Department of Physics

condensed matter physics (theoretical)

Professor Fertig is interested in the theoretical physics of many-particle systems, particularly in low dimensions. Such systems -- particularly their realizations in electronic materials -- support an amazingly broad variety of phenomena and states: the quantum Hall effect, metal-insulator transitions, electron crystals, highly correlated metals, superconductivity, and quantum magnetism. In many of these systems topology plays an important role, and understanding how this impacts the organizing principles of the important underlying degrees of freedom, as well as the measurable properties, of such systems, are among the important themes of his research.