Academic interests
I am interested in the statistical behavior of topological defects in different kinds of non-equilibrium systems. Examples of topological defects I have studied are quantized vortices in Bose-Einstein condensates, and crystal defects in crystals undergoing deformation. In both these systems the dynamics of the entire system is dominated by the dynamics of defects, so the statistics of the defects can tell you a lot about how the system behaves on a macroscopic scale.
Courses taught
- http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/matnat/fys/FYS2130/index-eng.html (Spring 2015)
- http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/matnat/fys/FYS1120/index-eng.html (from Autumn 2015)
- http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/matnat/fys/FYS3120/index-eng.html (from Spring 2016)
Background
Master's degree in Physics, University of Oslo. I studied a long chain of interacting spin 1/2 particles, e.g. a 1D quantum Heisenberg model in a constant magnetic field. Previous work had shown that this system should contain natural oscillation frequencies due to an analogy with Bloch oscillations, called magnetic Bloch oscillations. I used a new technique called Time Evolving Block Decimation (TEBD) in order to simulate the full chain without uncontrolled approximations. I found that we could excite the predicted oscillation frequencies using a resonant laser, resulting in characteristic oscillations in the magnetization.