Ian Affleck

Program
Quantum Materials

Appointment
Senior Fellow

Institution
University of British Columbia

Country
Canada Canada

Ian Affleck is a Professor of Physics and University Killam Professor at the University of British Columbia. He has been a member of CIFAR's Superconductivity Program (now known as the Quantum Materials Program) since 1989. He was also a Cosmology and Gravity Program member from 1987-2001. Prof. Affleck holds a B.Sc. from Trent University (Peterborough, Ontario) and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University. After completing his doctorate in 1979, he was a Junior Fellow with the Harvard Society of Fellows for two years. He became an Assistant Professor at Princeton University in 1981, and moved to the University of British Columbia (UBC) in 1987. He spent two leave years at Boston University from 2001-2003. Prof. Affleck has held visiting positions at the Centre d'Études Nucléaires in Saclay, France, and the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California at Santa Barbara. In 2006, Dr. Affleck was given a lifetime achievement award by the Canadian Association of Physicists.

Prof. Affleck describes his research interests as follows:

My PhD was in elementary particle theory and I worked almost exclusively in that area until about 1984. During this period, part of my research was on interface areas between particle physics and cosmology -- in particular, phase transitions in the early universe and the baryon number assymmetry of the universe. In 1984 my research interests began to move towards condensed matter theory, during a sabbatical leave in France.

I had originally been attracted to elementary particle theory by the mathematical beauty of the subject and the excitement of working on the most fundamental issues in science. After studying and working in that field for almost 10 years I began to feel that a certain divergence was taking place between theory and experiment. On the other hand, I was very excited to realise that many of the beautiful mathematical constructions used by elementary particle theorists also had much more down to earth applications in condensed matter physics where the contact with experiment was much more immediate and there was even the possibility of some useful applications of the pure science.

My present research is primarily in the are of strongly correlated electrons. The challenge here is to understand the complicated many-body interactions between electrons in solids. Much of conventional solid state (or condensed matter) theory attempts to treat these electrons as essentially non-interacting (i.e. uncorrelated). This assumption appears to fail spectacularly in certain materials including the high Tc superconductors and magnetic materials. Strong correlation effects are known to be especially important in materials that behave as if they have a reduced spatial dimension [i.e. one or two dimensonal rather than three]. The high-Tc superconductors are in this class containing both two dimensional and one dimensional aspects to their crystal structure and electronic properties. Single electron transistor nano-devices are another fascinating arena where strong correlation effects are at play.

Some of my most widely known research accomplishments have resulted from applying mathematical techniques from elementary particle physics to condensed matter physics. For example, in the 80's particle theorists made enormous progress in superstring theory. This was in large part based on many beautiful results on quantum field theory in one dimension, describing a quantized string. Superstring theory remains a beautiful and appealing idea which seems very far from laboratory verification. On the other hand, I was able to apply much of this mathematical progress to experimentally observable phenomena in one-dimensional antiferromagnets, conductors and three dimensional materials containing magnetic impurities. I am frequently thrilled to discover the beautiful mathematical structures of nature that are unveiled by experimental condensed matter physics. Despite the rather mathematical nature of much of my research, I have, on several occasions, worked quite closely with various experimentalists including neutron scatterers at Atomic Energy of Canada and muon spin resonance experimentalists at TRIUMF.

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Ian Affleck

Canadian Institute for Advanced Research

Cifar

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