Christopher Lee Baldwin

Our research focuses on the theory of non-equilibrium systems, particularly to understand how quenched disorder and other sources of randomness/imperfections (think stray fields or defects in a crystal lattice) impede the system’s “natural” dynamics. The classic example is glass — people often describe glass as technically a liquid, but one which is so viscous that it cannot flow and behaves more like a solid instead. On an abstract level, the same physics arises in a variety of other contexts, ranging from magnetic alloys to optimization problems in computer science. In this latter case, the “natural” dynamics is for an algorithm to approach the global optimum (say by steepest descent), but frustration and disorder trap it — the algorithm becomes stuck in a local but not global optimum.

Given this connection, much of the current research in our group concerns quantum computing — we investigate whether and how quantum fluctuations might help algorithms get unstuck and continue towards the global optimum. Rather than developing bespoke algorithms for specific optimization problems, we focus on understanding the physical mechanisms that are responsible for quantum algorithms succeeding or failing in general. Thus our work draws heavily on the theory of spin glasses and quantum many-body dynamics, which lets us branch out from time to time into related areas such as quantum chaos, localization, and driven-dissipative systems.

Another line of research centers on Lieb-Robinson bounds, which are rigorous “speed limits” on the spreading of information (quantum or otherwise) across an interacting many-body system. We develop techniques for incorporating disorder and related effects into the bounds, which gives us a mathematically precise way to quantify (or at least bound) their influence on the system dynamics.

In terms of education, I received my Ph.D in 2018 from the University of Washington, as a student of Chris Laumann (now at Boston University — I spent half of my Ph.D. there as well). I was then a postdoc in the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) at the University of Maryland, primarily advised by Alexey Gorshkov and Mohammad Hafezi while also working closely with Brian Swingle (now at Brandeis University) and Victor Galitski. I joined Michigan State University as part of the Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics group in the fall of 2023.