Condensed matter physics is the field of physics that deals with the macroscopic and microscopic physical properties of matter, especially the solid and liquid phases, that arise from electromagnetic forces between atoms and electrons. More generally, the subject deals with condensed phases of matter: systems of many constituents with strong interactions among them. More exotic condensed phases include the superconducting phase exhibited by certain materials at extremely low cryogenic temperatures, the ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic phases of spins on crystal lattices of atoms, the Bose–Einstein condensates found in ultracold atomic systems, and liquid crystals. Condensed matter physicists seek to understand the behavior of these phases by experiments to measure various material properties, and by applying the physical laws of quantum mechanics, electromagnetism, statistical mechanics, and other physics theories to develop mathematical models and predict the properties of extremely large groups of atoms.
Frank Anthony Wilczek is an American theoretical physicist, mathematician and Nobel laureate. He is the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Founding Director of T. D. Lee Institute and Chief Scientist at the Wilczek Quantum Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), distinguished professor at Arizona State University (ASU) and full professor at Stockholm University.
Anthony Zee is a Chinese-American physicist, writer, and a professor at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics and the physics department of the University of California, Santa Barbara.
The Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics (SITP) is a research institute within the Physics Department at Stanford University. Led by 16 physics faculty members, the institute conducts research in high energy and condensed matter theoretical physics.
Alexander L. ("Sandy") Fetter is an American physicist and Professor Emeritus of Physics and Applied Physics at Stanford University in California. His research interests include theoretical condensed matter and superconductivity.
Subir Sachdev is Herchel Smith Professor of Physics at Harvard University specializing in condensed matter. He was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2014, received the Lars Onsager Prize from the American Physical Society and the Dirac Medal from the ICTP in 2018, and was elected Foreign Member of the Royal Society ForMemRS in 2023. He was a co-editor of the Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics 2017–2019, and is Editor-in-Chief of Reports on Progress in Physics 2022-.
Jainendra K. Jain is an Indian-American physicist and the Evan Pugh University Professor and Erwin W. Mueller Professor of Physics at Pennsylvania State University. He is also Infosys Chair Visiting Professor at IISc, Bangalore. Jain is known for his theoretical work on quantum many body systems, most notably for postulating particles known as Composite Fermions.
Steven H. Simon is an American theoretical physics professor at Oxford University and professorial fellow of Somerville College, Oxford. From 2000 to 2008 he was the director of theoretical physics research at Bell Laboratories. He has served on the UK EPSRC Physical Sciences Strategic Advisory Board. He is known for his work on topological phases of matter, topological quantum computing, and fractional quantum Hall effect. He is a co-author of a highly cited review on these subjects. He has also written many papers in the field of information theory. He is the author of a popular introductory book on solid state physics entitled The Oxford Solid State Basics as well as a more recent book entitled Topological Quantum. He is married to political science professor Janina Dill.
Steven Mark Girvin is an American physicist who is Sterling Professor and former Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics at Yale University. He is noted for his theoretical work on quantum many body systems such as the fractional quantum Hall effect, and as co-developer of circuit quantum electrodynamics, the application of the ideas of quantum optics to superconducting microwave circuits. Circuit QED is now the leading architecture for construction of quantum computers based on superconducting qubits.
Shoucheng Zhang was a Chinese-American physicist who was the JG Jackson and CJ Wood professor of physics at Stanford University. He was a condensed matter theorist known for his work on topological insulators, the quantum Hall effect, the quantum spin Hall effect, spintronics, and high-temperature superconductivity. According to the National Academy of Sciences:
He discovered a new state of matter called topological insulator in which electrons can conduct along the edge without dissipation, enabling a new generation of electronic devices with much lower power consumption. For this ground breaking work he received numerous international awards, including the Buckley Prize, the Dirac Medal and Prize, the Europhysics Prize, the Physics Frontiers Prize and the Benjamin Franklin Medal.
Ashvin Vishwanath is an Indian-American theoretical physicist known for important contributions to condensed matter physics. He is a professor of physics at Harvard University.
Andrew Peter Mackenzie is a director of Physics of Quantum Materials at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids in Dresden, Germany and Professor of Condensed Matter Physics at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. He became a co-editor of the Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics as of 2020.
James (Jim) P. Eisenstein was the Frank J. Roshek Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at the physics department of California Institute of Technology.
Matthew P. A. Fisher is an American theoretical physicist and professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and is known for several major contributions to condensed matter physics. He completed his bachelor's degree in engineering physics from Cornell University in 1981 and earned a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1986 with Anthony Leggett as his advisor, with part of his work done under the supervision of Eduardo Fradkin. He went on to become first a visiting scientist and then a research staff member at IBM T. J. Watson Research Center (1986–1993). He joined the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics and the physics department of the University of California in 1993. In 2007 he joined Microsoft's Station Q as a research physicist, on leave from the UCSB physics department. During the academic year 2009–2010 he was on the faculty at Caltech, returning to the physics department at UCSB in summer 2010.
Aharon Kapitulnik is an Israeli-American experimental condensed matter physicist working at Stanford University. He is known primarily for his work on strongly correlated electron systems, low dimensional electronic systems, unconventional superconductors, topological superconductors, superconductivity and magnetism, transport in bad metals and precision measurements.
Eduardo Hector Fradkin is an Argentinian theoretical physicist known for working in various areas of condensed matter physics, primarily using quantum field theoretical approaches. He is a Donald Biggar Willett Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where he is the director of the Institute for Condensed Matter Theory, and is the author of the books Quantum Field Theory: An Integrated Approach and Field Theories of Condensed Matter Physics.
Shivaji Lal Sondhi is an Indian-born theoretical physicist who is currently the Wykeham Professor of Physics in the Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics at the University of Oxford, known for contributions to the field of quantum condensed matter. He is son of former Lok Sabha MP Manohar Lal Sondhi.
Eun-Ah Kim is a Korean-American condensed matter physicist interested in high-temperature superconductivity, topological order, strange metals, and the use of neural network based machine learning to recognize patterns in these systems. She is a professor of physics at Cornell University.
Don-Ning "Donna" Sheng is a condensed matter physicist whose research involves two-dimensional systems including the fractional quantum Hall effect and quantum spin Hall effect, as well as the natural emergence of supersymmetry in topological superconductors. She is a professor of physics at California State University, Northridge, and is also affiliated with the Princeton Center for Complex Materials at Princeton University.
Adriana Moreo is an Argentine-American condensed matter physicist whose research involves the computer simulation of superconductors, oxides of transition metals, graphene, and other strongly correlated materials. She is a professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Tennessee and a member of the research staff in the Materials Science and Technology Division of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
