Theory of Condensed Matter
Theoretical Condensed Matter physics is about building models of physical processes, often driven by experimental data, generalising the solutions of those models to make experimental predictions, and transferring the concepts gained into other areas of research. Theory plays an important role in understanding known phenomena and in predicting new ones.
With over seventy members, the TCM Group is one of the largest research Groups in the Cavendish Laboratory, and the largest university Condensed Matter Theory group in the country. Able to trace its history back for over sixty years, it has been home to many leading theoreticians.
Starting at the first principles microscopic level - with the Schrödinger equation - many properties of materials can now be calculated with a high degree of accuracy. We work on refining and developing new calculational tools and applying them to problems in physics, chemistry, materials science and biology.
Solids often show unusual collective behaviour resulting from cooperative quantum or classical phenomena. For this type of physics a more model-based approach is appropriate, and we are using such methods to attack problems in magnetism, superconductivity, nonlinear optics, mesoscopic systems, polymers, and colloids.
Collective behaviour comes even more to the fore in systems on a larger scale. As examples, we work on self-organising structures in "soft" condensed matter systems, non-linear dynamics of interacting systems, the observer in quantum mechanics, and models of biophysical processes, from the molecular scale up to neural systems.

Intellegens has announced Alchemite™ Suite, a new product suite that represents a step-change in ease-of-implementation and use for machine learning to accelerate R&D. The Suite delivers a new set of software apps targeted on key tasks for development teams in chemicals, materials, foods, life sciences, and manufacturing. The machine learning method used by Alchemite was developed by Dr Gareth Conduit whilst he was at TCM, and Dr Conduit is a co-founder of Cambridge-based Intellegens. TCM alumnus Dr Tom Whitehead also works for Intellegens.
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More seminarsAdaptive locomotion of active solids
Jonas Veenstra, Colin Scheibner, Martin Brandenbourger, Jack Binysh, Anton Souslov, Vincenzo Vitelli, and Corentin Coulais.
Buckle-Barrel Correspondence Based on Topological Polarization Conversion in Mechanical Metamaterials
Jingyi Zhang, Jingran Liu, Anton Souslov, María Teresa Pérez Prado, Javier Segurado, Maciej Haranczyk, Johan Christensen
Optical manifestations and bounds of topological Euler class
Wojciech J. Jankowski, Arthur S. Morris , Adrien Bouhon, F. Nur Ünal and Robert-Jan Slager
Smallest [5,6]fullerene building blocks
Jiaqi Wu
and
Bo Peng
Exact projected entangled pair ground states with topological invariant
Thorsten Wahl, Wojciech Jankowski, Adrien Bouhon, Gaurav Chaudhary, Robert-Jan Slager
All publications
Theoretical Condensed Matter physics is about building models of physical processes, often driven by experimental data, generalising the solutions of those models to make experimental predictions, and transferring the concepts gained into other areas of research. Theory plays an important role in understanding known phenomena and in predicting new ones.
With over seventy members, the TCM Group is one of the largest research Groups in the Cavendish Laboratory, and the largest university Condensed Matter Theory group in the country. Able to trace its history back for over sixty years, it has been home to many leading theoreticians.
Starting at the first principles microscopic level - with the Schrödinger equation - many properties of materials can now be calculated with a high degree of accuracy. We work on refining and developing new calculational tools and applying them to problems in physics, chemistry, materials science and biology.
Solids often show unusual collective behaviour resulting from cooperative quantum or classical phenomena. For this type of physics a more model-based approach is appropriate, and we are using such methods to attack problems in magnetism, superconductivity, nonlinear optics, mesoscopic systems, polymers, and colloids.
Collective behaviour comes even more to the fore in systems on a larger scale. As examples, we work on self-organising structures in "soft" condensed matter systems, non-linear dynamics of interacting systems, the observer in quantum mechanics, and models of biophysical processes, from the molecular scale up to neural systems.
News

Intellegens has announced Alchemite™ Suite, a new product suite that represents a step-change in ease-of-implementation and use for machine learning to accelerate R&D. The Suite delivers a new set of software apps targeted on key tasks for development teams in chemicals, materials, foods, life sciences, and manufacturing. The machine learning method used by Alchemite was developed by Dr Gareth Conduit whilst he was at TCM, and Dr Conduit is a co-founder of Cambridge-based Intellegens. TCM alumnus Dr Tom Whitehead also works for Intellegens.
Recent Publications
Adaptive locomotion of active solids
Jonas Veenstra, Colin Scheibner, Martin Brandenbourger, Jack Binysh, Anton Souslov, Vincenzo Vitelli, and Corentin Coulais.
Buckle-Barrel Correspondence Based on Topological Polarization Conversion in Mechanical Metamaterials
Jingyi Zhang, Jingran Liu, Anton Souslov, María Teresa Pérez Prado, Javier Segurado, Maciej Haranczyk, Johan Christensen
Optical manifestations and bounds of topological Euler class
Wojciech J. Jankowski, Arthur S. Morris , Adrien Bouhon, F. Nur Ünal and Robert-Jan Slager
Smallest [5,6]fullerene building blocks
Jiaqi Wu
and
Bo Peng
Exact projected entangled pair ground states with topological invariant
Thorsten Wahl, Wojciech Jankowski, Adrien Bouhon, Gaurav Chaudhary, Robert-Jan Slager
All publications