Joaquin Drut 2009
Frank Verstraete 2007

THE HERMANN KÜMMEL EARLY ACHIEVEMENT AWARD IN MANY-BODY PHYSICS

The International Advisory Committee of the International Conferences Series on Recent Progress in Many-Body Theoriesis pleased to announce that the  HERMANN KÜMMEL EARLY ACHIEVEMENT AWARD IN MANY-BODY PHYSICS in 2009 is awarded to

Dr. Joaquín E. Drut, Ohio State University, Columbus, U.S.A.

This award honors Prof. Kümmel's long and distinguished career as a leader in the field of many-body physics and as a mentor of younger generations of many-body physicists. This inaugural award will be presented to Dr. Drut at the 15th International Conference on Recent Progress in Many-Body Theories, to be held in Columbus, USA, 27-31 July 2009.

Dr. Joaquín E. Drut's Achievements

Joaquín Drut received his Doctor degree in March 2008, only one year ago, and already he has made an impressive contribution to the field of many-body physics. In a series of papers Joaquín established the thermodynamic properties of the spin-½ Fermi gas in the unitary regime first using Quantum Monte Carlo methods and then applying quantum field theory methods to determine analytically properties of the same system. His results and applied methods are directly relevant to many other important problems, including low-density neutron matter and QCD at low temperatures. These papers marked the transition to a quantitative understanding of strongly paired Fermions at finite temperature. A universal function of temperature characterizing the thermodynamics in the unitary limit was determined and verified by comparing with experiments in harmonic traps. An upper bound of the critical temperature for superfluidity was derived and a critical discussion of the extension to the vicinity of the unitary limit was given.

Very recently Joaquín Drut turned his attention to graphene and used lattice Monte Carlo simulations to present evidence that graphene in vacuum is an insulator. In the follow up paper, which was featured as "Editors' Suggestion" in Phys. Rev. B and was highlighted in the Viewpoint section of PHYSICS magazine, it is shown that the phase transition from the semimetal to insulator is of second order.

Abridged Curriculum Vitae

Dr. Joaquín Drut was born in Argentina in May 1978. He made his university studies up to the Master degree in Universidad Nacional de La Plata in Argentina. For graduate studies he moved to the Institute for Nuclear Theory & Department of Physics of the University of Washington in Seattle USA and received his Ph. D. degree in 2008 under supervision of professors Aurel Bulgac and Dam T. Son. Presently he has a post-doctoral position in the Department of Physics of Ohio State University in Columbus, U.S.A.
Starting in 2005 Dr. Drut delivered several seminars and conference talks. He has published 10 papers, which have received around 130 citations. Representative papers for his work are:

1. Aurel Bulgac, Joaquín E. Drut, and Piotr Magierski,
   Spin 1/2 Fermions in the Unitary Regime: A Superfluid of a New Type
   PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS. 96, 090404 (2006).
   This paper demonstrates that the superfluid transition in cold atomic gases occurs at a very high temperature, at a significant fraction of the Fermi energy. Before this paper the importance of the high transition temperature and the consequent unique mélange of Fermi and Bose features present in thermodynamic observables were not generally appreciated.
2. Aurel Bulgac, Joaquín E. Drut, and Piotr Magierski,
   Quantum Monte Carlo simulations of the BCS-BEC crossover at finite temperature
   PHYSICAL REVIEW A 78, 023625 (2008).
   In this paper technical details involved in the nonperturbative calculation of thermal averages of systems of interacting fermions at finite temperature are given. The universal function of temperature characterizing the thermodynamics in the unitary limit and other thermal properties of a system of spin-1 /2 fermions at and away from the unitary limit are determined.
3. Joaquín E. Drut and Timo A. Lähde,
   Is Graphene in Vacuum an Insulator?
   PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS. 102, 026802 (2009.
   In this paper ab initio simulations establish that graphene in vacuum is likely to be an insulator. It determines the critical strength of the Coulomb interaction at which the transition from semimetal to insulator happens. This work was selected as a Nature Highlight.