Magnus Borgh

Biography

Magnus Borgh joined UEA as a Research Fellow in Physics in 2016. He obtained his doctorate from Lund University, Sweden. He was subsequently awarded the Swedish Research Council Postdoctoral Stipend for postdoctoral research at DAMTP, University of Cambridge, followed by a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship and an EPSRC Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Southampton. Dr Borgh's research interests focus on ultra-cold atomic systems, in particular Bose-Einstein condensates. These represent a state of matter where all atoms occupy the same quantum-mechanical state. Bose-Einstein condensates have several interesting properties, including superfluidity and associated phenomena such as the appearance of quantised vortices and other so-called topological defects. One particular interest for Dr Borgh's research is the study of topological defects — e.g., vortices and monopoles — in Bose-Einstein condensates where the atoms have non-zero quantum-mechanical spin, giving rise to a particularly righ phenomenology. In these systems, the mathematical description of the defects is analogous to phenomena appearing in theories of the very early universe, opening up the possibilities of using the experimentally very accessible Bose-Einstein condensates as "quantum emulators" of objects and phenomena that may otherwise be difficult to study. Dr Borgh is also interested in Bose-Einstein condensates of exciton-polaritons in semiconductor microcavities. These are "quasiparticles" that can be described as "half matter-half light". Quasiparticle condensates are especially interesting because they are inherently non-equilibrium systems, giving rise to phenomena that arise from the dynamics of laser-pumping and decay of the particles in the condensate.

Research Interest

Physics