• Atomic Physics
• Biophysics Theory and Experiment
• Condensed Matter Experiment
• Cond Matter Theory Faculty
  • Philip W. Anderson
  • Ravindra Bhatt
  • Antonio Garcia-Garcia
  • F. Duncan M. Haldane
  • Davis Huse
  • Shivaji Sondhi
  • Sal Torquato

• Cosmology Experiment
• Cosmology Theory
• High Energy Experiment
• High Energy Theory
• Mathematical Physics
• Particle and Nuclear Astrophysics

• Quantitative and Computational Biology
• Cosmology at Princeton
• Lewis-Sigler Institute
• Princeton Center for Theoretical Physics
• Princeton Institute for the Science
  and Technology of Materials

I am a condensed matter theorist, a field in which I played the role of a major agenda-setter for 40 or so years (in fact I believe a colleague and I named the field in 1967 when we named our group in Cambridge--before that it was "solid state theory"). On occasional forays outside CMT I worked on pulsar glitches with David Pines and invented the "Higgs" boson in 1962. Since 1987 I have worked in that field almost exclusively on "High-Tc" superconductivity, a terribly complex and controversial field in which my contributions have at least the virtue of longevity. I became emeritus in 1997 at Princeton, where I have been since 1975; but my longest association was with Bell Labs 1949-84. I got into the Santa Fe Institute universe via the condensed matter phenomenon of the "spin glass', which I named in 1970 and produced the first theory with Sir Sam Edwards in 1975. Via work with Kirkpatrick and palmer, and later Stein, we came to realise that this was an important link between statistical physics and complex optimisation, and in the latter guise it spawned algorithms(simulated annealing), work on computational complexity, on neural nets (the Hopfield model etc), and on evolution on rugged landscapes. This was part of the Santa Fe Institute "toolkit" in the early days which for instance we showed off to John Reed of Citicorp in 1986. I also had developed an interest in economics via dilletantish studies in Cambridge, and was glad to help organise the global economy workshop in 1987, choosing a group of hard scientists to try to mesh with Arrow's ten economists, apparently with some success. I retain a watching interest in econ especially in pareto distributions on which I have one article and lots of acknowledgements. An older theme arose from my 1971 article "More is Different", which I follow up by writing on topics in epistemology of science. My earlier interests included Spectral Line Broadening, Magnetism, Broken Symmetry, Superfluidity in 3He, Transport Theory and Localization, Random Statistical Systems, and Prebiotic Evolution.

S e l e c t e d P u b l i c a t i o n s:

Philip W. Anderson Do we Need (or Want) a Bosonic Glue to Pair Electrons in High Tc Superconductors cond-mat/0609040 Philip W. Anderson Two New Vortex Fluids cond-mat/0606429 submitted to Nature Phys Philip W. Anderson Dynamics of the Vortex Fluid in Cuprate Superconductors: The Nernst Effect Cond-mat/0603726 B Edegger, Claudius Gros, V Muthukumar, Philip W. Anderson Electronic Structure of Gutzwiller Projected Superconductors cond-mat/0512646 submitted to PNAS: accepted Philip W. Anderson The “Strange Metal” is a Projected Fermi Liquid with Edge Singularities cond-mat/0512471 submitted to Nature Physics - accepted Philip W. Anderson Present Status of the Theory of High Tc Cuprates cond-mat/0510053 TBP, Journal of Low Temperature Physics Philip W. Anderson, W F Brinkman, David A Huse Thermodynamics of an Incommensurate Quantum Crystal Cond-mat/0507654 Science 310, 1164 2005 Philip W. Anderson Physics of a Superfluid Solid cond-mat/0504731 Philip W. Anderson Physics of the Pseudogap State: Spin-Charge Locking cond-mat/0504453 Phys Rev Lett 96, 017001 (2006) Philip W. Anderson A Suggested 4x4 Structure is Underdoped Cuprates cond-mat/0406038 Philip W. Anderson, N P Ong Theory of Asymmetric Tunneling in the Cuprate Superconductors cond-mat/0405518 J Phys Chem Solids 67, 1-5 (2006) N P Ong, Weida Wu, P M Chaikin, Philip W. Anderson Phase Coherence and the Nernst Effect at Magic Angles in Organic Conductors cond-mat/0401159 Europhys Lett 66, 579 2004 Philip W. Anderson, P A Lee, Mohit Randeria, T M Rice, N Trivedi, F C Zhang The Physics behind High-Temperature Superconducting Cuprates: the “Plain Vanilla” Theory cond-mat/0311467 J Phys Cond Matt 16, R755 2004 Philip W. Anderson, W F Brinkman “New Zero-resistance State” in Heterojunctions: a Dynamical Effect cond-mat/0302129 Philip W. Anderson In Praise of Unstable Fixed Points: The Way Things Actually Work cond-mat/0201431 journal? Philip W. Anderson Superconductivity In High Tc Cuprates: The Cause is no Longer a Mystery cond-mat/0201439 Physica Scripta, 2002 Philip W. Anderson Physics of the Pseudogap State of High Tc Cuprates, or, RVB Meets Umklapp Cond-mat/0108522 Journal? Philip W A RVB Revisited cond-mat/0104332 Given in 1999, published in...