Catherine works in the general area of Quantum Condensed Matter Theory. Her current research is primarily on quantum magnets and novel superconductors, including high temperature superconductors and chiral superconductors that may exhibit topological order. More information about her research group and activities can be found on her website.
Art is by Pamela Davis Kivelson.
Electron systems, including high temperature superconductors, frustrated antiferromagnets, and quantum Hall systems
Teaching Schedule
- Physics 739: Graduate Quantum Mechanics I
- Physics 740: Graduate Quantum Mechanics II
Catherine Kallin
John Berlinsky
Department of Physics & Astronomy
McMaster University
Dear Prospective Graduate Student,
Our research is in the area of strongly correlated electronic systems. Much of our work is on the theory of frustrated magnets, high temperature superconductors and other novel superconductors. We are also interested in other systems where electron-electron interactions and quantum effects are important, such as spin chains and ladders, carbon nanotubes, and quantum Hall systems. Other faculty members at McMaster who work in the area of strongly correlated electronic systems include Professors Sung-Sik Lee and Erik Sorensen and, on the experimental side, Professors Bruce Gaulin, Takashi Imai, Graeme Luke and Tom Timusk.
Currently, we have four PhD students, Philip Ashby, Sedigh Ghamari, Wen Huang and Saeed Zelli, and one postdoctoral fellow, Ed Taylor, in our group. Some of our recent graduates include Eric Mills, Kiri Nichol, Fei Lin, Rastko Skepnik, Denis Dalidovich, and Rahul Roy.
Here is a quick summary of some of the projects our group is currently working on. Philip Ashby is currently studying chiral p-wave superconductivity, which has been proposed as the state for strontium ruthenate. This is a novel state with a "topological order", which under certain conditions can support Majorana fermions and non-abelian statistics. Saeed Zelli is working on understanding the mysterious pseudogap phase of the high temperature superconducting cuprates. His work involves fairly large scale numerical calculations which include the effect of Gutzwiller projection (no double occupancy) which is believed to be important for this phase which arises from doping a Mott insulator. Rahul Roy works on topological insulators, systems which exhibit neither conventional spontaneous symmetry breaking or Fermi liquid behavior at low temperatures, but which have a type of subtle order and can be described by topological field theories. A chiral p-wave superconductor is one example, but other examples include quantum Hall states and novel states arising from a strong spin-orbit coupling in some semiconductor systems.
We are both members of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIAR) program on Superconductivity. This program runs an annual summer school which gives our graduate students and postdocs the opportunity to meet other students and researchers from across Canada who are working on research problems related to their own.
Both of us are also Affiliates of the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, and John Berlinsky is the Academic Program Director for Perimeter. Perimeter has launched recently a new graduate program, Perimeter Scholars International, and we expect some lively and interesting interactions to result from our involvement.
You can learn about where our former students and postdocs are now from our home webpage. You can also learn a bit about work from some of the general or review papers we have listed and/or linked to on our webpage. Please contact us at kallin@mcmaster.ca and berlinsk@mcmaster.ca if you think you might be interested in condensed matter theory or if you have any other questions.
Professor Catherine Kallin
Professor John Berlinsky
