Head of the Department of theoretical physics - Anatoly Konstantinovich Arzhnikov, PhD.

At present laboratory's staff contains 16 persons including 4 doctors and 9 candidates of sciences. Since 1989 the Head of the laboratory has been Anatoly Arzhnikov, doctor of sciences.

The principal lines of investigations are:

• The effect of disorder on the kinetic and magnetic properties, the spectra of electron and lattice quasiparticle excitations in alloys with chemical and topological disorder.
• Development of methods of "first-principles" calculations of spectral, electronic and phonon properties of low-dimensional (two-dimensional and semi-bounded) and partially disordered systems.
• Development of the method of molecular dynamics.

The theoretical department was created in 1976 simultaneously with the organization of a branch of the Institute of Metal Physics of the Ural Center of Russian Academy of Sciences in Izhevsk. By 1985 the theoretical laboratory had become a full-blooded research staff with more than 10 members, half of which were candidates of sciences. The head and scientific supervisor of the laboratory was its creator, doctor of sciences, Professor Vadim Shirokovskii . Originally, the laboratory was named "Laboratory of kinetic phenomena", which reflected the main line of investigations: calculations of kinetic coefficients on the base of "first-principles" microscopic calculations of electron states.

These studies along with the need for theoretical support of the experiments conducted at the Institute resulted in extension of the research field which now includes the study of the lattice and magnetic properties and the effect on them of atomic disorder. In 1997, considering the wide range of studies performed, the laboratory was renamed as "Laboratory of condensed matter theory".

They worked in our laboratory: