Research Interests:

Our group consists of applied mathematicians and material scientists working on modeling, analysis and simulation for materials systems with nanoscale structures. The materials problems include both materials growth and device properties. Some examples are the following: surface morphology in growth of epitaxial thin films for quantum well systems (Fig.1), strain effects in heteroepitaxial growth (Fig. 2), microscopic structure of step edges, and electronic structure for design of quantum systems (Fig. 3). Mathematical methods include ab initio (DFT) computations, kinetic Monte Carlo simulations, level set computations for island dynamics, rate equations and bulk models.

Selected Publications:

• R.E. Caflisch, "Monte Carlo and Quasi-Monte Carlo Methods", Acta Numerica, 1-49 (1998) .
• R.E. Caflisch, W. E, M. Gyure, B. Merriman and C. Ratsch, "Kinetic model for a step edge in epitaxial growth", Phys. Rev. E 59 6879-6887 (1999) .
• R.E. Caflisch, M. Gyure, B. Merriman, S.J. Osher, C. Ratsch, D. Vvedensky and J. Zinck, "Island dynamics and the level set method for epitaxial growth", Applied Math Letters 12 13-22 (1999).
• S. Chen, M. Kang, B. Merriman, R.E. Caflisch, C. Ratsch, R. Fedkiw, M.F. Gyure, and S. Osher, "Level Set Method for Thin Film Epitaxial Growth'', Journ. Comp. Phys. 167 475-500 (2001) .
• R. E. Caflisch and C. Connell, "Atomistic Theory of Elasticity for Thin Epitaxial Films", J. Elasticity (2001) submitted

Dr. Caflisch's complete list of publications
Dr. Caflisch's CV

Biography:

Russel Caflisch received his PhD in Mathematics from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University in 1978. After a year-long postdoc position at Courant, he was an Assistant Professor at Stanford, before heading back to Courant. At Courant, he received tenure in 1984 and was promoted to Professor in 1988. He moved to LA in 1989, to work at UCLA and live near the beach. Before he worked in nanoscale systems, Russel worked on a wide range of topics in applied mathematics, including kinetic theory of rarefied gas dynamics, multiphase fluid flows, vortical flows, singularity theory for fluid flows and PDEs, quasi-Monte Carlo methods, and computational finance. Currently, he leads a group of applied mathematicians and materials physicists working on modeling and simulation for epitaxial growth and device properties. Multi-scale analysis, combining models and simulation methods at different length scales from the atomistic to the continuum, is a hallmark of this group's efforts. Much of this work is in collaboration with HRL Laboratories in Malibu. Russel was awarded a Hertz Foundation Graduate Fellowship and a Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship.