Carlo Vanoni

Department: Physics
Faculty Adviser: Paul J. Steinhardt and Salvatore Torquato
Year of Study:
Undergraduate School: Milan University
Undergraduate Major: Physics

Personal Bio

I'm a postdoc research associate working at the Department of Physics (although my main office is at Frick). I did my undergraduate in Milan and got my PhD in Statistical Physics in Trieste, at the International School for Advanced Studies (known as SISSA).
As an undergraduate, I did some research for my Bachelor's and Master's theses, working respectively on combinatorial optimization and statistical systems that break ergodicity.
During my PhD, I mainly worked on quantum dynamics and localization phenomena induced by disorder, combining theoretical methods (like renormalization group) and numerical techniques (mainly exact diagonalization).
I'm very curious about weird physical phenomena that go against common sense, and I've learned that there are no uninteresting topics.
I love Princeton; it's a unique environment for scientific and personal growth, with leading experts in all the fields condensed in the same place.

Fun Fact

I'm Italian, so I love to go back home (and come on, it's Italy, also Americans love it!)

Research Pitch

I have just started my postdoc, and I am learning new things about the topic I will be working on for the next two years (or maybe more). It's called hyperuniformity, and it's a property of systems that are disordered, but still have some long-range structure that makes them not totally random. There is a way of quantifying the amount of randomness, and depending on this property, the physical system has different behaviors, in many case completely not expected.
My goal is that of finding a general theory to describe this systems, and to relate such properties to standard critical properties (like in phase transitions). The cool thing is that hyperuniform system emerge in a mindblowing large variety of system, making very desirable to have a deeper undestanding of this phenomenon.

Upcoming Programs That I Am Attending:

Plans for Summer 2025

Not available to participate in Summer ReMatch+ program.