Dear All,
You are most cordially invited to the ICTP Colloquium
on "Topological physics as censor, and as microscope"
by Prof. Roderich Moessner from the Max Planck
Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Germany.
The Colloquium will take place on Tuesday 26 August
2025 in the Budinich Lecture Hall at ICTP at 14:00 hrs
CET.
Biosketch:
Roderich Moessner is director at the Max Planck Institute for
the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden. After his DPhil in
theoretical physics at Oxford University, he was postdoc at
Princeton, and held faculty appointments at École normale
supérieure in Paris and at Oxford University.
His research interests are in condensed matter and materials
physics, especially concerning new and topological forms of
order, as well as the study of classical and quantum many-body
dynamics in and out of equilibrium. His theoretical
discoveries include classical and quantum spin liquids,
emergent magnetic monopoles, and non-equilibrium
spatiotemporal ordering phenomena. He is recipient of the
Leibniz Prize and of the Europhysics Prize.
Abstract:
Topological condensed matter exhibits properties which can be
unusually robust to local perturbations. Indeed, this property
may make local information very hard to access, a phenomenon
that may be called topological censorship. Here, we present
two instances where this tension between local and topological
physics brings up interesting physical phenomena. One is drawn
from quantum Hall physics, where we show that the local
distribution of the topologically quantised current flow is
continuously tunable between qualitatively different regimes
[1]. The other is a topological magnet, in which measurements
of the global magnetisation dynamics reveal the appearance of
a dynamical fractal and subdiffusion on the lattice scale in a
stochiometric material [2].
[1] B. Doucot, D. Kovrizhin, R. M., PNAS 121
(39) e2410703121 (2024)
[2] J. N. Hallen, S. A. Grigera, D. A. Tennant, C.
Castelnovo, R.M. Science 378, 1218 (2022)
Light refreshments will be served after the event.
For info, please check the following link: https://indico.ictp.it/event/11094/
Looking forward to your participation.
With best regards,
Director's Office, ICTP