Christopher L. Henley

Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics

I work on several topics, the common thread being geometry. Most of my problems involve nontrivial patterns in space; frequently the problem is to determine the qualitative nature of the ground state (or equilibrium phase).

5/4/09 QUASICRYSTALS AND COMPLEX ALLOYS: informal symposium

PUBLICATIONS (html links to pdf reprints).

TALKS (html links to talks).

THESES (by students since 2000).

Henley research group members

TEACHING: Spring 2009 P '636 Solid State II

Research opportunities (grad and undergrad)

Undergrad projects: I have ideas for projects in theoretical solid-state physics, not using quantum mechanics and related to my quasicrystals, biological physics, or frustrated antiferromagnets research (see "Research supported by the DOE", below). For more details, click here Grad research opportunities: see here . Postdocs (2009-11): I may have funding for a shared postdoc

RESEARCH INTERESTS

I'm involved in four major research areas. (Look here , for a poster from the Research Opportunities Meeting Nov. 2007, which tells the same story.) My NSF grant supports interacting electron models and frustrated antiferromagnets. My DOE grant supports quasicrystals and biological physics.

1. Quantum electrons on lattices

Typically on the computational-analytic borderline, with a focus on: what are unbiased ways to get information out of the (experimental or numerical) data? There are two threads currently:

Research details: fermions on lattices

2. Frustrated magnetism

This category includes (1) magnetic ordering in frustrated vector antiferromagnets, and (2) the statistical physics of discrete spin models that map to rough interface models (related to conformal field theories).

Research details: highly frustrated magnetism

3. Quasicrystals

Quasicrystals are complex metal alloys with highly ordered, yet non-periodic structures. We want to determine their structure and understand why they form. Thus our work breaks down into (1) atomic structure fitting and structural energies; (2) random tiling ensembles;

Research details: Quasicrystals

4. Biological physics.

I work on two major topics in biological physics They involve statistical mechanics plus spatial patterning. (1) We study the assembly of virus shells ("capsids"), via growth models (i.e. statistical physics) and also a kind of multiscale modeling, in which we infer effective lumped spring constants for whole protein units from all-atom simulations. (2) Physical mechanisms causing macroscopic Left/Right asymmetry (handedness) in animals and plants.

Research details: Biological physics.

Past projects

Some of the projects:

I belong to the Cornell Center for Materials Research. I was once active in a research group within the CCMR on "Energetic Surface Processing", which involved models of the growth of crystals by atom deposition.

Research details: past projects


Last modified: Aug. 25, 2009

Christopher L. Henley, clh@ccmr.cornell.edu