Harvard University’s Subir Sachdev will discuss aspects of quantum phase transitions in a Director's Colloquium talk at 1:10 p.m., Tuesday in the Physics Building Auditorium at Technical Area 3.
Sachdev’s colloquium, entitled “Quantum Phase Transitions,” will discuss how an increasing number of these exotic types of transition between states of matter at absolute zero temperature are being found experimentally and will feature illustrative cases from transition-metal compounds and trapped ultracold atoms. In these and other cases, quantum phase transitions from one state to another are provided by adjusting a tuning parameter other than temperature. Right at the transition between two states is a novel ‘quantum critical’ state of matter whose description has intriguing connections to the quantum theory of black holes and the quark-gluon plasma, a state of matter that existed in the very early universe.
Sachdev was made a professor of physics at Harvard in 2005, after moving from Yale University, where he had taught since 1987. He joined the Yale faculty after serving as a postdoctoral researcher for two years at AT&T's Bell Laboratories.
Born in New Delhi, India, Sachdev received his undergraduate degree in physics in 1982 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his master's and doctoral degrees from Harvard in 1984 and 1985, respectively.
Sachdev is the author of more than 130 research papers in refereed journals and the book Quantum Phase Transitions. Sachdev received the National Science Foundation's Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1988, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship in 1989, the National Science Foundation's Creativity Award in 1998. He became a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2001 and received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2003.
The unclassified colloquium is open to badge holders. The talk also will be broadcast on LABNET Channel 9 and on desktop computers using Real Media Stream and IPTV technology.
The Director’s Colloquium series brings distinguished leaders in science, technology, and policy to Los Alamos. Speakers are chosen on the basis of their contributions to leading edge science, technology, and interest in issues of national and global concern, as well as their ability to effectively communicate the urgency or excitement in the field to an audience.
The Director’s Colloquium Committee is seeking nominations for other colloquium speakers that may meet these criteria. Nominations can be submitted to the committee at http://int.lanl.gov/orgs/stb/nominate.php online.
For more information about the Director's Colloquium program, go to http://int.lanl.gov/orgs/stb/colloq.shtml online.
