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April 9, 2025
Location: SB 145
Time: 12:00 pm
Presenter: Kaden Hazzard
Programmable quantum matter at ultracold temperatures
Abstract:
Physicists are using highly controllable quantum systems of ultracold atoms and molecules to explore quantum states of unprecedented complexity. I will discuss our theory work and collaborations with experimentalists to control and understand these systems both in real space and in “synthetic dimensions.” We use atoms in laser-sculpted potential landscapes to study strongly correlated fermions, whose behavior is key to understanding major mysteries in real materials, such as the nature of high-temperature superconductors. Further controlling the internal degrees of freedom — for example molecules’ rotational states — allows one to create “synthetic dimensions,” in which rotational states act analogously to lattice sites in new spatial dimension and microwave radiation drives transitions between these sites, analogous to tunneling. I will discuss the resulting exotic behaviors as well as experiments probing them, from fluctuating quantum strings to paraparticles — a type of particle beyond the conventional bosons and fermions that was thought impossible until recently.
Prof. Hazzard is a theoretical physicists at Rice University studying the properties of interacting quantum matter. He is interested in fundamentally novel emergent properties, such as new phases of matter and types of nonequilibrium dynamics, as well as how to harness these systems for applications in quantum computation and sensing. He obtained his BS from The Ohio State University, his PhD from Cornell, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Colorado and NIST from 2010-2014, and then started his faculty position at Rice in 2014. He was elected as an American Physical Society Fellow in 2023.
Light lunch will be served.
