Title: A quantum mechanical problem reduced to a classical problem: quantum ground states and tilings

Liza Huijse - Sept 07 2009

Abstract

A long standing challenge in condensed matter theory is the understanding of
strongly correlated electron systems. This is particularly challenging when the
kinetics and interactions of the electrons have to be treated on an equal
footing. We study a lattice model which describes precisely this regime, but is
tuned to have a rich mathematical structure: supersymmetry. 

This property provides us with a powerful toolbox to study this model. I will
show how we employed this toolbox to reduce a quantum mechanical problem of
counting the quantum ground states of the model to a classical problem of 
counting tiling configurations.