Thomas Schäfer

Wesley O. Doggett Distinguished Professor
Riddick Hall 400F
Bio
Professor Schaefer received his PhD in 1992 from the University of Regensburg (Germany). From 1992-1998 he held postdoctoral positions at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the National Institute for Nuclear Theory at the University of Washington. From 1998-1999 he was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton before joining the Faculty at Stony Brook as an Assistant Professor in 2000. He was promoted to the rank of associate professor in 2003 and joined the faculty of North Carolina State University the same year. He was promoted to full professor in 2006. From 2000-2004 he was also a fellow at the Riken-BNL research center at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Research Description
Schaefer studies Quantumchromodynamics (QCD) and the behavior of matter under extreme conditions. This includes the behavior of matter at very high temperature (T>1010 Kelvin), which is relevant to the very early Universe and to high energy collisions of Heavy Ions, as well as matter at low temperature but density in excess of 1014 grams/cm3 , which occurs in compact stars. He is known for his study of topological object, instantons, in QCD, his work on color superconductivity in quark matter, and his work on effective theories of dense matter.
Publications
Honors and Awards
- Schaefer received a Fedor Lynen Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 1992, an Outstanding Junior Investigator Award from the Department of Energy in 2002, and was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2006. He serves as an Associate Editor of Physical Review Letters.
Selected Publications
Diffusive dynamics of critical fluctuations near the QCD critical point
M. Nahrgang, M. Bluhm, T. Schaefer, S. A. Bass
Phys.Rev. D, 99 (11), (2019), 116015
Critical Points at Infinity, Non-Gaussian Saddles, and Bions
A. Behtash, G. V. Dunne, T. Schaefer, T. Sulejmanpasic , M. Ünsal
JHEP, 1806 (068 ), (2018)
Determination of the density and temperature dependence of the shear viscosity of a unitary Fermi gas based on hydrodynamic flow
M. Bluhm, J. Hou, T. Schäfer
Phys.Rev.Lett., 119, (2017), 065302
Chiral lagrangian from duality and monopole operators in compactified QCD
A. Cherman, T. Schäfer, M. Ünsal
Phys. Rev. Lett., 117, (2016), 081601
Generalized theory of diffusion based on kinetic theory
T. Schäfer
Phys. Rev. A, 94, (2016), 043644
Complexified path integrals, exact saddles and supersymmetry
A. Behtash, G. V. Dunne, T. Schäfer, T. Sulejmanpasic, M. Ünsal
Phys. Rev. Lett., 116, (2016), 011601
Hidden topological angles and Lefschetz thimbles
A. Behtash, T. Sulejmanpasic, T. Schäfer, M. Ünsal
Phys. Rev. Lett., 115, (2015), 041601
Fluid Dynamics and Viscosity in Strongly Correlated Fluids
T. Schäfer
Ann. Rev. Nucl. Part. Sci., 64, (2014), pp. 125-148
Universal mechanism of (semi-classical) deconfinement and theta-dependence for all simple groups
E. Poppitz, T. Schäfer, M. Ünsal
JHEP issue, 3, (2013), article 87
Quasiclassical molecular dynamics for the dilute Fermi gas at unitarity
K. Dusling and T. Schäfer
Phys. Rev. A, 86, (2012), 063634
Correlated Quantum Fluids: Ultracold Quantum Gases, Quantum Chromodynamic Plasmas, and Holographic Duality
A. Adams, L. D. Carr, T. Schäfer, P. Steinberg and J. E. Thomas
New J. Phys., 14, (2012), 115009
Continuity, Deconfinement, and (Super) Yang-Mills Theory
E. Poppitz, T. Schäfer and M. Unsal
JHEP, 1210, (2012), 115
Shear viscosity and damping of collective modes in a two-dimensional Fermi gas
T. Schäfer
Phys. Rev. A, 85, (2012), 033623
Bulk viscosity, particle spectra and ?ow in heavy-ion collisions
K. Dusling and T. Schäfer
Phys. Rev. C, 85, (2012), 044909
Conformal symmetry and non-relativistic second order fluid dynamics
J. Chao and T. Schäfer
Annals Phys., 327, (2012), 1852
Elliptic flow of the dilute Fermi gas: From kinetics to hydrodynamics
K. Dusling and T. Schäfer
Phys. Rev. A, 84, (2011), 013622
Viscosity spectral functions of the dilute Fermi gas in kinetic theory
J. Chao, M. Braby and T. Schäfer
New J. Phys., 13, (2011), 035014