Abstract:
We know from everyday life that a collection of atoms organizes itself into a solid, liquid, or gas, depending on the external conditions. But how do many interacting electrons organize themselves, and collectively evolve with time? This question has traditionally been formidable for systems where the correlations between electrons are strong - which is the case for quantum systems with "frustration". These systems are abundant in nature and can also be artificially engineered. While theory has predicted “Wigner crystals,” "valence bond solids", and “quantum spin liquids” to exist, only recently has progress been made in realizing them in the lab. Motivated by these advances, I will discuss our theoretical and numerical work, hunting for these phases in real materials -- this includes highly frustrated pyrochlore and triangular moire systems. The second part of the talk, inspired by questions that arise from the first one, is based on our contributions to the exciting developments in the study of nonequilibrium dynamics of quantum magnetic systems. I will highlight our proposal for a simple model of frustration that offers a way to understand glassiness (in the absence of disorder), a variant of which has been recently realized and studied experimentally in an artificial atom setup. I conclude by discussing avenues for future research on equilibrium and nonequilibrium dynamical phenomena.

Speaker bio:
Hitesh Changlani is an Associate Professor at Florida State University and also associated with the national High Magnetic Field Laboratory (MagLab). Prof. Changlani received his B.Tech. in Engineering Physics from IIT Bombay in 2007, and his Ph.D. in Physics from Cornell University in 2013. Following postdoctoral positions at the Institute for Condensed Matter Theory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Institute for Quantum Matter, Johns Hopkins University, he joined the FSU faculty in 2018. His research in theoretical and computational condensed matter physics focuses on quantum systems with many strongly interacting particles. He is the recipient of an NSF CAREER award.