Dirac Fermions in Graphene and Graphite—a view from angle ...

Acknowledgements
I am very lucky to work with a group of talented and kind people in my Ph.D., from whom I have
benefited greatly. All the work presented here would not have been possible without them.
First of all, my deepest thanks go to my advisor, Alessandra Lanzara. I am very lucky to have such
an inspiring, creative and considerate advisor, who has made my Ph.D. fruitful and enjoyable. Besides the
training, encouragement and support that she gave me in science, I also appreciate her willingness to care
about students’ life beyond work. The past few years of working with her has been a fortune for me. Her
endless enthusiasm for science, her open-mindedness and her wisdom to balance work and life, have set her
as a role model for me.
I could not ask for better colleagues than the people in Lanzara group. Dr. Gey-Hong Gweon taught
me numerous things in my first three years, ranging from experimental skills to different physics topics. I
appreciate his mentoring and the efforts that he has put in to make me a good experimentalist. Dr. Kyle
McElroy taught me the importance of understanding the physics problems in different perspectives. Jeff
Graf, Chris Jozwiak and I joined the group as the first generation graduate students and we shared the
longest memories of our Ph.D. lives. Besides intelligent, they are the best colleagues who are always willing
to share their knowledge and skills and provide immediate help whenever needed. Daniel Garcia’s talks are
the most wonderful sound of the group and I appreciate his help to improve my speech skills, though I have
to admit that I am not a fast learner in this aspect. David Siegel reminded me of the early years of my Ph.D.
It is a pleasure to see that he has become very good at communications and experiments. The interaction
with visitors Dr. Marco Portalupi and Dr. Andreas Bill, as well as undergrads Elizabeth Rollings, Annie
Endozo and Max Watson, has also been very pleasant.
The collaboration with many theorists has been quite beneficial and pleasant. Dung-Hai Lee is the
longest theoretical collaborator. His deep physics insights and his enthusiasm for finding the most beautiful
solutions are very inspiring. The collaboration with A.N. Castro Neto, F. Guinea S.G. Louie and C.D.
Spataru has been a great pleasure.
Alexei Fedorov has collaborated in most of the research work presented here. His assistance in the
experiments and his support for trying new experiments is highly appreciated. I am grateful to Andreas
Schmid and Farid El Gably for providing extensive help with the LEEM measurements at the most critical
time. John Pepper is very talented in machining and I thank him for making modifications to accommodate
the needs of some challenging experiments. I thank Prof. P. N. First and Prof. W. A. de Heer for providing
the graphene samples at the beginning of this project. I thank Prof. Oscar Dubon and Prof. Michael F.
Crommie for serving as my committee members for the qualifying exam. J. T. Robinson and J. W. Beeman
have been very nice to help me with substrate treatment. I thank the friendly and helpful people on the ALS
floor: X. J. Zhou, W. L. Yang, N. Manella, K. Tanaka, S.-K. Mo, Y.-D. Chuang, J. H. Guo, B. K. Freelon,
B. S. Mun. The LBL security people have been very kind to escort me to work and to home in many late
nights.
My personal interaction with other physicists also helps me greatly. I thank Z. Hussain, Z.-X. Shen,
Y.-R. Shen and B.-F. Zhu for being patient to listen to me and give me advice. The encouragement from
M. A. H. Vozmediano and N. Berrah is also appreciated.
Finally, special thanks to my husband Pu for his encouragement and support throughout all these years.
Thanks to my parents for letting me travel a long way from home and visiting me for the last three months
of my Ph.D. Thanks to my brother and sister-in-law for having taken good care of my parents, my little
nephew for adding a lot of fun to the family.
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