Strong interactions and disorder in electron systems

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Condensed matter physics is the study of the diverse physical properties which arise from the essential ingredients of electrons, nuclei and electromagnetic forces. The materials and patterns which emerge are fascinating in their own right and have often proven to be of immense practical value. This research program aims to build understanding of the properties of systems in which the energy scale associated with the interactions between particles, especially at very short length scales, dominates the kinetic energy. Examples of such systems include transition metal oxides, some organic charge-transfer complexes, and ultracold atomic clouds in magneto-optical traps. Transition metal oxides display a wide range of interesting and potentially useful properties including high-temperature superconductivity, colossal magneto-resistance and multiferroicity. To produce these properties, the materials are often doped by atomic substitution, resulting in variations in parameters at the atomic scale referred to as disorder. The focus of this research is understanding the effect of disorder in strongly interacting systems. In particular I propose to use a careful study of small clusters to enhance understanding of the recently discovered many-body localized phase, use insights from this work to build a new calculation method for studying large systems, and explore ways to observe some of the unique features of strongly correlated systems in the highly controlled environment of quantum dot structures. Understanding and control of exotic materials properties is the driver of fundamentally new technologies.**