Ramamurti Shankar
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Description

RESPONSIBILITIES Chair, Department of Physics

APPOINTMENTS Primary appointment in the Physics Department.

INTERESTS Shankar's research focuses on exact solutions in statistical mechanics, effects of random impurities on phase transitions, renormalization group theories of Fermi systems, and the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect.

In statistical mechanics and in the quantum field theory of solids, his graduate student Ganpathy Murthy along with Prof. Shankar worked on random systems in which the interaction between the microscopic degrees of freedom varies from point to point. They worked out several exact solutions. These are particularly useful in systems with competing interactions where intuition is not a very reliable guide, e.g., a random magnet in which each spin receives conflicting signals from its neighbors on which direction to align.

Together with Prof. Subir Sachdev, Physics and Applied Physics, they have worked on the metal-insulator transition and on the properties of holes in quantum antiferromagnets. Recently, he has developed a renormalization group approach to the problem of interacting fermions. The presence of a fermi-surface necessitates a modification of the standard RG procedure which integrates out all high momenta. Using the new approach, he was able to recover the results of Landau's Fermi Liquid Theory, a notoriously mysterious and difficult subject. The new approach makes Fermi Liquid Theory simpler and more straightforward and provides information about its instabilities.

Presently, and sometimes in collaboration with Ganpathy Murthy, I am developing a hamiltonian description of the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect. The description has now reached a point where it allows us to compute gaps for all observed fractions, finite temperature properties like polarization, and the relaxation rate. Our description is also able to map the electronic variables in terms of which the problem is originally posed to the Composite Fermion that are the ultimate quasiparticles. For information on the nature of the problems under research by the Yale theoretical condensed matter physics group, please visit the condensed matter theory group.

CONSULTING AREA Theoretical condensed matter physics, quantum physics.

AWARDS AND HONORS Harwood F. Byrnes/Richard B. Sewall Teaching Prize, Yale University (2005)

REPRESENTATIVE PUBLICATIONS Hamiltonian Description of Composite Fermions: Aftermath, Ramamurti Shankar, 1999, Phys. Rev. Lett., 83, 2382.


Lectures:

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flag Lecture 1 - Course Introduction and Newtonian Mechanics
as author at  YALE PHYS 200 - Fundamentals of Physics with Professor Ramamurti Shankar,
16132 views
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flag Lecture 21 - Thermodynamics
as author at  YALE PHYS 200 - Fundamentals of Physics with Professor Ramamurti Shankar,
13983 views
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flag Lecture 12 - Introduction to Relativity
as author at  YALE PHYS 200 - Fundamentals of Physics with Professor Ramamurti Shankar,
9112 views
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flag Lecture 23 - The Second Law of Thermodynamics and Carnot's Engine
as author at  YALE PHYS 200 - Fundamentals of Physics with Professor Ramamurti Shankar,
7497 views
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flag Lecture 2 - Vectors in Multiple Dimensions
as author at  YALE PHYS 200 - Fundamentals of Physics with Professor Ramamurti Shankar,
7409 views
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flag Lecture 20 - Fluid Dynamics and Statics and Bernoulli's Equation
as author at  YALE PHYS 200 - Fundamentals of Physics with Professor Ramamurti Shankar,
7328 views
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flag YALE PHYS 200 - Fundamentals of Physics with Professor Ramamurti Shankar
as author at  YALE PHYS 200 - Fundamentals of Physics with Professor Ramamurti Shankar,
36578 views
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flag Lecture 3 - Newton's Laws of Motion
as author at  YALE PHYS 200 - Fundamentals of Physics with Professor Ramamurti Shankar,
6662 views
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flag Lecture 24 - The Second Law of Thermodynamics (cont.) and Entropy
as author at  YALE PHYS 200 - Fundamentals of Physics with Professor Ramamurti Shankar,
6372 views
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flag Lecture 16 - The Taylor Series and Other Mathematical Concepts
as author at  YALE PHYS 200 - Fundamentals of Physics with Professor Ramamurti Shankar,
6234 views
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flag Lecture 22 - The Boltzmann Constant and First Law of Thermodynamics
as author at  YALE PHYS 200 - Fundamentals of Physics with Professor Ramamurti Shankar,
5883 views
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flag Lecture 4 - Newton's Laws (cont.) and Inclined Planes
as author at  YALE PHYS 200 - Fundamentals of Physics with Professor Ramamurti Shankar,
5668 views
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flag Lecture 13 - Lorentz Transformation
as author at  YALE PHYS 200 - Fundamentals of Physics with Professor Ramamurti Shankar,
5392 views
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flag Lecture 17 - Simple Harmonic Motion
as author at  YALE PHYS 200 - Fundamentals of Physics with Professor Ramamurti Shankar,
5240 views
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flag Lecture 5 - Work-Energy Theorem and Law of Conservation of Energy
as author at  YALE PHYS 200 - Fundamentals of Physics with Professor Ramamurti Shankar,
4834 views
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flag Lecture 9 - Rotations, Part I: Dynamics of Rigid Bodies
as author at  YALE PHYS 200 - Fundamentals of Physics with Professor Ramamurti Shankar,
4239 views
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flag Lecture 7 - Kepler's Laws
as author at  YALE PHYS 200 - Fundamentals of Physics with Professor Ramamurti Shankar,
3992 views
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flag Lecture 11 - Torque
as author at  YALE PHYS 200 - Fundamentals of Physics with Professor Ramamurti Shankar,
3829 views
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flag Lecture 14 - Introduction to the Four-Vector
as author at  YALE PHYS 200 - Fundamentals of Physics with Professor Ramamurti Shankar,
3810 views
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flag Lecture 8 - Dynamics of Multiple-Body System and Law of Conservation of Momentum
as author at  YALE PHYS 200 - Fundamentals of Physics with Professor Ramamurti Shankar,
3810 views
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flag Lecture 10 - Rotations, Part II: Parallel Axis Theorem
as author at  YALE PHYS 200 - Fundamentals of Physics with Professor Ramamurti Shankar,
3740 views
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flag Lecture 6 - Law of Conservation of Energy in Higher Dimensions
as author at  YALE PHYS 200 - Fundamentals of Physics with Professor Ramamurti Shankar,
3631 views
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flag Lecture 19 - Waves
as author at  YALE PHYS 200 - Fundamentals of Physics with Professor Ramamurti Shankar,
3527 views
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flag Lecture 15 - Four-Vector in Relativity
as author at  YALE PHYS 200 - Fundamentals of Physics with Professor Ramamurti Shankar,
3519 views
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flag Lecture 18 - Simple Harmonic Motion (cont.) and Introduction to Waves
as author at  YALE PHYS 200 - Fundamentals of Physics with Professor Ramamurti Shankar,
3442 views