Guest Speaker: Peter Armitage (Johns Hopkins University)
Talk Title: "On Ising's model of ferromagnetism"
Date: Thursday, October 10, 2019 - 4:00pm to 5:00pm
PAB 1-434 (map)
Abstract: The 1D Ising model is a classical model of great historical significance for both classical and quantum statistical
mechanics. Developments in the understanding of the Ising model have fundamentally impacted our knowledge of thermodynamics,
critical phenomena, magnetism, conformal quantum field theories, particle physics, and emergence in many-body systems. Despite
the theoretical impact of the Ising model there have been very few good 1D realizations of it in actual real material systems.
However, it has been pointed out recently, that the material CoNb2O6, has a number of features that may make it the most ideal
realization we have of the Ising model in one dimension. In this talk I will discuss the surprisingly complex physics resulting
in this simple model and review the history of "Ising’s model” from both a scientific and human perspective. In the modern context
I will review recent experiments by my group and others on CoNb2O6. In particular I will show how low frequency light in the THz
range gives unique insight into the tremendous zoo of phenomena arising in this simple model system.
For more information, contact Yaroslav Tserkovnyak.
We thank the following people for their contributions to the wine fund for the post-colloquium reception: Professors Katsushi Arisaka, Andrea Ghez, Karoly Holczer, Huan Huang, HongWen Jiang, Per Kraus, Alexander Kusenko, Matthew Malkan, Mayank Mehta, Warren Mori, Ni Ni, Seth Putterman, Yaroslav Tserkovnyak, Vladimir Vassiliev, Shenshen Wang, and Nathan Whitehorn.