Out of equilibrum and disordered strongly interacting many particle systems

随着技术向纳米尺度收缩，设备中的内在无序以及设备与其环境之间的相互作用变得越来越重要。 具体地，设备可能与其环境不处于热平衡。 我的研究重点是扩展对不平衡和无序系统的理解和直觉。 要全面地理解这类系统的物理性质，需要发展新的概念和理论方法。 为了实现这一目标，我将研究三个失衡和无序的系统，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则，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、玻璃化和二维电子系统中的输运。 超冷的原子气体可以在绝对零度以上的纳开尔文温度下冷却，形成一种新的物质相，即玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚态。 最近的实验表明，冷凝物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，这些实验的意义将超越超冷原子，因为这些系统是相互作用量子系统性质的理想测试平台。 玻璃化提出了一个复杂的理论问题，因为它涉及非常大量的微观单位的合作松弛。 我的经验，在介绍一个新的理论描述自旋玻璃中的局部波动将使我带来一个新的视角，这个老问题，并帮助澄清玻璃系统中的局部和宏观动力学之间的关系。 电子被限制在一个二维层中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无序来观察。 我将计算可以与实验比较的量，以揭示这些新状态中激发的性质。 本提案中的研究结果将 对他们所关注的具体领域具有极大的兴趣，并在更深入地了解失衡和无序系统方面取得进展。

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.