Disorder is ubiquitous in condensed matter physics. No crystalline structure,
no sand-glass is perfect in the sense that, in practice, a few percent of
atoms (sand-grains) might have been exchanged with impurities through
contamination in the growth process of the crystal or in the preparation
of the sand-glass. I am mostly interested in the effect of disorder on
quantum systems (i.e., at low temperatures):
What is the effect of disorder on the
vibrational modes of a perfect crystal,
transport properties of a metal,
magnetic response of an ordered array of magnetic moments,
thermal transport in a superconductor,
electrical response of an array of flux lines?
Dr. Christopher Mudry
Paul Scherrer Institut
WHGA/125
CH-5232 Villigen PSI
Switzerland