Mr Sean M Harding

What role does strong quantum correlation play in the physics of many-electron systems? Developing theoretical methods to answer this question is difficult due to the exponential growth of the Hilbert space of any many-body quantum system as one approaches the thermodynamic limit. Current theoretical and experimental work demonstrates that such strongly correlated states can harbour interesting emergent properties, such as novel ordered phases in condensed matter like superconductivity.

My project is concerned with the theoretical investigation of model Hamiltonians to explore this rich physics, with aim to extend the methods to studying realistic materials.  Specifically, I am applying novel quantum embedding methods which map the exponentially large many-body problem onto a smaller correlated problem which is numerically tractable. The aim is to extend the capabilities of these approaches using new numerical techniques in order to study strongly correlated systems with more degrees of freedom, as well as the behavior of such systems out of equilibrium.