UNC Physics Colloquium

Na-Hyun Jo, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

“For the new material’s era beyond Silicon age: discovering, understanding, and manipulating quantum materials.”

Abstract
We are currently living on the edge of the silicon age, characterized by the rapid growth of the semiconductor industry. Yet, a new class of materials destined to become as familiar as silicon is underway. These materials are so-called quantum materials. In quantum materials, quantum effects manifest over a wide range of energy and length scales and give rise to exotic properties such as superconductivity, non-trivial topology, and many more. For the last decade, topological materials have been of great interest in the materials science community. With the steady rise of topological materials, the community’s attention is now shifting to strongly correlated topological materials that host a largely unexplored territory from both a theoretical and experimental perspective. In this colloquium, recent efforts to discover, understand, and manipulate the topological state of matter via strong correlation will be reviewed. First, I will describe how the spin degree of freedom can manifest a novel quantum state of matter. Second, the effect of lattice degree of freedom on manipulating quantum materials will be discussed. Finally, I will also briefly state the exciting future of the field.