Quantum transport, spintronics, and strongly correlated states in Dirac materials

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Finding new materials and understanding their electronic and transport properties, which determine their potential for applications, is one of the central tasks of modern science and technology. One of the most influential breakthroughs in physics and material science in the past decade has been the discovery of graphene, a monolayer of carbon. The lattice structure of graphene is such that the electrons in this material effectively behave as massless Dirac-like particles, which leads to qualitatively new quantum effects, including quantum transport regimes and magneto-transport phenomena. It was quickly realized that the unusual electronic properties of graphene, its mechanical robustness and two-dimensional nature, make it an attractive material for certain applications. The discovery of graphene triggered an intense interest in two- and three-dimensional materials with Dirac-like dispersion, which led to the emergence of a whole class of novel materials - Dirac materials. This class includes bilayer and multi-layer graphene, three-dimensional topological insulators, and more recently, Weyl semimetals, which can be viewed as 3D generalization of graphene, and others. The main goal of my research program is to develop a theoretical understanding of fundamental quantum effects, transport properties, and collective many-body phenomena arising in various Dirac materials. I will pursue three broad directions: 1) Quantum transport of charge and spin in graphene and its bilayer, topological insulators, and Weyl semimetals. Identifying new spin transport regimes suitable for generating and measuring spin currents. 2) Manipulating electronic and transport properties via adatom deposition and strains. Functionalizing Dirac materials to tailor them for nano-electronics, spintronics, and magnetic device applications. 3) Many-particle quantum systems often form collective states with qualitatively new emergent properties, such as superconductivity. I will find a variety of novel collective states in Dirac materials, including unconventional superconducting states, and non-abelian quantum Hall states.