Mentor's Bio:Born in Antwerp, Belgium Myriam Sarachik attended primary school in Antwerp and Havana, Cuba and high school at the Bronx High School of Science in New York. She earned a B. A. cum laude from Barnard College in 1954, majoring in physics. After working for a year at the IBM Watson Laboratories at Columbia University she returned to graduate school, receiving a M.S. in 1957 and a Ph.D. in 1960 from Columbia University.
Following a year as a research associate at IBM Watson Laboratories and a teacher at CCNY in the evening, she became a Member of the Technical Staff at Bell Telephone Laboratories at Murray Hill, New Jersey. In September 1964 she was appointed assistant professor at the CCNY. She was promoted to associate professor in 1967, to the rank of professor in 1971, and Distinguished Professor in 1995. She served as the Executive Officer of the University wide CUNY Ph. D. Program in Physics from 1975 to 1978.
Description of Research:Molecular Nanomagnets
Computing power/speed and the density of memory elements for storing and manipulating information has been steadily increasing, while the size of the component memory " bits " have been decreasing very rapidly. Considerable effort is currently being devoted to methods for storing information at molecular length scales. In order to continue our steep trajectory to better, smaller and faster computers, we must learn to understand and manipulate physics and chemistry at the molecular level. Moreover, quantum computation, a new and entirely different computing paradigm based on quantum phenomena, is being widely explored, both mathematically and experimentally. Rather than having two possible " classical " values, 0 or 1, the quantum mechanical elements of quantum computers, called " qubits " , represent a far broader set of possibilities, enabling much greater computing power.
Novel Behavior of Two Dimensional Electron Systems
One of the most interesting current questions in condensed matter physics is whether the unusual behavior observed in dilute, strongly-interacting two dimensional systems of electrons (or holes) signals the presence of a metallic phase and a metal-insulator transition.
According to well established theory, two-dimensional systems of weakly interacting electrons (or holes) are expected to be insulating in zero magnetic field B=0 in the zero-temperature limit. Experiments performed in the early 1980's provided confirmation of these expectations for relatively high electron densities. The availability within the last decade of samples of unusually high mobilities have allowed access to much lower electron (hole) densities, where electron interactions are quite strong. Unexpected metallic behavior has been observed in this low-density regime: for electron densities above some critical (low) density the resistivity decreases with decreasing temperature down to the lowest accessible temperatures while exhibiting insulating behavior at lower densities. This suggests there exists a true metallic phase in 2D.
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