PengChang Dai
Sam and Helen Worden Professor, Physics and Astronomy
362 Brockman Hall | 713-348-3731 | pengchang.dai@rice.edu
Research Area Website
Over the past decade, Dai group’s focus is to study magnetism in strongly correlated electron materials, including exotic superconductors, quantum spin liquid (QSL) candidates, and interesting magnetic materials. The focus of RLEMM will be on QSL candidates, exotic superconductors, and altemagnet candidate materials.
A QSL is a state of matter in which the spins of unpaired electrons in a solid are quantum entangled, but do not show magnetic order in the zero-temperature limit. Because such a state may be important to the microscopic origin of high-Tc superconductivity and useful for quantum computation, experimental realization of QSL is a long-sought goal in modern condensed matter physics. Models supporting QSLs for 2D spin-1/2 Kagome, triangular, honeycomb, and 3D pyrochlore lattice systems indicate that all QSLs share the presence of deconfined spinons. Spinons are elementary excitations from the entangled ground state which carry spin S = ½ and thus, are fractionalized quasiparticles, fundamentally different from the S = 1 spin waves in conventional 3D ordered magnets. We will study different families of QSL materials, focusing on triangular lattice and pyrochlore lattice families of materials, aiming to understand how quantum coherence is established and affected by disorder.
We will also extend our recent studies of spin dynamics in spin-triplet superconductor candidate UTe2. Compared with high-Tc superconductors, superconductivity in UTe2 may have spin triplet pairing instead of spin-singlet pairing. Spin-triplet pairing is particularly interesting and typically believed to be associated with ferromagnetic spin fluctuations. However, our recent results suggest that antiferromagnetic spin fluctuations are coupled with superconductivity in UTe2. In the coming years, we hope to unveil the microscopic origin of this class of superconductors and compare the outcome to other unconventional superconductors. We will also investigate recently discovered Cr and V based kagome lattice superconductors.
We will study altermagnet candidate materials, including spin excitations in MnTe and Li-doped MnTe, FeS, and other candidate materials.
Emilia Morosan
Professor, Physics and Astronomy
252 Brockman Hall | 713-348-2529 | emorosan@rice.edu
Research Area Website
Morosan is a leading expert in the design, discovery and synthesis of new materials using innovative crystal growth techniques. Her research lies at the forefront of condensed matter physics, solid state chemistry and materials science. Morosan and her research group at Rice is focused on novel states of matter, predicted theoretically to show non-trivial topological states such as Kramers-Weyl semimetals and multifold degenerate fermions, or strong correlations and quantum criticality, as observed in f-electron heavy fermions, Kondo insulators and charge-neutral fermions, and unconventional superconductivity in intercalated transition metal dichalcogenides.
Qimiao Si
Haryy C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor, Physics and Astronomy
307 Brockman Hall | 713-348-5204 | qmsi@rice.edu
Research Area Website
Theoretical Condensed Matter physics, specializing in strongly correlated electron systems. The Si group will expand their research into the new frontiers of quantum spin liquids as well as the emerging physics of altermagnetism. Their theoretical effort will be strongly coupled to the research of the experimental teams within RLEMM.
Ming Yi
Associate Professor, Physics and Astronomy
340 Brockman Hall | 713-348-5310 | mingyi@rice.edu
Research Area Website
The Yi group is interested in utilizing angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) to study a variety of strongly correlated and topological quantum materials. We are in particular interested in developing and utilizing sample environments for ARPES that allow in-situ tuning and manipulation of materials that allow us to gain insights into the nature of the interplay of multiple degrees of freedom. We have worked on quantum materials spanning unconventional superconductors, geometrically frustrated lattices, low dimensional magnets, density wave systems, and topological matter. For projects associated with RLEMM, we will use ARPES to explore superconductivity arising from active flat bands, systems with altermagnetic or other unconventional spin texture in momentum space, and potentially doped quantum spin liquids. By probing momentum-resolved electronic single particle spectral function, our work will complement the insights gained from transport and neutron scattering, and facilitate the wholistic theoretical understanding of these exotic quantum phenomena.