Columbia Hosts All-Hands Meeting for Quantum Materials

On July 17 and 18, members of the Department of Energy-funded Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) on Programmable Quantum Materials (Pro-QM) gathered at Columbia’s Faculty House to share their latest research. Investigators, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students from Columbia University, the University of Washington, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and the Flatiron Institute were in attendance, as well as members of the Pro-QM’s external advisory board and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Pro-QM Director and Higgins Professor of Physics and Department Chair at Columbia Dmitri Basov welcomed attendees to the all-hands meeting, the first in New York since pre-pandemic, with a note about how seamlessly the cross-country teams work together and his excitement about the center’s achievements so far.

“To create practical quantum technology, we need materials: something tactile, something we can touch,” Basov said in his opening remarks. “I want to convey our excitement about quantum materials and the concrete progress we’ve made toward our ambitious goals of creating and controlling quantum mechanical effects rooted in the new physics of van der Waals materials.”

The Pro-QM EFRC first launched in 2018; Basov and his collaborators successfully recompeted the center for an additional four-year, $12.6 million award from the Department of Energy in 2022. The center’s mission is to develop tools and materials to discover new physics that can be controlled on demand for use in emerging applications like quantum computers, networks, and sensors. Its current goals are centered around two scientific thrusts—programmable topology and programmable quantum interfaces—supported by two fabrication and characterization themes—materials design and engineering and multimodal, multiscale quantum imaging.

In its first four years, the Pro-QM EFRC published 108 research papers; in the 23 months since its renewal, it has published more than 80, with a total number of citations approaching 15,000. “We produce something sensational almost every week,” Basov said. Noted examples include evidence of the elusive quantum phase known as the fractional quantum anomalous Hall effect, sources of quantum light and particles for transferring quantum information, and the creation of several new quantum materials, including a form of carbon called graphullerene and the first 2D heavy fermion, CeSiI.

Young scientists involved with the Pro-QM EFRC at the meeting gave updates on their ongoing work. They had the opportunity to connect with junior and senior colleagues from across the country. The meeting also featured invited talks from several of the center’s collaborators and partners, including Ido Kaminer from Technion-Israel Institute of Technology; Angel Rubio from the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter in Hamburg; and Michael Fogler from the University of California, San Diego.

The center’s principal investigators will meet next spring to discuss new scientific directions for a possible third iteration of the Pro-QM EFRC. These include exploring the electromagnetic environment in cavities and developing on-chip quantum optics applications.

“The Pro-QM has been an intellectual hub, and this meeting has underscored the significant progress we've made in the discovery, understanding, and control of quantum materials,” said co-investigator Xiaodong Xu, a professor at the University of Washington. “I'm excited about the future innovations we will achieve together. The synergy between our institutions advances our scientific goals and paves the way for practical applications that could revolutionize technology."