Avadh B. Saxena is an American physicist and currently the Group Leader of Physics of Condensed Matter and Complex Systems Group (T-4) at

Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, ...

, New Mexico, United States. His contributions cover a range of topics including

phase transitions In chemistry, thermodynamics, and other related fields, a phase transition (or phase change) is the physical process of transition between one state of a medium and another. Commonly the term is used to refer to changes among the basic states of ...

, functional materials, topological defects such as

solitons In mathematics and physics, a soliton or solitary wave is a self-reinforcing wave packet that maintains its shape while it propagates at a constant velocity. Solitons are caused by a cancellation of nonlinear and dispersive effects in the mediu ...

and skyrmions, and

Non-Hermitian quantum mechanics PT symmetry was initially studied as a specific system in non-Hermitian quantum mechanics, where Hamiltonians are not Hermitian. In 1998, physicist Carl Bender and former graduate student Stefan Boettcher published in ''Physical Review Letters'' ...

. Saxena completed his PhD at the

Temple University Temple University (Temple or TU) is a public state-related research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1884 by the Baptist minister Russell Conwell and his congregation Grace Baptist Church of Philadelphia then calle ...

in 1986 (advisor: James D. Gunton). Subsequently, he held a joint postdoc position at the Materials Research Lab at Penn State (with Gerhard R. Barsch) and Cornell University (with James A. Krumhansl). In 1990 he came to

as a visiting scientist/consultant to the Theoretical Division (with Alan R. Bishop), and in 1993 became a Technical Staff Member. In January 2006 he assumed the Deputy Group Leader position of the Condensed Matter and Statistical Physics Group (formerly T-11) and since January 2009 he is the Group Leader of T-4. He is currently also an affiliate professor at the

KTH Royal Institute of Technology The KTH Royal Institute of Technology ( sv, Kungliga Tekniska högskolan, lit=Royal Institute of Technology), abbreviated KTH, is a public research university in Stockholm, Sweden. KTH conducts research and education in engineering and technolog ...

, and adjunct professor at the

University of Barcelona The University of Barcelona ( ca, Universitat de Barcelona, UB; ; es, link=no, Universidad de Barcelona) is a public university located in the city of Barcelona, Catalonia, in Spain. With 63,000 students, it is one of the biggest universities i ...

University of Crete The University of Crete (UoC; Greek: Πανεπιστήμιο Κρήτης) is a multi-disciplinary, research-oriented institution in Crete, Greece, located in the cities of Rethymno (official seat) and Heraklion, and one of the country's most aca ...

, Greece,

Virginia Tech Virginia Tech (formally the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and informally VT, or VPI) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. It also has educational facilities in six re ...

, and

University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university in the Arizona Territory. T ...

, and scientific advisor at the

National Institute for Materials Science is an Independent Administrative Institution and one of the largest scientific research centers in Japan. History The growth and development of today's scientific research center has passed through several phases in a number of locations: In ...

Tsukuba is a city located in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 244,528 in 108,669 households and a population density of 862 persons per km². The percentage of the population aged over 65 was 20.3%. The total ar ...

, Japan. He is a Fellow of

, a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), and a member of the

Sigma Xi Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society () is a highly prestigious, non-profit honor society for scientists and engineers. Sigma Xi was founded at Cornell University by a junior faculty member and a small group of graduate students in 1886 ...

Scientific Research Society and APS.

Academic career

Avadh has more than 475 publications with over 12,000 citations and an h-index of 54 (Google Scholar). He has also co-edited 6 Springer books in addition to several special journal issues. He is also slated to write a book on the topic of phase transitions in materials (Cambridge University Press). In addition, he has co-organized over 50 international conferences on various research topics. His main research interests include

optical Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultravio ...

electronic Electronic may refer to: *Electronics, the science of how to control electric energy in semiconductor * ''Electronics'' (magazine), a defunct American trade journal *Electronic storage, the storage of data using an electronic device *Electronic co ...

vibration Vibration is a mechanical phenomenon whereby oscillations occur about an equilibrium point. The word comes from Latin ''vibrationem'' ("shaking, brandishing"). The oscillations may be periodic, such as the motion of a pendulum—or random, su ...

al,

transport Transport (in British English), or transportation (in American English), is the intentional movement of humans, animals, and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, land ( rail and road), water, cable, pipelin ...

and magnetic properties of functional materials, device physics, soft condensed matter,

geometry Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is ...

topology In mathematics, topology (from the Greek words , and ) is concerned with the properties of a geometric object that are preserved under continuous deformations, such as stretching, twisting, crumpling, and bending; that is, without closing ...

and

nonlinear In mathematics and science, a nonlinear system is a system in which the change of the output is not proportional to the change of the input. Nonlinear problems are of interest to engineers, biologists, physicists, mathematicians, and many othe ...

phenomena. Recently he has been coordinating theoretical efforts at LANL in the context of Beyond Moore's Law quantum computing. Saxena completed his PhD at the

in 1986 under the supervision of James D. Gunton. In 1990 he was a visiting scientists at

, becoming a Technical Staff Member in 1993. He is an affiliate professor at the

, and adjunct professor at the

, Greece,

, and

. Avadh serves on many international advisory committees/boards, e.g., ICOMAT, CIMTEC, Deployable Quantum Computing, etc.

Most cited publications

#Conformational dynamics of photoexcited conjugated molecules
By: Tretiak, S; Saxena, A; Martin, RL; et al. Physical Review Letters Volume: 89 Issue: 9 Article Number: 097402 Published: AUG 26 2002 #2-Band Model for Halogen-Bridged Mixed-Valence Transition-Metal Complexes. 1. Ground-state and Excitation Spectrum
By: Gammel, JT; Saxenx, A; Batistic, I; et al. Physical Review B Volume: 45 Issue: 12 Pages: 6408-6434 Published: MAR 15 1992 #Efficient computation of the structural phase behavior of block copolymers
By: Tzeremes, G; Rasmussen, KO; Lookman, T; et al. Physical Review E Volume: 65 Issue: 4 Article Number: 041806 Part: 1 Published: APR 2002 #Real-time observation of nonlinear coherent phonon dynamics in single-walled carbon nanotubes
By: Gambetta, A.; Manzoni, C.; Menna, E.; et al. NATURE PHYSICS Volume: 2 Issue: 8 Pages: 515-520 Published: AUG 2006 #Molecular geometry fluctuation model for the mobility of conjugated polymers
By: Yu, ZG; Smith, DL; Saxena, A; et al. Physical Review Letters Volume: 84 Issue: 4 Pages: 721-724 Published: JAN 24 2000 #Ferroelastic dynamics and strain compatibility
By: Lookman, T; Shenoy, SR; Rasmussen, KO; et al. Physical Review B Volume: 67 Issue: 2 Article Number: 024114 Published: JAN 1 2003 #Particle model for skyrmions in metallic chiral magnets: Dynamics, pinning, and creep
By: Lin, Shi-Zeng; Reichhardt, Charles; Batista, Cristian D.; et al. Physical Review B Volume: 87 Issue: 21 Article Number: 214419 Published: JUN 17 2013 #Martensitic textures: Multiscale consequences of elastic compatibility
By: Shenoy, SR; Lookman, T; Saxena, A; et al. Physical Review B Volume: 60 Issue: 18 Pages: 12537-12541 Published: NOV 1 1999 #Molecular geometry fluctuations and field-dependent mobility in conjugated polymers
By: Yu, ZG; Smith, DL; Saxena, A; et al. Physical Review B Volume: 63 Issue: 8 Article Number: 085202 Published: FEB 15 2001 #Thermally activated avalanches: Jamming and the progression of needle domains
By: Salje, E. K. H.; Ding, X.; Zhao, Z.; et al. Physical Review B Volume: 83 Issue: 10 Article Number: 104109 Published: MAR 25 2011

References

External links

Official home page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Saxena, Avadh Living people Quantum physicists Theoretical physicists Los Alamos National Laboratory personnel Indian physicists Temple University alumni Year of birth missing (living people)