Mesoscopic Physics (MES)

Ed McCann

Mesoscopic physics is the name given to electronic behaviour in solid state nanostructures that are so small that their size is similar to relevant characteristic length scales. Examples of such length scales include the elastic mean free path (which governs the scale for ballistic transport), the phase coherence length (quantum interference effects), and the electronic wavelength (quantum confinement). The aim of this course is to describe key experimental transport phenomena including weak localisation, universal conductance fluctuations, Aharonov-Bohm oscillations, and conductance quantisation whilst giving an overview of theoretical methods such as the tight binding model, the Landauer-Büttiker formulism, scattering theory, and scaling theory.

Ed McCann works in the condensed matter theory group at Lancaster University. Recently, his research has been focussed on the properties of chiral electrons in graphene and graphene multilayers, looking at their transport and spectroscopic properties.

Quantum Information Processing (QIP)

Andrew Fisher

Quantum Information Processing is one of the most exciting applications of modern quantum physics, and has become a flourishing interdisciplinary field in its own right. In this short course we will concentrate on some aspects of the subject most relevant to condensed matter systems. We will start by defining qubits and quantum gates, then introduce quantum operations as a model for the action of a quantum system in a noisy environment and the Kraus representation theorem which provides a composite way to represent them. Then we will move on to quantum error correction and its connection to classical codes, and briefly discuss the physics of two of the most important solid-sate qubits: impurity spins in semiconductors and superconducting circuits. Finally we will talk about two alternatives to the standard gate model of quantum computation that particularly lend themselves to solid-state systems: adiabatic quantum computation (and the related topic of quantum annealing), and the topological computation (and related topological codes).

Andrew is Professor of Physics in the UCL Department of Physics and Astronomy and directory of the London Centre for Nanotechnology; formerly Junior Research Fellow at St John’s College Oxford (1989-93), Postdoctoral Fellow at the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory (1991-92), and Lecturer in Physics at the University of Durham (1993-95). He is Director of the new EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Delivering Quantum Technologies, starting in 2014.

Soft Condensed Matter (SCM)

Buddhapriya Chakrabarti

This course deals with the physics of soft materials. As the name suggests these materials are soft to touch (e.g. jello, creams, pastes etc.) as opposed to hard ones (e.g. metals, alloys)which fall under the purview of “Solid State Physics”. The important distinction between soft materials as opposed to their hard counterparts is that entropy and not internal energy dictates their equilibrium properties. Further these materials mostly comprise of organic molecules that interact weakly and as a result their properties are strongly influenced by thermal fluctuations, external fields, and boundary effects. This strong ‘susceptibility’ of soft matter leads to many fascinating properties. We will review a few generic features of soft materials, e.g. dominance of entropy, interplay between broken-symmetry and dynamic mode structure and topological defects that are common to such systems. The outline is as follows i) Introduction to soft condensed matter physics, (ii) Liquid Crystals and Polymers (iii) Fluid Membranes, (iv) Fluctuations and response of non-equilibrium soft systems.

Buddhapriya (Buddho) is a senior lecturer in the biological physics group at the University of Sheffield. His main research interests include soft condensed matter physics and biological physics.

Topological Phases of Matter (TOP)

Sam Carr

The well-known Landau theory of phase transitions classifies phases of matter according to broken symmetries and local order parameters, such as solids that break translational symmetry, or magnets that break magnetic rotation symmetry.  It has been long known that there are phases of matter that defy this classification — the quantum Hall state being the most obvious (but by no means only) example.  With the discovery of topological insulators about 10 years ago, interest in this field has exploded, and we now know of many distinct phases of matter with no local order parameter, but instead characterised by a topological invariant.  This short lecture course will focus mostly on non-interacting band theory, and introduce topological invariants, boundary states, and the bulk-boundary correspondence necessary to understand the modern topic of topological insulators.  Other manifestations of topology in modern condensed matter physics will also be exposed, although not discussed in detail.

Sam works on the theory of strongly correlated systems, specialising in low-dimensional systems both in and out of equilibrium. He has worked in groups in the US, Italy and Germany, and since 2013 has been a lecturer at the University of Kent in Canterbury.