Daniel Arovas received his PhD from UC Santa Barbara in 1986 and went on to do postdoctoral work at the University of Chicago. He joined the faculty of UC San Diego in 1988. A condensed matter theorist, he has worked on a variety of topics, including quantum Hall effect, fractional statistics, quantum magnetism, quantum dynamics and tunneling of vortices and skyrmions, and most recently open quantum systems. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and was the inaugural recipient (2017) of the Dresden Physics Prize. He also served a stint in the chair line of the APS Division of Condensed Matter Physics and Program Director for the ill-fated 2020 APS March Meeting, and is happy to tell the story of how the entire meeting came to be cancelled the day before it was to start.
IFT Colloquium – April 2
A Brief History of Quantum Magnetism
I will describe major developments in the field of quantum magnetism, from Bethe’s wavefunction for the spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic chain, the Haldane gap, valence bond solids and symmetry protected topological phases, and (hopefully) Kitaev spin liquids. This field has been one of the most consequential within condensed matter physics over the past 40 years.