A beautiful aspect of condensed matter physics is how fundamental ideas in theoretical physics emerge from studying phenomena in seemingly complex materials In the first half of this colloquium, I will present a “broad interest” introduction of how this happened historically in the Ising model a century ago and an overview of some wonderful abstract theoretical ideas that have emerged from the Ising model in these 100 years (explained in a non technical manner) In the second half, I will show how some of these abstract ideas were useful in my own study of a THz optics experiment on a particular material, CoNb 2 O 6 and how our study fits into some of the bigger goals of my field. 

Ribhu Kaul is a professor of physics at Pennsylvania State University, who has broad interests in condensed matter theory ranging from the details of material science to the emergence of quantum field theory in these systems.