Laboratory overview

Our programme is a co-ordinated effort to understand and employ properties of quantum mechanics to develop systems with novel quantum properties arising from a collective interaction of electrons.  We address tunable phases of matter emerging from but not dependent on lower level processes and entities.  These phases have functionalities that are richer from those of the constituent particles alone.


Typically, combining a wide range of experimental tools developed in our laboratory or in a close collaboration with industry; we utilize the spin, charge and orbital degrees of freedom and tune these using e.g., electric and magnetic field, temperature, dimensionality and chemical composition.  In one of our recent studies, we employed carefully controlled interfaces between materials to tailor novel physical phenomena and functionalities not exhibited by either of the constituent materials alone.  In another study, we have been investigating designer systems in multiple and switchable dimensions, and symmetry phases for emergent phenomena, including topologically stable field configurations such as skyrmions, originally discussed in particle physics and astrophysics but now most remarkably in condensed matter physics.


We also electrostatically modulate correlated electron behavior to tune phase transitions.  We study insulators with high dielectric constant, which by doping become metallic and by further doping even superconducting.  Other materials of interest include systems exhibiting a spontaneous electric polarization, the direction of which can be switched between equivalent states by the application of an external electric field making them suitable for electronic components such as tunable capacitors and memory cells, rendering them key materials in microelectronics.