Edward Marti - Understanding Complex Systems with Cold Atoms

Understanding Complex Systems with Cold Atoms

Many important systems, from the weather to earthquakes to the cells in your body, feature huge numbers of intricate parts that interact on lengths scales from tiny to huge. How do physicists begin to understand these complex systems when even the most powerful computers cannot keep track of every component? In this talk, we will see how physicists build models to describe complicated phenomena and find surprising examples of 'emergence': very complex systems that act in surprisingly simple ways. As an example, we will learn how researchers at CU and other universities use ultracold atoms as a tabletop simulation of emergent quantum phenomena like magnetism and superconductivity.

Edward Marti