The Disordered Systems group at King's is at the forefront of research in statistical mechanics of disordered and complex systems.

The research directions of the members of the group cover the field of Disordered Systems understood in the broadest possible sense, as the study of systems of many interacting degrees of freedom, subjected to random interactions, or being immersed in a complex, chaotic or stochastic medium, and their emergent behaviours. The framework of Statistical Mechanics, both Classical and Quantum, including its far-from-equilibrium extensions, is an important unifying background for the group’s activities.

A non-exhaustive list of topics under current or past research includes studies in spin glasses and other glassy systems and associated high-dimensional random landscapes; Extreme Value Statistics for strongly correlated random variables and stochastic processes; Random Matrix Theory and its numerous applications in physics and beyond; various aspects of integrability of many-particle systems and emergent hydrodynamic behaviour, and transport phenomena in extended systems; Anderson and many-body localization, and diffusion and wave scattering in disordered and chaotic media; out-of-equilibrium fluctuations, driven systems, thermalization and pre-thermalization, and nonequilibrium thermodynamics; dynamical aspects of ecosystems, neural networks, and spectral and dynamical properties of large complex networks; interacting deterministic and stochastic systems in the context of ergodic theory; phase separation in heterogeneous mixtures such as the cytoplasm and the plasma membrane; econophysics; active matter and the physics of life, including self-propelled particles, non-reciprocal interactions, branching growth and neuronal avalanches; and fundamental and high-impact interdisciplinary questions at the interfaces between Law, Social Sciences, Data Analytics and Mathematics.

The group runs the MSc Complex Systems Modelling in collaboration with the Financial Mathematics group and the Departments of Informatics and Physics.

PhD Positions

For PhD positions within the Disordered Systems group:

• The group welcomes applications for post-doctoral fellowships from strong candidates, please contact the person with whom you would like to work, and see our current fellowship opportunities and how to apply.
• View additional information about the Disordered Systems group
• Submit an application for Applied Research MPhil/PhD.
• Explore current PhD projects here that applicants can apply to