Fefferman Lab

Research focus

ERC Starting Grant · 2016

The Enigmatic Universality of Glass

The explanation for the distinct low temperature behavior of amorphous solids (glasses) is a long-standing open question. Specific puzzles include the nature of the low energy excitations (LEEs) that are responsible for their low temperature thermal and mechanical behavior and the origin of the remarkable universality of their low temperature mechanical dissipation. The phenomenological tunneling model proposes that the LEEs are atomic-scale tunneling two level systems (TLSs) and successfully explains much of the low temperature behavior of glass, but not the universality. Recently, individual TLSs were probed in the amorphous tunnel junction of superconducting qubits, but such dielectric…

From the public funding record at EU CORDIS. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.