Foundation president, Harvey Fineberg, and chairman emeritus and co-founder, Gordon Moore, discuss the Statement of Founders’ Intent with staff.
Investigating emergent phenomena in strongly correlated quantum materials using a suite of photoelectron spectroscopy techniques.
My research goal is to advance the fundamental understanding of exotic states in a variety of quantum materials, including high temperature superconductors, topological materials, transition metal dichalcogenides, heavy fermion systems, and charge density wave systems, using spectroscopy tools such as angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) and x-ray scattering. My work has contributed to the understanding of nematicity and multi-orbital effects in the iron-based superconductors.
What I find most captivating about correlated electron systems is their complex phase diagram where often multiple electronic orders emerge in proximity. Such complexity is rooted in the active interaction of multiple degrees of freedom — lattice, charge, spin and orbital. Many quantum materials are found to sit in a regime with fiercely competing ground states of similar energy scales, giving rise to potential novel phenomena. Spectroscopy techniques such as ARPES are powerful tools to directly probe the electronic structure of a solid and learn about the various interactions in the system including electron-electron interactions, electron-phonon interaction, electron-magnon interaction and electronic orders. My group is working to develop a suite of in-situ tuning devices coupled with ARPES spectroscopy to explore the phenomenology in a variety of quantum materials and identify the leading degree of freedom responsible for the emergent order.
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B.S., Physics, Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyPh.D., Physics, Stanford UniversityPostdoctoral Researcher, University of California, Berkeley
Rice University, Department of Physics and Astronomy
$1,600,000
60 months
Ming Yi Experimental Investigator Award
May 2020