Andrew Lucas

Department of Physics

University of Colorado Boulder

I am an assistant professor of physics at the University of Colorado Boulder. My group's work spans multiple disciplines of theoretical and mathematical physics, including condensed matter, hydrodynamics, statistical physics, high energy physics, atomic physics and quantum information.

Hydrodynamics can be unstable in many-body systems due to microscopic thermal noise. We predicted and numerically observed the breakdown of hydrodynamics in kinematically constrained fluids, which will occur below four spatial dimensions; the two different scaling exponents depicted correspond to fluids with or without the most strongly relevant perturbation turned on.

The Lucas theory group in October 2022. From left to right: Koushik, Xiaoyang, Jinkang, Chao, Jack, Henry, Marvin, Andrew H, Andrew O, Aaron, me (Andrew L), Yifan, Isabella, Oliver

Recent News

09/23: With PhD student Chao and alumnus Chi-Fang (Anthony) Chen, we have published a comprehensive review article on Lieb-Robinson and locality bounds on quantum information dynamics.

07/23: I am awarded $1.2M from DOE's Quantum Testbed Pathfinder for quantum computing research, as part of a collaboration with University of Maryland!

04/23: Koushik successfully defends his PhD, and Henry successfully defends his honors thesis. Congrats!

06/22:   Jinkang's paper on novel dynamical universality classes in fracton fluids has been published in Nature Physics!

06/22:   Caleb gets his PhD from Stanford; congrats!

12/21:   I won an NSF CAREER grant to study new universality classes of (fracton) hydrodynamics!

12/21:   I won the 2022 George E. Valley Jr. Prize from the American Physical Society, awarded to a promising early career physicist.

For news from over 2 years ago, click here.