Condensed concepts

  I am currently working on the proofs and index for Condensed Matter Physics: A Very Short Introduction . It is wonderful to have got to th...

Last year New Scientist published a nice article by Jon Cartwright States of matter: The unthinkable forms beyond solid, liquid and gas From...

My colleagues and I recently posted a preprint C3 symmetry breaking metal-insulator transitions near a flat band in the half-filled Hubbard ...

Condensed matter physics is driven by fashion (too much). Is it fair to say that the latest fashion is the vanadium-based kagome metals  AV3...

 I just completed my first draft of Chapter 8: Topology Matters for Condensed Matter Physics: A Very Short Introduction. Any comments and su...

It is that time of year again. My physics predictions are the same as last year. For physics this year I predict Experiments for testing Bel...

 Twisted bilayer graphene seems to be the hottest topic in condensed matter physics right now. I tend to not follow fashion, both in clothin...

It is that time of year again. I have not made predictions for a few years. For physics this year I predict Experiments for testing Bell ...

Even though I have not posted about it for a while, mental health continues to be on my radar. I monitor my own mental health carefully and ...

I have had some interesting discussions with an editor at Oxford University Press about the Very Short Introductions series.  The upshot is ...

What kind of theory paper to I enjoy? Here are some personal tastes - "simple" enough I can understand it - physical insight -...

In the book Who Got Einstein's Office? , about the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, the author Ed Regis, mocks it as the ...

Some of my UQ colleagues and Jaime Merino have written a series of nice papers inspired by an organometallic molecular material Mo3S7(dmit)3...

The past two decades have seen impressive advances in Angle-Resolved PhotoEmission Spectroscopy (ARPES). This technique has played a particu...

In the condensed matter theory group at UQ we regularly run reading groups, where we work through a book, review article, or some lecture no...

I was delighted to see this year's Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to Thouless, Haldane, and Kosterlitz  ”for theoretical discoveries of...

This week I am in Telluride at the bi-annual workshop on Condensed Phase Dynamics.  I really enjoyed the talks today. A common topic was tha...

An enduring theme on this blog is that one should always consider "boring" explanations for "surprising" experimental re...

Nature Physics has an editorial The Rise of Quantum Materials . In a refreshing change for the Nature Publishing Group, it is devoid of hyp...

Normally we associate spin-orbit coupling with degenerate atomic orbitals (or energy bands) associated with d- or f-orbitals. However, in so...