Director

Director Sergej FLACH

Professor Flach is the director of the Center for Theoretical Physics of Complex Systems, established in December 2014. Director Flach obtained both his M.A. and Ph.D. from Dresden University of Technology in Germany between 1986 and 1989. After an Alexander-von-Humboldt stay at TU Munich he did post-doc work at Boston University, and joined the Max Planck Society in 1994. In 2012 he took a position as a professor at the New Zealand Institute for Advanced Study in Auckland, before coming to Korea in 2014 to the Center for Theoretical Physics of Complex Systems.

Introduction

Conducting cutting edge research at the interface of computational and applied theoretical condensed matter physics and optics of nano-structured systems

• - Complex Condensed Matter and Many-Body Interactions
• - Topology in Condensed Matter and Nanophotonics
• - Light-Matter Interaction in Nanostructures

Main research activities

Today the eyes looking for novel technologies and new generation devices focus on nano- structured materials with unprecedented electrical, mechanical, optical and other properties like graphene, nanotubes, quantum dot arrays, metamaterials, trapped atomic condensates, superconducting networks, plasmonic and nanophotonic structures. There is an increasingly strong demand for new theoretical concepts, approaches and computational tools for uncovering fundamental nonlinear and quantum many-body processes in such systems and designing efficient methods of their control.

Our center aims to take up the grand challenge and to create a world-class laboratory for the nonlinear classical and quantum dynamics of nano-structured systems, and to conduct cutting edge research on phenomena at the interfaces of applied and computational theoretical condensed matter physics and optics. We aim to cross-fertilize research on exciton-polariton condensates, superconducting networks, quantum dot networks, ultracold atomic gases, optical waveguide networks, topology, frustration, flatband physics, Fano resonant nanoscale devices, artificial gauge fields, quantum ratchets, many body localization, disorder against interactions, artificial quasicrystals, nonintegrability, deterministic chaos, Arnold diffusion, KAM, coherence and decoherence, quantum stochastic dynamics, finite systems, targeted energy transfer, transport in nano structures, nonlinear naophotonics, topological insulators, and more.

An efficient Visitors and Workshop Program will ensure finest research and training standards thus developing the center into a leading institution able to successfully compete within a quickly globalizing science network. By becoming a meeting hub for the global scientific community the center will offer to young scientists an excellent research environment and connections with the worldwide leaders in a broad variety of emerging research fields.