Austen Lamacraft

Research

The 20th Century saw the rise of the atomic theory of matter, with the quantum mechanics of many body systems at its foundation. Today, there exists a good qualitative understanding of gases, liquids, solids, metals, superconductors, and a variety of other states of matter in ordinary circumstances. My research concerns matter in exotic conditions, where radically different behaviour is possible. This might mean:

• Low dimensional systems where atoms or electrons are confined to move in the plane or the line, and we must reexamine what we mean by a solid, liquid, or gas.
• Systems that start or are driven far from equilibrium, where macrostates cannot be characterised by temperature alone.
• Disordered systems that behave totally differently from their clean counterparts.

In general my goal is to understand what behaviour is generically possible in such systems. This means working with simplified models that can capture the essential physics of the situation. These models are then studied using methods of many body physics, field theory, or numerical simulation.