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Professor Sir Michael V Berry

Ph.D.(St.And.), B.Sc.(Exon.), Sc.D.(Dub.), F.R.S.

  • BS8 1TL

1972 …2019

Research output per year

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Personal profile

Research interests

See Professor Sir Michael Berry's website for more details.

Many incompletely understood phenomena lurk in the borderlands between physical theories - between classical and quantum, between rays and waves... These borderlands - the domain of physical asymptotics - are my intellectual habitat, with an emphasis on geometrical aspects of waves (especially phase) and chaos.

A source of delight is uncovering down-to-earth or dramatic and sometimes beautiful examples of abstract mathematical ideas: the arcane in the mundane. Examples are:

  • mathematical singularities in rainbows and the patterns on the bottom of swimming-pools;
  • a laser pointer shone through irregular bathroom-window glass, illustrating abstract aspects of wave interference;
  • optics with transparent overhead-projector plastic sheets, illustrating polarization singularities, matrix degeneracies, and quantum measurement, and Anderson localization;
  • a levitating spinning-top, illustrating adiabatic stability and geometric phases;
  • twists and turns with a belt, illustrating the behaviour of identical particles in quantum mechanics, responsible for the impenetrability of matter, lasers, superconductivity...
  • Oriental magic mirrors, directly displaying the Laplacian.
  • Tsunamis, which are caustics in spacetime, and, when focused, spacetime caustics on a cusped caustic

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Research Output

Emil Wolf and Bristol

Berry, M. V., 5 Apr 2019, (Accepted/In press) Progress in Optics. Elsevier B.V., (Progress in Optics).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter in a book

    • Minimal model for tidal bore revisited

    Berry, M. V., 8 Jul 2019, In : New Journal of Physics. 21, 10 p., 073021.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article (Academic Journal)

    Open Access
    File
    • 1 Citation (Scopus)
    92 Downloads (Pure)

    Roadmap on superoscillations

    Berry, M., Zheludev, N., Aharonov, Y., Colombo, F., Sabadini, I., Struppa, D. C., Tollaksen, J., Rogers, E. T. F., Qin, F., Hong, M., Luo, X., Remez, R., Arie, A., Götte, J. B., Dennis, M. R., Wong, A. M. H., Eleftheriades, G. V., Eliezer, Y., Bahabad, A., Chen, G. & 7 others, Wen, Z., Liang, G., Hao, C., Qiu, C. W., Kempf, A., Katzav, E. & Schwartz, M., 18 Apr 2019, In : Journal of Optics (United Kingdom). 21, 5, 36 p., 053002.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Review article (Academic Journal)

    Open Access
    File
    • 19 Citations (Scopus)
    179 Downloads (Pure)

    Supervised Work

    Conical Diffraction: Complexifying Hamilton's Diabolical Legacy

    Author: Jeffrey, M. R., 3 Oct 2007

    Supervisor: Berry, M. (Supervisor)

    Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis › Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

    File

    Statistical properties of the eigenfunctions on quantum graphs

    Author: Piotet, F., 2009

    Supervisor: Berry, M. (Supervisor) & Keating, J. (Supervisor)

    Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis › Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

    File