Mathematical Physics Program

The Mathematical Physics Program in the Mathematical Sciences Institute is coordinated by Professor Peter Bouwknegt.

Link to the Theoretical Astro-Physics program.

People

People in the program include staff in the Department of Mathematics, the Centre for Mathematics and its Applications, and the Department of Theoretical Physics, RSPE.

Research

The mathematical physics group at the ANU was ranked among the top international mathematical physics groups in the recent ANU Quality Review. Our research interests range from integrable models in statistical mechanics and quantum field theory to string theory, representations of quantum algebras and applications to algebraic geometry. Further information can be found on individual home pages and through the Mathematical Physics home page in the Department of Theoretical Physics.

News

Congratulations to current Maths Phys group members, Profs Batchelor, Baxter and Bazhanov and Dr Guan with their succes in the Discovery Projects 2010 round. Also congratulations to Dr David Ridout (currently CRM, University of Montreal) who will be joining our group in 2010 on an ARC Australian Research Fellowship.

Professor Peter Bouwknegt has been appointed to the ARC College of Experts Mathematics, Information and Communication Sciences (MIC) panel from 2009.

Professor Murray Batchelor has been appointed Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical from 2009.

Professor Murray Batchelor has been awarded an Honorary Professorship from Chongqing University in China. Link

Emeritus Professor Rodney Baxter's seminal paper Eight-Vertex Model in Lattice Statistics has been selected as the Milestone Letter for 1971 to mark the 50th anniversary celebration of Physical Review Letters.

Professor Peter Bouwknegt to be Y C Wong Visiting Lecturer in Mathematics at the University of Hong Kong.

Emeritus Professor Rodney Baxter's classic book Exactly Solved Models in Statistical Mechanics (cited over 3000 times in the ISI database) is now available as a paperback in the Dover Classics Series (Amazon link).

Archived News

Events

We maintain an up to date list of forthcoming and recent events of relevance to the Mathematical Physics Program.

Projects and Teaching

We are currently recruiting honours and PhD students, with a number of Honours and PhD Projects available. We are involved in undergraduate education through the 2nd year honours course MATH2406: Mathematical Methods II Honours: Partial Differential Equations, Fourier Analysis and Complex Analysis and the 3rd year honours course MATH3351: Topics in Mathematical Physics Honours as part of the Mathematical Physics Major. We also mentor and supervise a number of students in the ANU PhB program.

In 2010 MATH3351: Topics in mathematical Physics Honours will run in the first semester, and consist of

• Quantum Field Theory (18 lectures, Bouwknegt)
• Integrable Models in Statistical Mechanics and Quantum Field Theory (18 lectures, Batchelor).

Click here for more details.