Between Order and Disorder | Boltzmann Lecture by Paul Fendley at SISSA, 20 February 2.30 pm

[Infopoint]

On Wednesday 20 February SISSA celebrates Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann’s 
birthday with a lecture by physicist Paul Fendley entitled “Between 
Order and Disorder”. The event will take place in room 128-129 at 2.30 pm.

Boltzmann's development of statistical mechanics gives a precise way of 
understanding the phases of matter as competition between energy and 
entropy. At high temperatures, entropy wins and disorder is favoured. At 
low temperatures, energy typically wins, favouring ordering, e.g. lining 
up spins in a ferromagnet. However, theoretical and experimental work in 
recent decades has shown that some quantum systems do not order, even at 
zero temperature. Rather, they exhibit topological order, where ordering 
patterns can be understood only by the behaviour at long distances. 
Fendley will describe what topological order is, along with a few of its 
remarkable physical properties.

Paul Fendley is a theoretical physicist studying statistical mechanics 
and related mathematics. One particular focus of his research is on 
novel behaviour emerging in many-body systems. He is currently Senior 
Research Fellow at All Souls College and Professor of Physics at the 
University of Oxford.

Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann, born in Wien on 20 February 1844, is considered 
the founding father of statistical physics. The /Boltzmann Lecture/ is a 
project promoted by the group of Statistical Physics at SISSA and, in 
particular, by the coordinator Pasquale Calabrese and Giuseppe Mussardo, 
author of the documentary film “Boltzmann. The genius of disorder” (2006).

For more information: https://www.sissa.it/news/between-order-and-disorder



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Chiara Saviane, PhD
Media Relations and Communications Unit
SISSA - Trieste
T: +39 0403787230
M: +39 3337675962
SISSA.IT <http://sissa.it/>