Vinay Ambegaokar

Goldwin Smith Professor of Physics Emeritus

   
 

va14@cornell.edu

618 Clark Hall
Laboratory of Atomic & Solid Physics
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853-2501
Phone: (607) 255-5168

 

 

 

 


Research Areas
Condensed matter and low temperature physics, going back to the 1963 calculation of the temperature dependence of the Josephson effect, and the 1964 calculation of the effect of strong electron-phonon coupling on the thermal conductivity of superconducting lead. Destruction of superconductivity by disorder in homogeneous films and wires, low temperature conductivity of metallic films, transport of electrons through quantum dots.

Current Research

My general interests are in the area of low temperature and condensed matter physics. Current work focuses on some aspects of disordered metallic conductors, on quantum information and its loss through “decoherence,' and on mathematical ways of describing these phenomena.

I retired in July 2007, and am supervising no more Ph.D. theses.
Retirement Symposium


Out of my other interests:

Landau-Memorial-Talk

Lecture: A Physicist's Reflections, Reminiscences, and Ramblings on the Theme: Memory and Creativity
Reflections, Reminiscences, and Ramblings on the Theme: Memory and Creativity-unedited-typescript (98K .pdf)
Reflections, Reminiscences, and Ramblings on the Theme: Memory and Creativity-article (1.95MB .pdf)
[open in Acrobat Reader, and enlarge to either 50% or 100% for best resolution]

Book: Reasoning About Luck: Probability and Its Uses in Physics
Errata | Selected Letters | Selected_Reviews

Book Review: "True genius: the life and science of John Bardeen, by Hoddeson and Daitch"
from Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 35 (2004) 120-138

Scan of book review (781K.pdf)