Quantum Impurities in Interacting Environments

Quantum impurities were traditionally studied in metal which are typically modeled as Fermi Liquids in 3-d. A canonical example is the Kondo problem. Recently, however, new devices probe impurities in such interactingenvironments as carbon nanotubes, edges of QHE samples or of 2-d topological insulator. Now theoretical modeling and study of such systems reveals rich physics. This talk will present new exact results on the thermodynamic properties of several of these systems, study their critical properties and relate them to experimental data.