Out of equilibrum and disordered strongly interacting many particle systems

随着技术向纳米级缩小，设备的内在无序性以及设备与环境之间的相互作用变得越来越重要。特别是，器件可能与其环境不处于热平衡状态。我的研究重点是扩展对非平衡和无序系统的理解和直觉。对这些系统的全面物理理解需要发展新的概念和理论方法。为了实现这一目标，我将研究三个不平衡和无序的系统，短期目标是获得与当前和未来实验的详细比较。从长远来看，我的目标是找到更普遍的原则，适用于更广泛的系统类别。我打算研究的三种系统是：超冷原子气体；玻璃状;以及二维电子系统中的输运。超冷原子气体可以在绝对零度以上的纳米开尔文温度下冷却形成物质的新阶段，即玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚物。最近的实验表明，凝析物常常不处于平衡状态。我打算对这些实验进行定性和定量的描述，这将超出超冷原子的含义，因为这些系统是相互作用量子系统特性的理想测试平台。玻璃性是一个复杂的理论问题，因为它涉及到大量微观单位的协同松弛。我在引入自旋玻璃局部波动的新理论描述方面的经验将使我能够为这个老问题带来新的视角，并有助于澄清玻璃系统中局部动力学和宏观动力学之间的关系。涉及限于二维层的电子的结构被发现在磁场中表现出奇异的现象，这些现象通常依赖于它们的观察。我将计算可以与实验相比较的量，以揭示这些新状态下激发的本质。本提案中的研究结果将对他们所关注的特定领域产生极大的兴趣，并为深入了解非平衡和无序系统提供进展。

As technology shrinks towards the nanoscale, intrinsic disorder in devices and the interactions between a device and its environment become increasingly important.  In particular, a device may not be in thermal equilibrium with its environment.  My research is focused on extending understanding of, and intuition for, out-of-equilibrium and disordered systems.  A comprehensive physical understanding of such systems requires the development of new concepts and theoretical methods.  To work towards this, I will study three out-of-equilibrium and disordered systems, with a short-term goal of obtaining detailed comparisons with current and future experiments.  In the long-term, my goal is to find more general principles, applicable to a wider class of systems.  The three systems I intend to study are: ultra-cold atomic gases; glassiness; and transport in two-dimensional electron systems.  Ultra-cold atomic gases can be cooled to form a new phase of matter, a Bose-Einstein condensate, at nanokelvins above absolute zero.  Recent experiments have shown that condensates are often not at equilibrium.  I intend to develop qualitative and quantitative descriptions of these experiments, which will have implications beyond ultra-cold atoms, as these systems are an ideal test-bed for the properties of interacting quantum systems.  Glassiness presents a complex theoretical problem as it involves the co-operative relaxation of very large numbers of microscopic units.  My experience in introducing a new theoretical description for local fluctuations in spin glasses will allow me to bring a new perspective to this old problem and to help to clarify the relationship between local and macroscopic dynamics in glassy systems.  Structures involving electrons confined to a two-dimensional layer are found to exhibit exotic phenomena in magnetic fields that often rely on disorder for their observation.  I will calculate quantities that can be compared with experiment to reveal the nature of excitations in these novel states.  The results of the research in this proposal will   be of great interest to the specific areas they are focused on, and provide progress towards a deeper understanding of out-of-equilibrium and disordered systems.