborations, academic and industrial.  Which project depends on the student's interest, although the final number of projects will have to be limited, of course.  Very briefly, the projects include

1)  The role of functional MRI studies of the brain in cognitive science - research with Professor Tony Jack of the CS dept.

2)  Role in the continuing development of the new imaging modality, magnetic particle imaging -  research with the radiology dept.

3) Searches for simple schemes using electromagnetic measurements for the detection of malaria - research with the medical school.

4) Research aligned with Cleveland industry in imaging, radiation, and photovoltaic physics.

5) Research into how we learn and how it informs our teaching.

6) A recently discovered duality between the color of quarks and gluons and their space-time structure actually is related to our previous particle physics work of some years ago.  There is more knowledge to be gained by comparing the new and old work.

Corbin Covault

High Energy Astrophysics

Our group is active in experimental research in High Energy Astrophysics. Our major experimental effort is on the Pierre Auger Observatory which includes data collection from the completed Auger South (in Argentina) and R&D in anticipation of Auger North (to be deployed in southeastern Colorado) We are also active in two minor projects (XOSS and OSETI). Information can be found on the HEA group web page: http://hea.case.edu/ . What all these efforts have in common is (a) they involve looking for rapid flashes of light with photomultiplier tubes, and (b) each involves extensive collaboration with scientists and students within our group and among other groups. Senior projects in our group will be developed around one of these five efforts, typically with both instrumentation and software (analysis or simulation) components.

Possible senior projects include optical calibration studies, timing measurements with GPS equipment, cosmic ray shower simulations, and detector prototyping. Our group attracts a number of undergraduates with at least eight senior projects in the past four years. There are also some opportunities for projects in distributed computing and physics education research.

Gary Chottiner

Surface Science and Thin Films

1.  Understanding the properties and behavior of lithium is of great importance in developing better battery storage systems for a variety of purposes, and it’s often the surface rather than the bulk of the lithium component that matters in these applications.  Unfortunately, a truly clean lithium surface is extraordinarily difficult to create and sustain due to lithium’s high reactivity.  Our lab (G. Chottiner + D. Scherson of the Dept. of Chemistry) has experience in this area and may hold the record for the cleanest lithium surface ever reported.  This project will employ the ultra-high vacuum (UHV) system in Rockefeller 314 (and perhaps other UHV systems on campus) to compare various methods of producing a clean lithium surface, including ion sputtering a solid Li disk and evaporating Li from a thermally heated source.  We’ll then investigate how the surface evolves when it is intentionally contaminated with simple molecules such as nitrogen and oxygen, and possibly more complex molecules that are used in the manufacture of Li batteries.

2. One of the more useful experimental techniques in surface science is Temperature Programmed Desorption, TPD.  A mass spectrometer is used to monitor gasses that leave a surface as a sample is heated.  TPD can be used to measure the binding energy of atoms or molecules to a surface (a quantity that is critically important but difficult to measure in any other way) and, with the help of isotopically labeled gases, the reactions that can occur when molecules and atoms interact with each other on a surface.  One can’t simply purchase a TPD apparatus, it has to be constructed from individual components and the software has to be written to control the experiment and analyze the data.  Our research group has experience in this area but doesn’t currently have an operating TPD system.  The student who takes on this project will develop a TPD system and use it to examine a variety of scientifically and technologically interesting problems.

3. There is a possibility for one additional project but it will only be available to an extremely talented and dedicated student, and it will require the approval of Prof. Frank Ernst of the Dept. of Materials Science. This project will require the student to learn how to use an expensive, delicate UHV Scanning Tunneling / Atomic Force Microscope that is housed in the White Building to take images and conduct experiments on a system TBD.  You can learn more here.

Xuan Gao

Suspended Nanowire Electro-Mechanical Devices

Nanoelectromechanical-systems or NEMS are sub-micron devices where the electronic characteristics are integrated with the mechanical behavior. Developing NEMS with high quality factor will allow novel devices and new tools for sensing and studying minuscular forces/displacements. In this project we will construct a NEMS device with suspended nanowire with diameter as small as 10nm. The resonant modes and quality factor of the suspended nanowire beam will be studied through electrical characterization of device at high frequencies.

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Large Scale Graphene Transistor Arrays

Graphene, a single atomic sheet of carbon atoms, was recently isolated from graphite and received tremendous interest in electronics applications. The widely used mechanical exfoliation method of graphene, however, is uncontrolled and not useful for manufacturing large scale electronics. We will explore various contact printing methods for constructing large scale graphene transistor arrays. The goal is to achieve few-layer or single layer graphene transistor arrays on centimeter size silicon wafer with high yield.

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Nanowire Transistors for DNA Sensing

Nanowires are emerging as novel materials for device applications. In this project we will employ nanowire transistors as sensors for biomolecule detection. The specific goal is to achieve highly sensitive and sequence specific detection of single strand DNAs. We will synthesize nanowires through a ‘bottom up’ (chemistry-based) approach and fabricate nanowire transistors using lithography techniques. Both physical adsorption and covalent bonding will be explored to attach probe peptide nucleic acid (PNA) onto nanowire surface to capture the target DNA. Electrical measurement of the nanowire transistor will be used to detect and study DNA hybridization. Effects like base mismatch between probe and target strands and charge screening in ionic solutions will be investigated as DNAs hybridize/dehybridze on nanowire surface. Students will gain experience in several research areas including material chemistry, nano-electronics, and biophysics.

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Nanowire Spin-electronic Devices

Conventional electronic devices use the charge of flowing electrons to realize computation and information processing. The concept of incorporating the spin degree of freedom of electrons into the device functionality opened up a new area termed ‘spin-electronics’ (or ‘spintronics’). Much attention of forefront spintronics research has been focused on how to create and control spin polarized current in semiconductors. Recently, researchers have achieved some success in doing so in bulk or thin-films of semiconductors. In this project, we will first investigate if one can electrically create and detect spin polarized current in semiconductor nanowires by contacting nanowires with ferromagnetic metal. We will then study if an external gate voltage can be used to control the spin polarization of current to realize the ‘spin-transistor’, the most fundamental spintronic-device which has yet to be demonstrated.

Kathleen Kash

Thermal gradient growth of single crystal InN

Mixing a little InN with GaN has given us the ability to tune the band gap of the alloy semiconductor In(x)Ga(1-x)N from the ultraviolet through the visible, and has as a result given us efficient blue LEDs and a host of other important devices. In order to model these devices precisely and accurately, we need to know the intrinsic properties of InN. As for any semiconductor, this means that we need to measure these properties on a sample of sufficiently high quality. It seems that no one can grow InN of sufficiently high quality yet, and this state of affairs is reflected in the broad ranges reported for its measured properties, from electron effective mass to lattice constants to band gap. For example, the measurements of the band gap vary from 0.6 eV to 2.3 eV, and as a result there has been huge controversy in the last decade and a half over the "true" band gap, and some researchers feel, rightly enough, that this controversy is still not resolved. The aim of this senior project will be to artfully construct an appropriate thermal gradient across a melt of In, expose the surface of the melt to a nitrogen plasma, and thereby grow a single crystal of high quality InN. If successful, we'll then make the best measurements ever of as many properties of InN as we can. And anticipate that the world will beat a path to our door to demand this wonderful material.

And, other projects available, see e.g. previous abstracts

Kenneth Kowalski

Comparing Classical and Quantum Probabilities
Classical dynamics is usually formulated in terms of strictly deterministic entities, but quantum theory is probabilistic which sometimes makes the comparison between the predictions of the two theories difficult even in what is expected to be the "classical limit." This investigation  proposes to extend the number of the relatively few well-known examples of classical dynamical problems, such as the one-dimensional harmonic oscillator, a freely falling particle in a uniform gravitational field, and the Coulomb scattering problem, that have been expressed in probabilistic terms and compare them with their quantum-mechanical counterparts with particular attention to both the extreme classical and extreme quantum limits by means of analytical and numerical studies.

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Shortening Radioactive Lifetimes of Waste from Nuclear-Fission Reactors

One of major problems associated with fission nuclear reactors is the longevity of the waste that is produced which complicates the storage strategies for these byproducts. That longevity largely resides in the heavy-element portions of the waste products, while the radioactive isotopes of most of the light elements are relatively short-lived. This has prompted a number of accelerator-based approaches which are designed to breakdown, by collision processes, the heavier radioactive elements into lighter ones which can then be stored without unreliable projections as to geological conditions into the far future. Up to now, this is the only method that can, in principle, actually dispose of fission-reactor waste products from earth, rather than simply storing them or rocketing them into the sun, but yet a practical (economical) means of implementing it seems not to have been realized despite considerable efforts. This project concerns itself with understanding by means of simple models the physical and engineering problems involved with using particle accelerator beams for reducing macroscopic quantities of radioactive heavy elements to materials composed of elements at the low end of the periodic table. It is likely that the realization of the predictions of these models will involve computer simulations

Walter Lambrecht

Shallow defect levels in semiconductors: the effective mass approximation.

Point defects such as impurities, vacancies, interstitials, are important in semiconductors because they control the doping and electrical behavior.  Defects that form levels in the gap close to one of the band edges are called shallow defects. These defects are difficult to calculate accurately by means of direct simulations because their wave functions are spread out over many unit cells. However, they are well described in the so-called effective mass approximation. In that method, we assume they are like particles with an effective mass being trapped in the Coulomb potential of the impurity. The problem then reduces to that of the Hydrogen atom with a Coulomb interaction reduced by the dielectric constant and with an effective mass. In this project we will explore extensions of this simple model to make it more realistic. First, we want to to add a so-called "central cell" correction, which describes how near to the defect the potential may differ from a Coulomb interaction. Second, for acceptor levels (close to the valence band maximum) we need to take into account the degeneracy of the valence band maximum. In other words, there are several bands with different effective mass, and the latter  also depends on direction. This means that instead of the usual Schroedinger equation, we obtain a set of coupled differential equations. We will use the variational method to find approximations to the ground state wave function and lowest binding energy. Finally, for some semiconductors, there are several conduction band minima with the same energy at different k-points. In that case, we also want to include the effects of possible interactions between those states, which is called intervalley coupling. In this project, we will first review the existing theories and then develop numerical methods  to solve the resulting equations and finally apply it to realistic cases.

Harsh Mathur

Senior projects in theoretical physics: