Journal club

The Journal Club provides an informal environment to practice presenting scientific material, a platform for discussion, as well as exposure to a broader background in physics. Everyone is welcome to attend, but if you are interested in giving a talk please let us know (by emailing als217 @ cam.ac.uk).

Talks should present the key results of a seminal paper chosen by the presenter, over a maximum of 45 minutes with at least 15 minutes for discussion. Presenters should be aware that these talks are usually very interactive, and plan time accordingly. Whilst there are no restrictions on the publication date or subject matter of the paper, we encourage presenters to choose material which has proved to be influential for a wide section of the theoretical condensed matter community.

A good source of material for this is Journal Club for Condensed Matter Physics , which collates key papers and accompanies them with a commentary by a distinguished correspondent.

The presentation itself need not follow the same structure as the original paper, and more modern pedagogical approaches to the same result can be adopted. Blackboard presentations are preferred.

Administrative Details

The next speaker and their chosen paper/topic will be announced via the mailing list and will be shown to the right. Subscribers will be listed to the right in the order they will present.

The presenter should send either a reference to their chosen paper, or a title of their talk, by email to the organiser at least 5 days in advance of their slot. A PDF copy of this reference will be distributed to the mailing list in advance of the talk.

Previous Talks

2023 - 2024

• Vedant Motamarri, Dynamically Generated Logical Qubits Quantum 5, 564 (2021)
• Daniel Spasic-Mlacak, Theory of Edge States in the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect International Journal of Modern Physics B 6, No. 10, pp. 1711-1762 (1992)
• Mircea Bejan, Deep thermalization and emergent quantum state designs PRX Quantum 4, 010311 (2023)
• Alaric Sanders, Quantum orders and symmetric spin liquids Phys. Rev. B 65, 165113 (2002)
• Wojciech Jankowski, Riemannian Geometry and Topology of Bloch States Nature Physics 18, pp. 290–295 (2022)
• Yufei Pei, Integer Quantum Hall Effect

2022 - 2023

• Luca Rüegg Shou Cheng Zhang - The Chern-Simons-Landau-Ginzburg theory of the fractional quantum hall effectInternational Journal of Modern Physics B 06 (01), pp. 25-58 (1992)
• Alaric Sanders A. Kitaev - Anyons in an exactly solvable model and beyond Annals of Physics 321 (2006)
• Wojciech Jankowski N.D. Mermin - The topological theory of defects in ordered media Rev. Mod. Phys. 51, 591
• Arthur Morris Introduction to topological band theory. Recommended background: Chapter 1 of Bernevig, "Topological Insulators and Topological Superconductors" (Princeton University Press 2013)
• Bogdan Zviazhynski Machine learning for predicting physical phenomena from sparse and noisy data: an introduction
• Arthur Morris Introduction to topological band theory 2
• Mircea Bejan Measurement-Induced Phase Transitions I Ann. Rev. Cond. Mat. Phys. 14, 335-379 (2023)

2019 - 2020

• Michael Hutcheon D. M. Ceperley and B. J. Alder - Ground State of the Electron Gas by a Stochastic Method Phys. Rev. Lett. 45, 566 (1980)
• Jan Behrends L. Fidkowski and A. Kitaev - Topological phases of fermions in one dimension Phys. Rev. B 83, 075103 (2011)
• Petr Zapletal F. D. M. Haldane and S. Raghu - Possible Realization of Directional Optical Waveguides in Photonic Crystals with Broken Time-Reversal Symmetry Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 013904 (2008)
• Ivona Bravic M. S. Hybertsen and S. G. Louie - Electron correlation in semiconductors and insulators: Band gaps and quasiparticle energies Phys. Rev. B 34, 5390 (1986).

2018 - 2019

• Clara Wanjura Z. Gong et al. - Topological Phases of Non-Hermitian Systems Phys. Rev. X 8, 031079 (2018).
• Chris Parmee H.-P. Breuer et al. - Stochastic wave-function method for non-Markovian quantum master equations Phys. Rev. A 59, 1633 (1999).
• Nicolo Forcellini Jens Lindhard - On the properties of a gas of charged particles Dan. Vid. Selsk Mat.-Fys. Medd. 28 (1954).
• Shovan Dutta S. White - Density matrix formulation for quantum renormalization groups Phys. Rev. Lett. 69, 2863 (1992).
• Elis Roberts W. A. Benalcazar, J. C. Y. Teo, and T. L. Hughes - Classification of two-dimensional topological crystalline superconductors and Majorana bound states at disclinations Phys. Rev. B 89, 224503 (2014).
• Bo Peng A. I. Larkin and D. E. Khmelnitskii - Layered Structure in Ferroelectric Photoconductors Zh. Eksp. Theor. Fiz. 55, 2345 (1968).
• Andrea Pizzi Anatoli Polkovnikov - Quantum corrections to the dynamics of interacting bosons: Beyond the truncated Wigner approximation Phys Rev A 68 053604 (2003).
• Baptiste Bermond Local simulation algorithms for Coulomb interactions - A. C. Maggs, V. Rossetto Phys Rev Lett 88 196402 (2002).
• Benji Remez Excitonic Insulator - Jerome, Rice, and Kohn Phys. Rev 158 462 (1967).
• Max McGinley Periodic table of topological insulators and superconductors - A. Kitaev AIP Conference Proceedings 1134, 22 (2009)..
• Attila Szabo Quantum spin liquids: entanglement, gauge theories, and exotic quasiparticles Rep. Prog. Phys. 80, 016502 (2017).
• Daryll Foo `Contribution to the theory of superfluidity in an imperfect Fermi gas' - L.P. Gorkov and T.K. Melik-Barkhudarov JETP 13, 5 1018 (1960)

2017 - 2018

• Adam Smith String-net condensation: A physical mechanism for topological phases M. Levin and X.-G. Wen, Phys. Rev. B 71, 045110 (2005)
• Kasia Macieszczak The fluctuation-dissipation theorem [R. Kubo, Rep. Prog. Phys. 29 (1966)]
• Ezequiel Rodriguez-Chiacchio Symmetries and conserved quantities in Lindblad master equations [V. Albert and L. Jiang, PRA 89 (2014)]
• Philipp Verpoort 'On spin-orbit induced spin relaxation in conduction electrons' [Yafet, Solid State Physics 14 (1963)]
• Victor Jouffrey (20th April): Fabian Grusdt, Eugene Demler - New theoretical approaches to Bose polarons [arXiv:1510.04934 (2015)]
• Petr Zapletal (6th April): Florian Marquardt et. al. - Quantum Theory of Cavity-Assisted Sideband Cooling of Mechanical Motion [Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 093902 (2007)]
• Angela Harper (23rd March): Laser Printed Organic Electronics (APS prize talk). Original paper [Adv. Mat. Tech. 2, 11 (2017)]
• Chris Parmee (23rd February): Michael Wortis -- Bound States of Two Spin Waves in the Heisenberg Ferromagnet Phys. Rev. 132, 85 (1963)
• Stephen Spurrier (9th February): D. Xiao, M.-C. Chang, and Q. Niu -- Berry phase effects on electronic properties Rev. Mod. Phys. 82, 1959 (2010)
• Max McGinley (26th January): H. Li and F.D.M. Haldane - Entanglement Spectrum as a Generalization of Entanglement Entropy: Identification of Topological Order in Non-Abelian Fractional Quantum Hall Effect States Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 010504
• Bart Andrews (15th December): A. Kubica et. al. - Three-dimensional color code thresholds via statistical-mechanical mapping arXiv:1708.07131
• Chris Parmee (1st December): J. M. Kosterlitz and D. J. Thouless - Ordering, metastability and phase transitions in two-dimensional systems. J. Phys. C: Solid St. Phys. 6, 1181 (1973)
• Tycho Sikkenk (17th November): Renormalization Group Wilson-Fischer fixed point
• Garry Goldstein (3rd November): Fractional quantum Hall systems. See books by X.-G. Wen, E. Fradkin and N. Nagaoso
• Daniel Malz (20th October): On Landauer's Formula. See the canonical paper here. See also the introduction and sections 1.1-1.3 of "Quantum Transport" by Nazarov and Blanter found here.
• Nicolo Forcellini (6th October): E. Runge and E. K. U. Gross - Density-Functional Theory for Time-Dependent Systems. Phys. Rev. Lett. 52, 997 (1984)

2016 - 2017

• Adam Smith (9th June): L. V. Keldysh - Diagram Technique for Nonequilibrium Processes. Sov. Phys. JTEP 20, 4, 1018 (1965)
• Ezequiel Rodriguez-Chiacchio (2nd June): D. Jaksch, C. Bruder, J. I. Cirac, C. W. Gardiner, and P. Zoller - Cold Bosonic Atoms in Optical Lattices. Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 3108 (1998)
• Philipp Verpoort (26th May): Shuang Jia, Su-Yang Xu & M. Zahid Hasan - Weyl semimetals, Fermi arcs and chiral anomalies. Nature Materials 15, 1140–1144 (2016)
• Yu Yang Fredrik Liu (19th May): C. L. Kane and E. J. Mele - Z2 Topological Order and the Quantum Spin Hall Effect. Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 146802 (2005)
• Stephen Spurrier (12th May): Douglas R. Hofstadter - Energy levels and wave functions of Bloch electrons in rational and irrational magnetic fields. Phys. Rev. B 14, 2239 (1976)
• Chris Parmee (5th May): M. Srednicki - Chaos and quantum thermalization. Phys. Rev. E 50, 888 (1994)
• Bart Andrews (28th April): D. J. Thouless, M. Kohmoto, M. P. Nightingale, and M. den Nijs - Quantized Hall Conductance in a Two-Dimensional Periodic Potential. Phys. Rev. Lett. 49, 405 (1982)
• Garry Goldstein (21st April): See chapter 17 - Heavy electrons (sections 17.3, 17.5, 17.6) of Piers Coleman - Introduction to Many-Body Physics
• Beñat Mencia (7th April): A. A. Abrikosov - On the Magnetic Properties of Superconductors of the Second Group. Sov. Phys. JETP 5, 6 1174 (1957)
• Daniel Malz (31st March): J. H. Shirley - Solution of the Schrödinger equation with a Hamiltonian periodic in time. Phys. Rev. 138, B979 (1965)
• Nicolo Forcellini (10th March): P. W. Anderson - Localized magnetic states in metals. Phys. Rev. 124, 41 (1961)
• Adam Smith (3rd March): S. R. White - Density matrix formulation for quantum renormalization groups. Phys. Rev. Lett. 69, 2863 (1992)
• Ezequiel Rodriguez-Chiacchio (24th February): R. H. Dicke - Coherence in Spontaneous Radiation Processes. Phys. Rev. 93, 99 (1954)
• Phillip Verpoort (17th February): J. Kondo - Resistance minimum in dilute magnetic alloys. Prog. Theor. Phys. 32, 1 (1964)