Choose a topic that you would like to learn more about. Write a paper and prepare a 30-minute presentation. Include the following elements:

• A through review of the classic texts, with a tutorial approach in mind
• The most recent research literature on the topic or related topics (we can discuss this more)
• Numbers that give the reader an idea of the scale of the quantities you discuss
• A good bibliography that includes review and tutorial articles and research articles
• Uniqueness - no topic should overlap that of another class member. You will decide jointly about topics - all of you have to be interested in the others' topics
• Length: no maximum. 10-page minimum?
• Presentation: 15?30? minutes plus 5 minutes for questions
• Optional: a tentative homework problem and solution that would be good for future years

• Topological insulators
• Metal-insulator transitions
• Coulomb blockade
• FQHE
• nanoscale thermal transport
• Majorana fermions
• High temperature superconductivity
• Tunneling – semiconductor, josephson,
• Temp dependence of resistivity in semiconductors
• Universal Conductance Fluctuations
• Many other topics …

This Brief review article on topological insulators is pretty quick to read. Robert, you might be interested in the discussion on the last page about future work in the field with topological insulators and majorana fermions.

Current draft of the paper (Still pretty rough. Will be updated Sunday night): topological_insulators_rd.pdf

high temperature superconductors

Theory of High Temperature Superconductivity, by S. Fujita, S. Godoy

Here is a link to a draft of the paper for this course. Also, some interesting reading on High Temperature Superconductivity and Plasma Physics.

pommerenck_superconductivity.pdf

science-2015-clery-369-71.pdf

superconductivity_pommerenck.pptx

photons and electron transport Check out my rough draft here. The content I will present will be almost identical but with ever so slightly more pictures and less words. This version of the abstract has what I originally envisioned my project being, then I spent waaaay too much time trying to understand all of the derivations for what is a vast, vast topic that has like 75 years of prolific works behind it. These are my favorite links that will do a much better job covering this material than I ever could http://www.pveducation.org/pvcdrom/instructions http://ecee.colorado.edu/~bart/book/book/contents.htm main_text.docx

hopping conductivty in organics (and other)

Here is my powerpoint. I fixed a few things and added some experimental current values and mobilities.

organicstransport.pdf

Majorana fermions

Check out the Wikipedia article on Majorana Fermions for a general introduction to the topic. (JT - the Wiki article refers to a paper from just 3 weeks ago, claiming to have detected MFs in a superconductor http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nmat4604.html.)

In particular, we would be interested in Majorana Fermions as they exist in solid state superconductivity. Read this paper for a nice introduction.

majorana.pdf