Transport, Entanglement and Topology in Correlated Many-Particle Systems

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NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARYThis award supports integrated research, education and outreach activities in theoretical condensed matter physics. The PI will investigate unusual and subtle ways in which electrons in materials and atoms trapped by laser light can organize themselves into unconventional states of matter or phases using fundamental physical concepts from quantum mechanics and mathematical concepts from the field of topology. The discovery and understanding of new electronic states of matter contribute to the base of knowledge that enables the understanding of how to manipulation quantum mechanical states to achieve high performance information processing and new electronic device technologies.The PI will develop theoretical models that capture the essential physical principles and advance understanding of the properties unconventional phases of electrons, such as those that appear when electrons are trapped at the interface between semiconductors and exposed to a high magnetic field perpendicular to the interface. The PI will also investigate transformations among unconventional phases. The emphasis of the research is on calculating physical quantities that can be measured experimentally, and finding experimental methods that can reveal the exotic properties of such unconventional orderings most directly.This project contributes to educating graduate students in physics and a postdoctoral fellow in theoretical techniques, associated properties of materials, and in the use of computational modeling to connect theory to the prediction of materials properties. The PI will also be heavily involved in community service, including organizing national and international professional conferences. In addition the PI has been working to complete a new graduate textbook on Modern Condensed Matter Physics.TECHNICAL SUMMARYThis award supports integrated research, education and outreach activities in theoretical condensed matter physics. The PI will investigate unconventional phases and phase transitions among them in strongly correlated electronic systems. The research is motivated by the realization that strong interactions among electrons can drive electronic systems into unconventional phases, which cannot be described by standard paradigms like the Fermi liquid theory. Emphasis will be on proposing ways to probe unconventional phases experimentally using transport and related methods, and on characterizing them theoretically using entanglement and topological quantum numbers.Specific areas of investigation include: Unusual edge properties of fractional quantum Hall phases that support quasiparticles with fractional charge and statistics; cold atom systems that support fractional quantum Hall phases, and undergo quantum phase transitions among them; exotic phases formed by mixtures of bosonic and fermionic atoms or molecules that exhibit supersymmetry; and entanglement properties of interacting systems. The research is focused on phases and phase transitions that are currently under active study by experimentalists and theorists. Theoretical methods that will be used in carrying out the research include: bosonization, renormalization group, and particle-vortex duality transformation methods. The emphasis is to calculate physical quantities that can be measured experimentally, and to propose experimental methods that can directly probe the exotic properties of proposed unconventional phases.This project contributes to educating graduate students in physics and a postdoctoral fellow in theoretical techniques, associated properties of materials, and in the use of computational modeling to connect theory to the prediction of materials properties. The PI will also be heavily involved in community service, including organizing national and international professional conferences. In addition the PI has been working to complete a new graduate textbook on Modern Condensed Matter Physics.