Condensed Matter Physics

The Condensed Matter Physics program supports experimental projects and projects that combine experiment and theory to investigate the foundational physics behind phenomena exhibited by condensed matter systems. Representative research areas in such systems include:

• Phenomena at the nano- to macro-scale including transport, magnetic and optical phenomena; classical and quantum phase transitions; localization; electronic, magnetic, and lattice structure or excitations; superconductivity; and nonlinear dynamics.

• Low-temperature physics: quantum fluids and solids; 1D & 2D electron systems.

• Physics of soft matter: partially ordered fluids, liquid crystals, gels, foams and emulsions, granular and colloid physics, rheology and jamming.

• Mesoscale systems and macromolecular assemblies: self-organization and active matter, physics of biological materials, intrinsically heterogeneous materials and complex interactions across different length scales.

• Understanding the foundational physics of new states of matter as well as the physical behavior of condensed matter under extreme conditions. For example, low temperatures, high pressures and high magnetic fields.

Questions of current interest that span these research areas are:

• How and why do complex macroscopic phenomena emerge from simple interacting microscopic constituents?

• What are the rules and principles controlling collective motion, self-organization and self-assembly of matter?

• What new physics occurs far from equilibrium and how?

• What is the physics behind the behavior of matter confined to the nanoscale in one or more dimensions?

• What is the physics of spin systems and quantum states of matter that could lead to their coherent manipulation and control?