2024-25 Frederick L. Hovde Distinguished Lecturer
Yong Chen
Karl Lark-Horovitz Professor of Physics and Astronomy
Department of Physics and Astronomy
Thursday, November 21, 2024
PHYS 2903:00-3:30 – Reception
3:30-4:30 – Lecture
Bringing atoms together and making quantum matters–a few new tricks learned
Abstract
Feynman famously stated that the most important piece of knowledge that could be passed on to future generations would be “the world is made of atoms”. The capabilities to assemble atoms into diverse materials and molecules underpin much of the technological and societal progresses. This talk will start with a few new “tricks” we learned over the past several years “bringing atoms together” to make novel 2D quantum materials --- ranging from one made of pentagon building blocks once thought impossible to exist, to a “Moire magnet” featuring a new form and “metamaterial” analog of magnetism achieved by stacking and twisting two layered antiferromagnets that modulate the wavefunction overlap between atoms in adjacent layers. Using lasers and other electromagnetic waves to coherently couple different quantum states of atoms and prepare atoms in superposition states, we can perform “quantum control” over the molecular formation (turning on/off certain chemical reactions in a manner analogous to bright/dark fringes in a double-slit interference experiment), and engineer a rich varieties of “synthetic quantum matters” (including some that effectively live in “curved spaces” and possess unprecedented topological properties). The talk will end by discussing the emerging frontier where “atom-like” objects (building blocks of “qubits”) are interfaced with complex quantum materials to create hybrid quantum systems that may enable “quantum sensing” of quantum materials, a new paradigm of measurement that can help unlock the often-elusive “quantum-ness” and application potentials of quantum materials with nontrivial quantum correlations and entanglement.