My research seeks to understand the properties of materials from a fundamental microscopic basis in the context of the branch of theoretical physics known as "condensed matter."

The last two decades have been a time of much progress in this area, driven primarily by the experimental discovery of a number of new, technologically important materials. Some of these materials are superconducting complex oxides crystals of oxygen, copper, and two or more transition metals which conduct electricity without resistance at relatively high temperatures.

The principles of quantum mechanics and the Coulomb interactions between the electrons play a central role in determining the physical properties of many such complex oxides. Indeed, the competing physical effects of Coulomb interactions often place these materials close to the boundary of phases with distinct types of long-range order (Coulomb interactions tend to localize the electrons at positions well separated from each other, while the quantum uncertainty prefers completely delocalized electrons). It is therefore fruitful to identify the critical points which separate such phases and to develop theoretical descriptions of their vicinity. The study of such "quantum phase transitions" has been a major preoccupation of my research group and the subject of my book, mentioned below.

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Selected publications

"Quantum Criticality Beyond the Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson paradigm," T. Senthil, L. Balents, S. Sachdev, A. Vishwanath, and M.P.A. Fisher, journal?, vol, p. (year?); http://arzzxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0312617

"Order and Quantum Phase Transitions in the Cuprate Superconductors," S. Sachdev, Reviews of Modern Physics, 75, 913 (2003); http://onsager.physics.yale.edu/p116.pdf

"Quantum Criticality: Competing Ground States in Low Dimensions," S. Sachdev, Science, 288, 475 (2000); http://onsager.physics.yale.edu/p93.pdf

Quantum Phase Transitions, S. Sachdev (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999); http://pantheon.yale.edu/~subir/qptweb/toc.html