sid parameswaran, Oxford Physics

I am a theoretical physicist, and my work focuses on quantum mechanical systems of many particles that are strongly interacting, far from equilibrium, or both.

Systems of many particles can display a variety of emergent cooperative phenomena that cannot be understood from their microscopic details. Usually, the study of this type of "condensed matter" builds on two key principles, namely (i) that most situations can be understood by approximately treating the constituents (such as electrons, atoms, or molecules) as weakly interacting; and (ii) that the assumption of thermal equilibrium provides a powerful way to capture the properties of complex systems using simple statistical tools.

I'm interested in what happens when quantum systems are so strongly interacting, or so dramatically disturbed from equilibrium, that these guiding principles break down. A new set of analytical and computational ideas is required to fully understand the behavior of such systems, and new experimental probes must be devised to explore their properties. Besides their great fundamental interest, many of the new phenomena displayed in these extreme regimes could have many important applications. Insights into weakly-correlated, equilibrium systems fueled the technological revolution of the second half of the twentieth century; what new and unexpected benefits might we accrue from understanding their more complex cousins?

Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics

University of Oxford Oxford OX1 3PU, United Kingdom
sid.parameswaran_at_physics.ox.ac.uk +44 (0)1865 (2) 73968

Some recent research topics include:

Electronic ordering in Moiré heterostructures
New spectroscopic probes of strongly-correlated materials and disordered systems
Dynamics of quantum systems far from equilibrium
Statistical mechanics and dynamics in quasiperiodic systems
Quantum Hall physics, particularly in conjunction with broken symmetries
Frustrated magnets and spin liquids, with a focus on symmetry and fractionalization
Topological semimetals

For more details, see my research page, or read some of my publications. For information on working with me, see here.

Brief Bio

I am a Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford, and a member of the Condensed Matter Theory group in the Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics. I am also a Tutorial Fellow in Physics at Hertford College, where I am also the Fellow for Research and an ex officio member of the Academic Committee. I joined Oxford in 2017 as an Associate Professor, and was promoted to full Professor in 2023.

From July 2014-July 2017 I was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of California, Irvine. I was also a founding co-PI of the California Institute for Quantum Emulation (CAIQuE).

Previously, I was a Simons Postdoctoral Fellow in the Condensed Matter Theory Center at the University of California, Berkeley. Before beginning my stint at Berkeley, I worked with Shivaji Sondhi at Princeton University, where I received my PhD in 2011. My thesis research focused primarily on the physics of the quantum Hall effect and topological phases of matter, with an occasional foray into problems in frustrated magnetism. I graduated in 2006 with degrees in physics and mathematics from the University of Rochester in upstate New York, where I was supported by a Renaissance Scholarship. I was raised and educated through high school in Chennai, India.