Dr Ashton Bradley

Biography

I obtained my undergraduate degree and MSc in Physics from the University of Auckland. I then gained my PhD at Victoria Univesity of Welllington, advised by Crispin Gardiner on the stochastic Gross-Piteavskii theory of atomic superfluids (2006). I spent several years at the University of Queensland in the Center of Excellence for Quantum-Atom Optics, working with Matthew Davis, Murray Olsen and Margaret Reid on the theory of finite temperature superfluids and quantum entanglement. In 2008 I moved to the University of Otago to take up a FRST Research Fellowship to work on quantum vortices and stochastic superfluids. In 2011 I was awarded an inaugural Rutherford Disovery Fellowship to study superfluid turbulence in two dimensional Bose-Einstein condensates

Research Interest

I am primarily interested in ultra-cold matter waves. Since the discovery of dilute gas Bose-Einstein condensation in 1995, the physics of nano-Kelvin matter waves has been a fascinating field of scientific exploration. The field is characterized by mesoscopic quantum systems with an unrivaled level of characterization and control, thus enabling rigorous tests of theoretical concepts and clean analog realizations of phenomena that are difficult to study in other settings. Fundamental advances have been achieved in many areas, from analog models of relativistic phenomena such as the Hawking Effect, to our basic understanding of superfluidity and tests of the Kibble-Zurek theory of symmetry breaking in dynamical phase transitions.