Dietrich Belitz Professor Emeritus, Condensed Matter Theory Dr. rer. nat., TU Munich, 1982 At Oregon since 1987 Member, Institute for Fundamental Science Member, Materials Science Institute phone: (541) 346-4738 e-mail: dbelitz"at"uoregon.edu

Principal Research Interests

Dietrich Belitz conducts theoretical research at the boundary between statistical mechanics and condensed matter physics. His principal interest has been focussed on quantum many-body problems, including superconductivity and magnetism, on quantum phase transitions, in particular metal-insulator transitions and magnetic transitions, and on transport theory.

Quantum phase transitions take place at zero temperature as some non-thermal control parameter is varied. Prominent examples are the ferromagnetic transition of itinerant electrons at low temperature as a function of pressure, or the metal-insulator transition in doped semiconductors as a function of the dopant concentration. While the concepts developed for thermal phase transitions, such as scaling and universality, and the general apparatus of the renormalization group, still apply, the detailed behavior in the vicinity of quantum phase transitions has proven to be rather complex and hard to understand. Two thrusts of Belitz's research have been work on the Anderson-Mott metal-insulator transition that occurs in disordered systems of interacting electrons, and an investigation of the quantum ferromagnetic transition. Belitz maintains a close collaboration with Ted Kirkpatrick at the University of Maryland's IPST .

List of Publications

• Major Review Articles:
  • Metallic Quantum Ferromagnets (2016, with M. Brando, T.R. Kirkpatrick, and M.F. Grosche)
    
  • How generic scale invariance influences quantum and classical phase transitions (2005, with T.R. Kirkpatrick and T. Vojta)
    
  • The Anderson-Mott Transition (1994, with T.R. Kirkpatrick)
  
  
• Complete list of publications since 1994: arXiv.org

Curriculum Vitae

A reasonably recent version of my CV is here

Teaching

A version of my lecture notes on Mechanics can be found here

Fall 2024: PHYS 610 Mathematical Methods for Scientists
Winter 2025: PHYS 622 Classical Electrodynamics

Postdoctoral Associates:

• Changfeng Chen (1989-1990)
• Ferdinand Evers (1995-1997)
• Thomas Vojta (1995-1997)
• Olaf Bleibaum (2002-2003)
• Jörg Rollbühler (2003-2005)
• Sumanta Tewari (2003-2005)
• Ronojoy Saha (2006-2008)

Graduate Students:

• Thomas P. Devereaux (PhD 1991)
• Shuang Q. Yang (PhD 1994)
• Wansoo Park (PhD 1995)
• Rajesh Narayanan (PhD 1999)
• Sharon Sessions (PhD 2002)
• Qi Li (PhD 2008)
• Yan Sang (PhD 2014)
• Sripoorna Bharadwaj (PhD 2016)
• George DeCoster (PhD 2018)
• James Amarel (PhD 2022)

Other Important Stuff:

DB's Climbing Page