Physical Society Colloquium

From String Theory to Quantum Dot Experiments

Ian Affleck

Department of Physical & Astronomy
University of British Columbia

Part of the string theory revolution of the 1980’s was the development of conformal field theory. While its applicability as a theory of everything is still unclear, it led to solutions of models of conduction electrons interacting with magnetic impurities that predict remarkable behavior. A gated semi-conductor device was tailored to finally provide an indisputable experimental realization of this theory. I will give a non-technical review of both theory and experiments.