James P. Sethna

• Teaching
  

  • Jupiter! The Three-Body Problem. (tcl/tk)
  • Order Parameters, Broken Symmetry, and Topology
  • LASSPTools
  • Materials Simulations.
  • Statistical Mechanics.
  • Tunnel Through the Earth
  • Computational Methods
  • Drunken Boat on-line literary magazine, abstraction from "Crackling Noise".
  • Waves and Thermodynamics. (Physics 218)
  • Critical Droplets and Nucleation.
  • Coarsening.
  • Fracture and Symmetry.
  • Crackling Noise for Kids.
  • Basic training in condensed matter theory
  • Jacob Alldredge's ``This Is Stat Mech'' (Spring 2003).
  • Computational Physics using Numerical Recipes
  • Statistical Physics: Scaling and the Renormalization Group
  • Graduate Quantum I
  
  
• Materials Science
  
  
  • Hysteresis, the return-point memory effect, and avalanche distributions
  • Precursors to martensitic phase transitions: tweed and spin glasses
  • Melting a copper cluster
  • Layer-by-Layer Forever
  • Elastic Theory has Zero Radius of Convergence
  • Electromigration and Voids.
  • Double Jumps: Altered Arrhenius Laws.
  • KMCMD: Picoseconds to Seconds.
  • Replacing Wisdom and Experience.
  • Dislocation dynamics and Tools for analyzing dislocation structures

• Sloppy Models
  
  
  • Statistical mechanics of sloppy models
  • A sloppy systems biology model
  • What is Sloppiness?
  • What are Sloppy Models?
  • Fitting Exponentials: Prediction without parameters
  • Fitting Polynomials: Where is sloppiness from?
  • Why sloppiness? The Sloppy Universality Class
  • Do parameters matter? Fits versus measurements.
  • Experimental design in sloppy systems
  • Parameter robustness and sloppiness
  • Environmental robustness and sloppiness: Circadian rhythms
  • Evolvability, robustness, and sloppiness
  • Estimating systematic errors for interatomic potentials and for density functional theory.
  • SloppyCell software, available on SourceForge.
  • SloppyScaling Python software for critical point scaling collapses.

• Biophysics
  
  
  • Cell membranes, the Ising model, string theory, and why you sneeze. (See Cornell Chronicle, Nature Physics News, Physics World, Nature Materials News and Views
  • Twisted DNA supercoils like garden hoses and old-style telephone cords
  • Signal transduction networks as sloppy models

• Glasses
  
  
  • Orange Peel Carpets: Frustration and curvature in glasses
  • Elastic dipole model explaining universal low-temperature properties
  • Zero temperature entropy distributions at slow cooling rates
  • Slow relaxation in frustrated Ising and Frenkel-Kontorova systems
  • Scaling theory of the liquid-to-glass transition

• Disordered Systems
  
  
  • Slow relaxation in the Griffiths phase in spin glasses
  • Spin glasses on a Bethe lattice
  • Sliding of charge-density waves

• Defects in Liquid Crystals
  
  
  • Structure of the blue phases as networks of disclination lines
  • Ideal blue phase template on the surface of a sphere in four dimensions
  • Quasicrystalline model for the blue fog phase
  • Defect theory of the rippled P-beta' phase of lyotropic smectics
  • Boojums in chiral smectic liquid crystal films

• Quantum
  
  • Instanton methods applied to defect tunneling in the presence of phonons
  • Photoinduced soliton pair formation in polyacetylene
  • Statistics of the quasiparticles in the RVB state
  • Cusps in Inhomogeneous Broadening: Level Repulsion and Dirt
  • Atomic Tunneling from a STM/AFM Tip
  • Vortex core states in superconductors
  • Ground state of an interacting anyon system
  • Quantum Tunneling of Large Objects: Dislocation Kinks.

• Dynamical Systems
  • Renormalization group analysis of the breakdown of quasiperiodic motion
  • Breakdown of quasiperiodic motion in systems forced at two frequencies
  • Defect Chaos.
  • Crumpling Paper
  • Mosh Pit Dynamics at Heavy Metal Concerts (As seen in New Scientist, The Atlantic.)

James P. Sethna, sethna@lassp.cornell.edu