Professor Sir Michael Berry
Ph.D.(St.And.), B.Sc.(Exon.), Sc.D.(Dub.), F.R.S.
Current positions
Emeritus Professor of Physics
School of Physics
Contact
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Research interests
Many incompletely understood phenomena lurk in the borderlands between physical theories - between classical and quantum, between rays and waves... These borderlands - the domain of physical asymptotics - are my intellectual habitat, with an emphasis on geometrical aspects of waves (especially phase) and chaos.
A source of delight is uncovering down-to-earth or dramatic and sometimes beautiful examples of abstract mathematical ideas: the arcane in the mundane. Examples are:
- mathematical singularities in rainbows and the patterns on the bottom of swimming-pools;
- a laser pointer shone through irregular bathroom-window glass, illustrating abstract aspects of wave interference;
- optics with transparent overhead-projector plastic sheets, illustrating polarization singularities, matrix degeneracies, and quantum measurement, and Anderson localization;
- a levitating spinning-top, illustrating adiabatic stability and geometric phases;
- twists and turns with a belt, illustrating the behaviour of identical particles in quantum mechanics, responsible for the impenetrability of matter, lasers, superconductivity...
- Oriental magic mirrors, directly displaying the Laplacian.
- Tsunamis, which are caustics in spacetime, and, when focused, spacetime caustics on a cusped caustic
Projects and supervisions
Thesis supervisions
Publications
Recent publications
05/04/2019Emil Wolf and Bristol
Progress in Optics
Minimal model for tidal bore revisited
New Journal of Physics
Semiclassical quantization of truncated potentials
European Journal of Physics
Superoscillations and leaky spectra
Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical
Roadmap on superoscillations
Journal of Optics (United Kingdom)