The profile area "Space, Time & Matter" explores the physical and mathematical foundations of the natural sciences: from the elementary building blocks of matter, to the interaction of the building blocks in solids, artificially producible quantum materials, the atmosphere and Earth's interior, planets and neutron stars. This requires mathematically precise models and efficient algorithms for the numerical exploration.
Björn Winkler · Maria Roser Valenti
|Spokesperson
“Space, time, and matter are the basic building blocks of any scientific theory and are explored in their most fascinating manifestations in this Profile Area.”
Key Research Areas
Overview of Key Research Areas:
Matter under extreme conditions
investigates the extreme temperature, density, and gravity present in the early universe and in the interior of compact stars. It does so by using the collisions of heavy ions at CERN-LHC and GSI-FAIR, or of neutron stars.
Structure, properties and processes in the deep earth
investigates the properties of matter on earth at extreme temperatures and pressures, deriving a quantitative understanding of large-scale processes, such as magmatism and tectonics.
Condensed matter and quantum materials
investigates novel phenomena resulting from a coupling between elastic properties of quantum materials and their electronic quantum phases, as well as many-body phenomena in quantum matter and synthetic quantum matter.
Light-driven processes in atoms, molecules and organisms
investigates light-matter interaction in atoms, molecules, solids, and biological systems. Using light, it develops methods to control processes in complex systems.
Multi-scale dynamics of the atmosphere
investigates challenging issues in atmospheric physics, from molecular-scale condensation nuclei, clouds, turbulence, atmospheric waves and weather, over to planetary-scale patterns of climate variability.
Algorithms and complexity
develops new, mathematically rigorous techniques for the design and analysis of algorithms needed for simulation, reconstruction, controlling, and optimizing the dynamics in networks.