Master of Arts, University of Akron, 2007, Theatre Arts

Space is an essential tool for actors. An actor must perceive the space and use it – all of it, not only the stage area. An actor must learn to see the space for what it is—the literal space of the theatre so he or she is not swept away into a world built solely in his imagination. The actor should learn to use the different landmarks to guide his precise actions. An actor must work to own the space, so he or she feels at home in the theatre. The actor must sensitize himself to the space, training himself to be a highly sensitive organism capable of instant, precise reactions to the stimuli found within. The actor must learn to trust his intimate knowledge of the space, stay within the moment, and extend his energy beyond the stage. The actor must understand how his or her internal space must be cleared of clutter so that he or she might connect to the external space. The actor should know that the space of the text promises a wealth of information, but the text must be woven into the physical acting score. The actor should be vigilant to remain attentive to all areas of space, including the space between.

Committee: James Slowiak (Advisor) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2016, Physics

A large portion of cold atom researches have been devoted to finding novel systems by taking advantage of the high manipulability of cold atom experiments. From the original Bose-Einstein condensates, to the recent realization of Harper-Hofstadter models, cold atoms have kept feeding the world with surprises of realizing systems that were once thought to be purely theoretical constructions. Such trend of research have propelled this thesis to seek for possible new physics based on current cold atom technologies, and to discuss its unique properties. In the first part, we will discuss the local spin ordering for systems made of large spin fermions. This is a generalization of the usual magnetic ordering for spin-1/2 systems, and we shall see that the large spin characters have made qualitative difference. Here we provide a general tensorial classification for fermionic systems of arbitrary spin, and discussed their general character and associated topological defects in the Majorana representation. We have also identified a series of highly symmetric “Platonic solid states” that are stable against perturbations, and have good chance of being observed in experiments. The second part focuses on another topic, which is the eects of background manifold on the quantum systems residing on it. We will first examine the vortex physics for Bose condensates confined on non-trivial 2D surfaces with synthetic gauge fields. In particular, we discuss in detail the cylindrical surface as an example where two types of vortices and a peculiar “necklace” pattern show up as a result of the confining geometry. Then we discuss the topic of Hall viscosity, a unique dissipationless viscosity coeffcient that is related to the adiabatic change of space geometry. We relate it to the density response of a system, and therefore provide an alternative way to compute and measure such a quantity.

Committee: Tin-Lun Ho (Advisor); Eric Braaten (Committee Member); Richard Furnstahl (Committee Member); Jay Gupta (Committee Member) Subjects: Physics