Research

Summary

Our research mostly revolves around the field of mesoscopic conductors and superconductors. This includes graphene and topological aspects of condensed matter physics, such as topological insulators and superconductors, and Majorana bound states, as well as spintronics and the effects of disorder. Numerical simulations play a large role in our work, and we work on developing new algorithms applicable in our research activities. More information on a few topics is given below.

Much of what we do is covered in this online course. Check it out.

For a more systematic listing of our activity, check out our recent publications.

Some parts of our work, while perhaps being less serious, result in beautiful images, check out those as well.

Research topics

Majorana bound states. One example of an exotic physical object that is simple to analyse but hard to grasp is Majorana bound states (frequently also called Majorana fermions). Consider a combination of simple ingredients. Take conventional superconductors, known for almost a century, and understood extremely well for half a century. Add a semiconducting quantum wire, a basis of modern electronics, but scaled down; these were studied for decades. The amazing thing is that the theoretical and experimental progress showed how combining these two ingredients one can create the special Majorana bound states. Sergey Frolov very properly calls them zen particles, by comparison with the god particle, Higgs boson. They have no energy, no charge, and no mass (which makes them extremely hard to find), and they store quantum information in a way completely hidden from environment. The state of these quantum degrees of freedom changes when they are moved around each other, allowing to implement an alternative route to quantum computation.

Topological insulators. Symmetry has always been a guiding concept in physics, allowing to generalize conclusions from one particular system to many which possess similar qualities. The other concept with applicability that is perhaps as broad is topology. It allows to conclude that certain properties of superficially very different systems must be identical as long as the two systems can be continuously transformed into one another. Topological insulators use a combination of both symmetry and topology. The surface of these materials is guaranteed to be conducting as long as certain symmetry of the material is unbroken, and as long as bulk stays insulating.