Research - Durham University

Latest research news
- Parents should be allowed to make informed choices over infant bed-sharing, says child sleep expert
  
  Parents should be given more information and be encouraged to make informed choices to minimise the risks of infant bed-sharing, a child sleep expert has said.
- Brain frontal lobes not sole centre of human intelligence
  
  Human intelligence cannot be explained by the size of the brain’s frontal lobes, say researchers.
- Museum find proves exotic ‘big cat’ prowled British countryside a century ago
  
  The rediscovery of a mystery animal in a museum’s underground storeroom proves that a non-native ‘big cat’ prowled the British countryside at the turn of the last century.
- New fracking research led by Durham University finds it is “not significant” in causing earthquakes
  
  A new study of hundreds of thousands of hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”) operations has found that the process has only caused earth tremors that could be felt on the surface in three cases.

Research is at the core of Durham University. It shapes and inspires the disciplinary structure of our departments, several of which lead the UK - and even the world - in their fields. Research leads the content and development of our teaching at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and creates new cross-disciplinary programmes through our centres and institutes. In partnership with policy-makers, industry, healthcare and education, Durham's cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural research shapes local, national and international agendas.

Links to recent research highlights and to the Research Office and other units and schemes that support our research can be found on this page.

Forthcoming research seminars

Maths HEP Lunchtime Seminars: Spatially modulated phases in AdS/CFT

Presented by Aristomenis Donos, Imperial

5 October 2012 13:00 in CM101

The AdS/CFT correspondence is a powerful tool to analyse strongly coupled quantum field theories. Over the past few years there has been a surge of activity aimed at finding possible applications to condensed matter systems. One focus has been to holographically realise various kinds of phases via the construction of fascinating new classes of black hole solutions. In this framework, I will discuss the possibility of describing finite temperature phase transitions leading to spontaneous breaking of translational invariance of the dual field theory at strong coupling and finite chemical potential. For the marginally stable case, I will also describe a mechanism which leads to a strong effect in the low frequency optical conductivity, similar to what happens in strange metals.

Contact tomas.andrade@durham.ac.uk or jonathan.pearson@durham.ac.uk or mukund.rangamani@durham.ac.uk or b.s.withers@durham.ac.uk for more information

Find out about research in our colleges