Swarnajayanti fellow from Bangalore researching high-temperature superconductors. Surprising connections between materials and black holes. Subhro Bhattacharjee aims to explore this uncharted quantum material frontier.
Many-electron materials are the focus of Prof Ranjit Bhattacharjee’s research. “This research will help bridge the gap between theory and experiments,” he says. His earlier work in Physical Review focused on quantum materials.
Key Highlight:
- Swarnajayanti fellow from Bangalore studying high-temperature superconductors Strange metals is odd even by quantum physicist standards.
- Intriguing connections between high-temperature superconductors and black hole properties.
- Subhro Bhattacharjee, Associate Professor at the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences in Bengaluru, will explore this new frontier of quantum materials.
- It can help create quantum analogs of computing bits or surface metals in otherwise bulk electric insulators.
- “This research will help bridge the gap between theory and experiments of these phases,” said Prof. Bhattacharjee.
Subhro Bhattacharjee, Associate Professor, International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, Bengaluru, is working on a project to figure out how strange metals linked to high-temperature superconductors work through the math.
People who study quantum physics think that strange metals are weird, even if they aren’t that weird. Those materials have a lot in common with high-temperature superconductors, but they also have a lot to do with the properties of black holes.
Swarnajayanti fellowship recipient Subhro Bhattacharjee, an Associate Professor at the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences in Bengaluru, wants to explore this new and unexplored field of quantum materials. He wants to use the money from the fellowship to do this. To understand the many new things that happen in quantum systems, he is trying to come up with a general way to think about them. This is called “electronic phases of matter.” They become magnets, semiconductors, and superconductors because of the way quantum mechanics and the interaction of electrons inside the material work together to make the material work.
Many people don’t know much about these phases, even though they’re the parents of some of the most interesting and useful forms of quantum matter out there. One of the biggest problems of our time is trying to figure out how people use computers together. This is one of the keys to new technologies in the future, though. A theoretical framework that has been used for a long time to describe the collective electronic behavior of quantum materials has a lot of problems and needs to be updated with new ideas. Having this knowledge is very important today because quantum materials can be used to make better things.
Research by Prof. Bhattacharjee is important because it helps us understand the wide range of new electronic properties that quantum systems have. It’s important to figure out how materials that aren’t simple magnets, metals/semiconductor, or superconductors work together in ways that haven’t before, so we can learn more about how they work.
A very strange thing called quantum entanglement has been found to be the key to keeping these electronic phases of matter stable in many candidate materials that we see all around us. When we think about quantum entanglement, we don’t think about it in the same way that we think about things in the world around us. Because of this very thing, electrons can start to act in new ways as a whole. Incredibly, there are so many things that happen. It can lead to, for example, important surface metals in otherwise bulk electric insulators, or it can help make quantum computer bits that work like bits on a computer.
It’s important to Professor Bhattacharjee that his research focus on the true range of possible new “quantum-ordered” electron phases and how they might be classified, as well as how they might be used to make new materials. It’s his goal to understand the many-many electrons inside these materials and the new principles that make them behave the way they do. It’s not the first time he’s looked into quantum materials. In Physical Review, he looked into things like topological phases of matter and their excitations, emergent electromagnetism in granular solids, etc. They all help us learn more about nature and how to use it to make new technologies.
People in India are studying strange metals with help from the Swarnajayanti Fellowship, which the government set up to help people learn more about them in an organized way. According to Prof. Bhattacharjee, this research will help “bridge the gap between theory and experiments of these phases and give us important insights into the non-trivial role of quantum mechanics that shapes the correlated behavior of electrons in these strange metals.”
Subhro Bhattacharjee @ictstifr has received the prestigious Swarnajayanti Fellowship of the Department of Science & Technology @IndiaDST, in the physical sciences category. This fellowship is awarded to a select number of young scientists to enable them to pursue basic research. pic.twitter.com/5ey4lQguZp
— ICTS (@ictstifr) December 10, 2021
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