Karl Landsteiner

You might have landed here accidentally, looking for HIM. Note that although we have been born in the same city and share a name there are some notable differences between the two of us: I am a physicist, whereas HE was a medical Doctor. HE won a Nobel Prize, wheres I am still working on it 😉 If you want to know more about HIM look here, otherwise continue reading please.

ADDRESS:
Instituto de Física Teórica
Nicolas Cabrera 13-15
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
28049 Madrid
SPAIN
Tel: +34-91299-9811

New hep-th New nucl-th New hep-ph

My research interst in mostly concerned with the collective behaviour of chiral matter. Chirality (greek for handedness) is an everyday experience, as its name says: our Hands are chiral! In nature chirality is ubiquious, plants grow in spiral patterns (appearently 90% of all plants are right-handed), organic molecules are chiral, all life itself is chiral on its molecular level.

However on the deepest level of nature, in quantum mechanics, something seems deeply wrong with chirality. In quantum physics the classical concept of chirality suffers from what is called an anomaly! The chiral symmetry is not compatible with quantum physics. This amazing and strange fact is called anomaly. The chiral anomaly has been discovered back in 1969 and was welcome. It explains the decay of the netural pion into photons. Curiously these anomalies give rise to new patterns in the collective behavior of chiral matter. When subjected to magnetic fields or to rotation chiral matter responds by generating currents. Even better these currents are dissipationless.

Can we observe these current in nature? Can we harness the power of the chiral anomaly for technology? These are the quesitons that motivate me and in which I try to make progress on in my research.

Slides of some Talks, Colloquia and Lectures:
Slides of Lecture Notes I II III
Anomalous Transport from Holography