Quasiparticles & collective excitations as a research area investigates emergent, effective degrees of freedom in many-body systems, where interactions among underlying microscopic constituents give rise to particle-like or mode-like entities such as phonons, magnons, polarons, excitons, and plasmons. This field focuses on formulating and analyzing low-energy effective theories, dispersion relations, lifetimes, and interaction vertices of these excitations using frameworks such as many-body perturbation theory, Green’s functions, field-theoretic methods, and numerical many-body techniques. It plays a central role in understanding transport, superconductivity, topological phases, and nonequilibrium dynamics in condensed matter, ultracold atomic systems, and related quantum materials.
Crystals, bacterial colonies, flame fronts: the growth of surfaces was first described in the 1980s by the Kardar–Parisi–Zhang equation. Since then, it has been regarded as a fundamental model in physics, with implications ...
General Physics
Apr 10, 2026
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358
Most people think of diamonds as high-end adornments. Not Ania Bleszynski Jayich. The UC Santa Barbara physicist sees diamonds, which she grows in the UC Quantum Foundry, as a potentially powerful foundation for quantum sensors. ...
Optics & Photonics
Apr 6, 2026
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33
Control of heat transport in nanostructures is of central importance for numerous modern technologies—from high-performance computer chips that need to be cooled to energy converters—and is a highly active area of research. ...
Nanophysics
Apr 2, 2026
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66
Recent advancements in nanophotonics are moving beyond isotropic noble metals to achieve dynamic and directional control over plasmons. Conventional localized surface plasmon resonances (LSPR) are limited by their isotropic ...
Nanophysics
Mar 31, 2026
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13
When lasers were invented in the 1960s, they opened new avenues for scientific discovery and everyday applications, from scanners at the grocery store to corrective eye surgery. Conventional lasers control photons—individual ...
Optics & Photonics
Mar 30, 2026
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48
Argonne and Northwestern University scientists teamed up to understand how light interacts with metallic nanoframes, with implications for biosensing, quantum information science and beyond.
Nanophysics
Mar 27, 2026
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11
Researchers at the Würzburg site of the Cluster of Excellence ctd.qmat have succeeded in transferring the topological quantum Hall and spin Hall effects to a hybrid light-matter system by harnessing targeted material design. ...
Optics & Photonics
Mar 27, 2026
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187
Just as an antenna interacts with radio waves, light interacts with metallic nanostructures. Therefore, understanding how a structure influences field oscillations provides valuable insights into the structure's physical ...
Nanophysics
Mar 26, 2026
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32
Phonons are the quantum units of mechanical vibration. They describe how motion propagates through a solid at the smallest possible scales, in much the same way that electrons describe electric currents. Because phonons can ...
Condensed Matter
Mar 25, 2026
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46
You may not be able to hear it, but all solid materials make a sound. In fact, atoms—bound in lattices of chemical bonds—are never silent nor still: Under the placid surface of each and every object in our surroundings, a ...
Condensed Matter
Mar 24, 2026
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