Abhishodh Prakash

about me 

I am a member of the Physics faculty at the Harish-Chandra Research Institute. My research interests are broadly in various aspects of quantum many-body systems- their phases and phase transitions in and out of equilibrium, topological defects and textures, fractons, thermalization or lack thereof. I am especially interested in the role played by rigid structures such as topology and global symmetries.

Before this, I was a Postdoc at the Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics in the University of Oxford working as a part of Sid Parameswaran's group and an ICTS-Simons prize postdoctoral fellow at the International Center for Theoretical Sciences in Bangalore, India. I got my PhD at the C.N.Yang Institute of Theoretical Physics at Stony Brook University working with Tzu-Chieh Wei. I completed my undergraduate education with a dual degree in Physics and Electrical Engineering at the Goa campus of the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS). 

News and olds 

• [October 2025] My paper with Ylias Sadki and Shivaji Sondhi, "Continuum Fractons: Quantization and the Many Body Problem " is on arXiv (2510.00110)

• [September 2025] My paper with Jonathan Classen-Howes and Riccardo Sense, "Universal freezing transitions of dipole-conserving chains" is published in PRB.

• [September 2025] I gave a colloquium at IISER Pune titled "A topological theory of terminating transitions" based on upcoming work.

• [July 2025] My paper with Nick Jones, Ryan Thorngren and Ruben Verresen, "Charge pumps, pivot Hamiltonians and symmetry-protected topological phases" is on arXiv (2507.00995)

• [June 2025] My paper with Aryaman Babbar, Ylias Sadki and Shivaji Sondhi, "Classical Fractons: Local chaos, global broken ergodicity and an arrow of time " is published in Physical Review B.

• [May 2025] My paper with Vishnu Pulloor Kuttanikkad, Rajesh Narayanan and Titas Chanda "Two-dimensional J1-J2 clock model: A cornucopia of emergence" is on arXiv (2505.05194).

• [April 2025] I visited the Indian Institute of Science and gave a talk titled "Topological families, terminting transitions and the shape of equilibrium". 

• [April 2025] I gave a talk at the 10th Indian Statistical Physics Community Meeting titled "Classical fractons: hamiltonian attractors, non-equilibrium steady states and an arrow of time". You can watch a recording of the talk here.

• [April 2025] I visited IIT Madras and gave a talk titled "Fractons: a novel paradigm for non-equilibrium dynamics"

• [March 2025] I visited IISER Bhopal and delivered three lectures on "Charting topology of phase diagrams and field theories". I also gave a talk in their physics club titled "Group theory, soap films and broken symmetries"

• [March 2025] The Mathematica Code used in our recent preprint "Classical Fractons: Local chaos, global broken ergodicity and an arrow of time" is featured in Wolfram Community 

• [March 2025] My paper with Nick Jones and Paul Fendley, "Pivoting through the chiral-clock family" has been published in SciPost.

• [Feb 2025] My paper with Nick Jones, "Classical origins of Landau-incompatible transitions" has been accepted for publication published in Physical Review Letters.

• [Feb 2025] I gave a talk at HRI titled  "How group theory classifies phases of matter and transitions between them" as part of a new seminar series titled "Math-Physics Samgam" started at HRI with Aprameyo Pal. 

• [Feb 2025] My paper with Ylias Sadki, Shivaji Sondhi and Dan Arovas "Phase space fractons"  is on arXiv (2502.02650).

• [Jan 2025] I am co-organizing the Physics of Quantum Matter summer school at IISER Pune for PhD students on 30 June - 11 July 2025. Applications are open (deadline 28 Feb 2025)

• [Jan 2025] My paper with Aryaman Babbar, Ylias Sadki and Shivaji Sondhi, "Classical Fractons: Local chaos, global broken ergodicity and an arrow of time " is on arXiv (2501.12445). 

• [Dec 2024] I gave a talk "Classical origins of Landau-incompatible transitions" at the "Young Investigator's Meet on Quantum Condensed Matter Theory" based on based on my recent preprint with Nick Jones on the same title.

• [Nov 2024] I gave a talk titled 'Deconfined Quantum Criticality sans Quantum' at the discussion meeting 'Quantum Many-Body Physics in the age of Quantum Information'  based on my recent preprint with Nick Jones. A video recording of the talk can be found here.

• [November 2024] I have joined the faulty of Harish-Chandra Research Instutute in Allahabad!

• [Sep 2024] I gave a talk at the CT.QMAT conference in Dresden titled "Charge pumps, boundary modes and the necessity of unnecessary criticality" based on my recent paper with the same title. 

• [Sep 2024] I gave two talks at ICTS-TIFR, Bangalore: a colloquium titled "Fractons: a novel paradigm for broken ergodicity" and a seminar titled "Topological structures of 'featureless' phases: unnecessary criticality, charge pumps and boundary modes".

• [Aug 2024] My paper with Sid Parameswaran, "Charge pumps, boundary modes, and the necessity of unnecessary criticality" is up on arXiv (2408.15351).

• [Aug 2024] My paper with Jonathan Classen-Howes and Riccardo Senese, "Universal Freezing Transitions of Dipole-Conserving Chains" is up on arXiv (2408.10321). 

• [July 2024]  My paper with Ylias Sadki and Shivaji Sondhi "Machian fractons, Hamiltonian attractors and non-equilibrium steady states" is published in Physical Review B.

• [June 2024] I gave an online talk titled "Symmetry routes to novel phases of matter" at Raman Research Institute

• [June 2024] My paper with Nick Jones and Paul Fendley, "Pivoting through the chiral-clock family" is up on arXiv (2406.01680).

• [May 2024] I gave a talk "Classical origins of Landau-incompatible transitions" at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai and IIT-Madras based on a recent paper with the same title. 

• [May 2024] I gave a colloquium at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, titled "Symmetry routes to novel phases of matter"

• [May 2024] My paper with Nick Jones, "Classical origins of Landau-incompatible transitions" is up on arXiv (2404.19009).

• [Feb 2024] I gave a talk at '30 minute Theoretical Physics Tuesdays' talk at Oxford titled 'Fractons: what are they and why do we care?'.

• [Feb 2024] My paper with Shivaji Sondhi and Alain Goriely, "Classical Non-Relativistic Fractons" has been published at PRB.

• [Jan 2024] I gave a talk at IIT Kanpur titled "Machian fractons, Hamiltonian attractors and folk theorem faux-pas" 

• [Jan 2024] I gave a colloquium titled "Symmetries: who are they when they come knocking on our doors" and seminar titled "Symmetry routes to novel many-body phenomena" at the Harish-Chandra Research Institute. 

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