Out of equilibrum and disordered strongly interacting many particle systems

随着技术向纳米尺度缩水，器件中的内在无序以及器件与其环境之间的相互作用变得越来越重要。尤其是，器件可能与其环境不处于热平衡。我的研究重点是扩展对失衡和无序系统的理解和直觉。对此类系统的全面物理理解需要发展新的概念和理论方法。为了努力实现这一点，我将研究三个失衡和无序系统，短期目标是与当前和未来的实验进行详细的比较。从长远来看，我的目标是找到更普遍的原理，适用于更广泛的系统类别。我打算研究的三个系统是：超冷原子气体；玻璃质感；和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开尔文冷却形成新的物质相--玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚体。最近的实验表明，凝聚体往往不处于平衡状态。我打算对这些实验进行定性和定量的描述，这将产生超出超冷原子的影响，由于这些系统是研究相互作用量子系统性质的理想试验台。玻璃性是一个复杂的理论问题，因为它涉及到非常大量的微观单位的合作松弛。我为自旋玻璃中的局部涨落引入新的理论描述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域动力学和宏观动力学之间的关系。人们发现，涉及限制在二维层中的电子的结构在磁场中表现出奇异的现象，这往往依赖于无序来观察它们。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性质。该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，并为更深入地理解失衡和无序系统提供了进展。

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.