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I work in the area of theoretical quantum condensed matter physics.
This field involves exploring how to cook a
variety of very interesting recipes from just two ingredients: Quantum
Mechanics and Many Interacting Particles.
This field broadly includes the modern
day solid state physics of electrons in low dimensional transition
metal oxides and correlated bosonic fluids such as superfluid Helium-4
and ultracold atomic gases. This is a field driven by the large variety
of materials, and experiments which can
probe these systems in great detail.
The interplay of quantum mechanics, interactions and disorder
in these systems gives rise to a variety of fascinating phases: the high
temperature superconductors, Mott insulators, supersolids,
spin liquids, and many others.
An understanding of these quantum phases involves
characterizing them, say, by an order parameter or broken symmetry,
and knowing
their ground state correlations and low energy excitations which
can be experimentally probed.
Some phases of matter, such as spin liquids, do not possess any
conventional order and one needs to look beyond a local order parameter
description for these unusual phases.
A second aspect involves understanding the phase transitions
between some of these phases which could be achieved by tuning various
parameters
such as the temperature, particle density, magnetic fields or the strength
of the disorder. Another challenge is to understand the out-of-equilibrium
dynamics of these systems as they are driven by external time-dependent
perturbations, a question of much interest in the cold atomic gases.
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