Eva-Maria Graefe is a German mathematical physicist who works as a reader in mathematical physics at

Imperial College London Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...

and as a University Research Fellow of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

. Her research involves

ultracold atom Ultracold atoms are atoms that are maintained at temperatures close to 0 kelvin (absolute zero), typically below several tens of microkelvin (µK). At these temperatures the atom's quantum-mechanical properties become important. To reach such low ...

s 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'' ...

, an area she describes informally as the study of "holes in quantum systems" by which dissipation degrades their quantum behavior.

Education and career

Graefe studied physics at the

University of Kaiserslautern Technical University of Kaiserslautern (German: ''Technische Universität Kaiserslautern'', also known as TU Kaiserslautern or TUK) is a public university, public research university in Kaiserslautern, Germany. There are numerous institutes arou ...

, completing her doctorate there in 2009. Her dissertation, ''Quantum-classical correspondence for a Bose-Hubbard dimer and its non-Hermitian generalisation'', was supervised by Hans-Jürgen Korsch. She did postdoctoral research in

quantum chaos Quantum chaos is a branch of physics which studies how chaos theory, chaotic classical dynamical systems can be described in terms of quantum theory. The primary question that quantum chaos seeks to answer is: "What is the relationship betwee ...

at the

University of Bristol , mottoeng = earningpromotes one's innate power (from Horace, ''Ode 4.4'') , established = 1595 – Merchant Venturers School1876 – University College, Bristol1909 – received royal charter , type ...

before joining Imperial College. There, she was supported as a L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Fellow prior to her position as a Royal Society University Research Fellow.

Recognition

Graefe is the 2019 winner of the

Anne Bennett Prize The Anne Bennett Prize and Senior Anne Bennett Prize are awards given by the London Mathematical Society. In every third year, the society offers the Senior Anne Bennett prize to a mathematician normally based in the United Kingdom for work in, in ...

of the

London Mathematical Society The London Mathematical Society (LMS) is one of the United Kingdom's learned societies for mathematics (the others being the Royal Statistical Society (RSS), the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA), the Edinburgh Mathematical S ...

, "in recognition of her outstanding research in quantum theory and the inspirational role she has played among female students and early career researchers in mathematics and physics". The award cited her work with Hans-Jürgen Korsch on

mean-field approximation In physics and probability theory, Mean-field theory (MFT) or Self-consistent field theory studies the behavior of high-dimensional random ( stochastic) models by studying a simpler model that approximates the original by averaging over degrees o ...

of parity-time symmetric

Bose–Einstein condensate In condensed matter physics, a Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) is a state of matter that is typically formed when a gas of bosons at very low densities is cooled to temperatures very close to absolute zero (−273.15 °C or −459.67&n ...

s, her work with G. Demange on the exceptional points of non-Hermitian operators, and her work with R. Schubert on semiclassical limits of non-Hermitian quantum mechanics.

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Graefe, Eva-Maria Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 21st-century British mathematicians 21st-century British physicists 21st-century German mathematicians 21st-century German physicists Women mathematicians 21st-century German women scientists Mathematical physicists Technical University of Kaiserslautern alumni Academics of Imperial College London