Reference recent paper to join group? I'm in my second year at uni.
There's a professor whose group I want to get into. My question relates to what's appropriate to send in a &quot;hey can I join&quot; email.
For example, this man quite recently (in the last 7 months) published a paper relating surveying different search algorithm techniques to find ideal locations in a molecular lattice w/ xray diffraction (this is a made-up research topic for privacy haha).
I really like this approach and wanted to use similar techniques in my graduate studies. However, he's so far only published this paper based on it. Should I not mention my specific interest in my email?
Also in general, there are a few people at my school who explore a similar &quot;scale&quot; of physics as this man. I'm unsure about how much detail I'm meant to put in my emails. Are professors looking for someone who's completely in-tune to their specific subfield of the subfield, or do they expect &quot;someone who wants to work with physics on this scale and thinks your papers are cool&quot;? Obviously the former is preferred, but I'm wondering if the latter is the usual.
Thank you for reading.
Rather than explaining in the email why you would want to join this particular lab over any other lab, I would simply write an email that says something like

Dear Professor X, I'm in my second year at uni and I am considering
which group to join. I read your recent paper ABC and would love to
learn more about the work you and your group does. Do you maybe have
45min in the next week where we could chat about this in person?
Best, anon.jpg

EDIT: Anonymous Physicist just rightly pointed out that this is for an undergraduate study and not searching for a PhD lab as I had mistakenly assumed. I would still ask for a large enough amount of the profs time though to make the meeting worth while. In my eyes there is no point to meet for such a short time that another meeting would be required. So maybe ask for 30 minutes. If the prof won't find 30 min time, then I think this means this prof is too busy for undergrads in the lab.