Rate My Professor Philip Brydon

Dr. Philip Brydon serves as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Physics within the Sciences Division at the University of Otago. He began his studies at the Australian National University in 1999, earning his PhD there in 2006. After graduation, he held a postdoctoral position at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart, Germany (2006–2008), followed by an appointment at the Technical University of Dresden, Germany (2008–2013). In 2013, he joined the University of Maryland in the USA for a third postdoctoral role until 2015. In September 2015, Brydon started as a Lecturer at the University of Otago, later advancing to Senior Lecturer.

Brydon's research focuses on the physics of unconventional superconductors, whose properties cannot be explained by the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer theory. He studies the interplay between superconductivity and spin-orbit coupling, particularly in systems where strong spin-orbit coupling causes electrons to behave as spin-3/2 particles, resulting in unusual superconducting states. As an Associate Investigator at the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, he contributes to microscopic descriptions of these technologically important materials. Brydon teaches and coordinates courses including PHSI 222 Electromagnetism, PHSI 341 Thermal and Condensed Matter Physics, and PHSI 421 Advanced Statistical Mechanics. He has supervised postgraduate theses such as "Unconventional superconductivity in locally noncentrosymmetric superconductors" (PhD, 2024), "A theoretical study of spin-orbit coupled superconductors" (PhD, 2024), "Intrinsic contributions to the anomalous Hall conductivity" (MSc, year not specified), and "Search for the Sarma state in 2-band superconductors" (MSc, 2024).

Selected key publications include "Incommensuration in odd-parity magnets" (Physical Review B, 2026), "Inversion-asymmetric itinerant antiferromagnets by the space group symmetry" (Physical Review Letters, 2025), "Unified picture of superconductivity and magnetism in CeRh₂As₂" (Physical Review Letters, 2025), "Probing p-wave superconductivity in UTe₂ via point-contact junctions" (npj Quantum Materials, 2024), "Collective modes in an unconventional superconductor with j = 3/2 fermions" (Physical Review B, 2024), and "Beyond triplet: Unconventional superconductivity in a spin-3/2 topological semimetal" (Science Advances, 2018). His publications appear in leading journals, reflecting his impact in condensed matter physics.