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

Imperial College London Imperial College London, also known as Imperial, is a Public university, public research university in London, England. Its history began with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, who envisioned a Al ...

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 In condensed matter physics, an ultracold atom is an atom with a temperature near absolute zero. At such temperatures, an atom's quantum-mechanical properties become important, especially through what's known as a "superfluid", such as Superfl ...

s and

non-Hermitian quantum mechanics In physics, non-Hermitian quantum mechanics describes quantum mechanical systems where Hamiltonians are not Hermitian. History The first paper that has "non-Hermitian quantum mechanics" in the title was published in 1996 by Naomichi Hatano an ...

, 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 The University of Kaiserslautern-Landau (German: ''Rheinland-Pfälzische Technische Universität Kaiserslautern-Landau'', also known as RPTU) is a public research university in Kaiserslautern and Landau in der Pfalz, Germany. The university wa ...

, 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 focused on how 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 between quantum mechanics ...

at the

University of Bristol The University of Bristol is a public university, public research university in Bristol, England. It received its royal charter in 1909, although it can trace its roots to a Merchant Venturers' school founded in 1595 and University College, Br ...

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 society, learned societies for mathematics (the others being the Royal Statistical Society (RSS), the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA), the Edinburgh ...

, "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 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 Density, densities is cooled to temperatures very close to absolute zero#Relation with Bose–Einste ...

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 women mathematicians 21st-century German physicists 21st-century German women scientists German mathematical physicists Technical University of Kaiserslautern alumni Academics of Imperial College London