While many PhD candidates are dreaming of the chance to be published in a prestigious journal, recent N.C . State graduate Adam Keith made it his reality when he was published in Nature, an international journal detailing the newest findings in science and medicine.
Last summer, Keith and his colleagues at the National Institute of Standards and Technology ( NIST ) at Boulder, Colo ., undertook the task of simplifying the rules of condensed matter systems to make more complex simulations possible.
Condensed matter physics examines the properties of condensed phases of solids and liquids. Physicists who work in the field attempt to understand the behavior of these phases using established physical laws and rely on complex models to examine their data. Some models can grow large enough where they can no longer be read on a standard computer. That is where Keith and his team stepped in.
Keith spent his time at NIST solving equations by hand and writing code to numerically evaluate the quantities his group was interested in. NIST researchers used this code to compare his theory to their results. Keith said his method made it much simpler to create large simulations by allowing them to evolve naturally, so it could be read off the values of interest.
Keith believes the method could open the gateway to more ambitious efforts like research into superconductivity and the possibility of exploring deeper questions condensed matter physicists are eager to explore. He joked, though, that he is a member of a team and not a standalone genius.
“I actually did not write the paper, although a section in the supplementary materials was based on my writing,” Keith said. “My contribution was the theory and code that allowed the experimentalists to correctly interpret their results. So, I literally could not have done it without the experimental work done by Joe Britton, Brian Sawyer and John Bollinger at NIST , and Jim Freericks and Joseph Wang at Georgetown University.”
Keith credited the University with laying the foundation underpinning his success.
“I’m no genius, but I do feel I was well prepared to conduct this research and am confident that several others in my graduating class would have done equally well at doing this work,” Keith said. “That is to say, I am comfortable with the caricature of a ‘boy genius’ if it represents the degree to which the physics department at N.C . State prepared me to solve problems. We’re physicists – we’re all ‘geniuses.’ I am nothing super special in my own community.”
Keith plans to attend graduate school at the University of Colorado at Boulder and continue working on similar research, if not the same project.
