The Kavli Nanoscience Institute was pleased to host a Kavli Futures Symposium on the Frontiers of Condensed Matter Physics. This special one-day symposium brought together experts to discuss emerging physics and technology from the edge states of surfaces & interfaces of novel materials and nano-metamaterials.
The event featured invited talks from F. Duncan M. Haldane (Princeton), Kang Wang (UCLA) and Yayu Wang (Tsinghua University), and a panel discussion with Zhi-Xun Shen (Stanford), Jochen Mannhart (Max Planck Institute of Solid State Research, Stuttgart, Germany), Charles Marcus (Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark), Allan MacDonald (University of Texas at Austin) and Xie Chen (Caltech). Professor Jason Alicea (Caltech) served as the moderator. The symposium also included a tour of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, hosted by our wonderful colleagues at the Microdevices Lab.
Videos from the event are now available via the KNI YouTube page. Click on a link below to view the talks and panel discussion.
F. Duncan M. Haldane, "Fractional Quantum Hall Effect in Flat Bands"
Kang Wang, "Chiral Majorana and Topological Quantum Computing"
Yayu Wang on "Quantum Anomalous Hall Effect & Interface Superconductivity in 2D Systems"
Panel Discussion with Zhi-Xun Shen (Stanford), Jochen Mannhart (Max Planck Institute of Solid State Research), Charles Marcus (Niels Bohr Institute), Allan MacDonald (University of Texas at Austin), and Xie Chen (Caltech), moderated by Jason Alicea.
Technical Synopsis:
Recent advances in nanofabrication technology and in the development of two‐dimensional (2D) crystals and heterostructures/interfaces of novel materials have enabled new possibilities to manipulate and conduct controlled studies of different quantum degrees of freedom (e.g., spin, valley, number of layers, symmetry, topology, etc.) in materials. For instance, 2D crystals of van der Waals (vdW) materials with honeycomb lattice structures, such as semimetallic graphene, insulating hexagonal boron nitride (h‐BN), and semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) that exhibit strong spin‐valley coupling, have simulated intense research efforts due to their rich physical properties and great promises for technological applications in nanoelectronics, spintronics, valleytronics and optoelectronics. The surface and edge states of strong spin‐orbit coupled topological insulators in proximity to either ferromagnetism or superconductivity can manifest the elusive topological magnetoelectric effect (TME) or Majorana fermion modes, which are not only of fundamental scientific importance but also promising for applications to spinorbitronics and quantum information technology. Monolayer interfaces of iron‐based superconductors (e.g., FeSe with a bulk superconducting transition temperature Tc ~ 8 K) with polar substrates (such as SrTiO3 or TiO2) have found an enhancement in the Tc value by nearly ten folds, suggesting the importance of quantum confinement and strong coupling to the occurrence of high‐Tc superconductivity. Nanoscale strain engineering of graphene by nanofabrication of meta‐structures can induce giant pseudo‐magnetic fields (up to ~ 104 Tesla local fields at nanoscales!) and strong valley polarization for novel valleytronics, whereas similar strain engineering of TMDCs can lead to controlled spatially varying bandgaps and optical luminescence for optoelectronics and optospintronics.