Home page of

David Vanderbilt

Directory information

  Position: Faculty
  Research group: Center for Materials Theory
  Email address: dhv@physics.rutgers.edu
  Telephone: (848) 445-9049
  Office: Serin E291
  Mailing address: David Vanderbilt
Board of Governors Professor
Department of Physics and Astronomy
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
136 Frelinghuysen Road
Piscataway, NJ 08854-8019 USA

Research Activities

In recent decades, first-principles methods of computational electronic-structure theory have provided extremely powerful tools for predicting the electronic and structural properties of materials, using only the atomic numbers of the atoms and some initial guesses at their coordinates as input. My principal interests are in applying such methods to study the dielectric, ferroelectric, piezoelectric, and magnetoelectric properties of oxides. These may be simple bulk materials, or they may be superlattices or other nanostructured composites in which surface and interface effects are important. I also have an abiding interest in the development of new theoretical approaches and computational algorithms that can extend the reach and power of these first-principles methods. In particular, our group has made contributions to pseudopotential theory, the theory of electric polarization, the study of insulators in finite electric fields, the theory of Wannier functions and their applications, and the role of Berry phases and Berry curvatures in dielectric and magnetoelectric phenomena.

Basic Information

Book

Berry Phases in Electronic Structure Theory:
Electric Polarization, Orbital Magnetization and Topological Insulators

Publically Available Software Packages

Announcements

Internal Links

External Links


Please send any comments on this page to dhv@physics.rutgers.edu.