Niels Bohr Lecture by JC Séamus Davis
Visualizing Quantum Matter
Talk by: JC Séamus Davis Professor of Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford.
Abstract: Information technology including computing, communication, encryption and the internet are anticipated to become wholly quantum mechanical as part of the emerging second quantum revolution. Global IT corporations such as Google, Microsoft, IBM and Intel are investing intensively in a race to achieve dominance in the new field of quantum technology (QT). Three interrelated elements are critical to QT: quantum information, quantum devices, and the quantum materials from which they will be fabricated.
QT requires these new quantum materials to exhibit some combination of macroscopic quantum physics (e.g. superconductivity), quantum entanglement (nonlocal interdependence of multiple quantum devices), and quantum topology (topological preservation of macroscopic quantum functionality). New experimental techniques are required for design, discovery and analysis of such materials.
In this regard, direct visualization of electronic quantum matter at the atomic scale is a uniquely powerful technique. In this talk I will describe the development of new instruments and techniques for visualizing quantum matter. As examples, we will visually explore the previously unseen and very beautiful states including Kondo and Hund Metals, Electronic Liquid Crystals, Quantum Anomalous Hall States, and Electron-pair Crystals. Time permitting, I will discuss the implications of the general capability to visualize quantum matter, for fundamental physics research and also for advanced materials and new Technologies.
About JC Séamus Davis
Séamus Davis’ received a Physics B.Sc. from University College Cork, Ireland in 1983 and his Physics Ph.D. from the University of California – Berkeley, USA in 1989. He was appointed Professor of Physics at the University of California - Berkeley and a Faculty Physicist at Berkeley National Laboratory between 1993 and 2003. He became Professor of Physics at Cornell University, New York, in 2003 and a Senior Physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York in 2006. In 2007 he was appointed Distinguished Professor of Physics at St. Andrews University, Scotland, and in 2008 the J.G. White Distinguished Professor of Physical Sciences at Cornell University. He has also served as Director of the Center for Emergent Superconductivity, of the US Dept. of Energy (2009-2014). In 2019 he was appointed JG White Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Cornell University, USA; Professor of Physics, University College Cork, Ireland; and Professor of Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
Séamus Davis’ active research interests are in the macroscopic quantum physics of emergent quantum matter including studies of superconductors, superfluids, supersolids, Kondo, Weyl and Hund metals, topological condensates, and spin & monopole liquids. His work has been recognized by the Outstanding Performance Award of the Berkeley National Lab. (2001), the Science and Technology Award of Brookhaven National Lab. (2013), the Fritz London Memorial Prize (2005), the H. Kamerlingh-Onnes Memorial Prize (2009), G.B Moore Foundation Investigator Award (2014), and the Science Foundation Ireland - Medal of Science (2016). Davis is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics (UK), the American Physical Society (USA), and a Member of the US National Academy of Sciences.
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Niels Bohr Lectures