An Associate Professor of Physics at The Graduate Center and Lehman College, Dr. Dimitra Karabali is pursuing research in theoretical high-energy physics which is currently focused in two areas, a) understanding nonperturbative features of gauge theories, such as confinement and mass gap and b) theoretical aspects of quantum Hall effect, in particular connections to non-commutative field theories and higher dimensional extensions.
a) It is well established by now that all physical phenomena can be described and explained in terms of the four fundamental forces, gravitational, electromagnetic, weak, and strong. Further, all these forces can be described by a class of theories known as gauge theories. In particular, Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) is a gauge theory describing the nuclear or strong interactions that bind the quarks and gluons into the protons and neutrons, the underlying constituents of nuclear matter. Although many aspects of QCD have been well understood over the last thirty years, there are nonperturbative phenomena of central importance, such as the mechanism for confinement of quarks and gluons and the generation of mass gap which defy a systematic quantitative analysis. Part of Dr. Karabali's research is focused on the understanding of these phenomena, by approaching them in a somewhat simpler but still physically relevant framework, the (2+1)-dimensional Yang-Mills theory.
b) The phenomenon of quantum Hall effect (QHE) appears in special samples of material in the presence of a strong perpendicular magnetic field. It is characterized by the existence of a series of plateaux where the electrical conductivity, in the direction perpendicular to both the magnetic field and the electric field applied along the surface of the material, is quantized, at very low temperatures. Both theoretically and experimentally, this has been one of the most intriguing problems of condensed matter physics for almost two decades. Dr. Karabali's recent research on QHE involves extensions to higher dimensional spaces and applications of these results to fluid dynamics.
Professor Karabali's research is supported by a National Science Foundation grant and a PSC-CUNY Research award.