Senior thesis leads to scientific publication

Posted in News Story

Recent Georgetown Physics graduate Mark Jreissaty (A.B. 2011) has turned his award-winning Senior Thesis into a scientific publication in the prestigious American Physical Society journal Physical Review A. Working with Prof. Marcos Rigol, a graduate student, and a post-doc, Mark studied how bosonic Mott insulators in optical lattices expand when a confining potential is turned off. In addition to advancing the understanding of these intriguing systems, the work provides the basis for a novel type of atom laser. Mark will also report the results of his study in the 2012 March Meeting of the American Physical Society. Mark’s research earned him Honors in Physics and a share of the Physics Department’s Undergraduate Research Award. He is now an Engineering student at Columbia University.

The vast majority of physics majors at Georgetown take advantage of the opportunity to work directly with physics faculty on cutting-edge research, often leading to similar publications. Any current undergraduates who would like to learn more about the opportunities in our department should visit our Research Opportunities web page or talk to any faculty member.