Join us for these exciting seminars featuring:
8 Sept 2025 (Monday) - Shuyun Zhou (Tsinghua University)
6 Oct 2025 (Monday) - Paul Skrzypczyk (University of Bristol)
3 Nov 2025 (Monday) - Mohammad Hafezi (University of Maryland)
1 Dec 2025 (Monday) - Alberto Morpurgo (University of Geneva)
12 Jan 2026 (Monday) - Valla Fatemi (Cornell University)
Feb 2026 (Date to be announced) - Haruki Watanabe (University of Tokyo)
March 2026 (Date to be announced) - Jorg Schmiedmayer (Vienna University of Technology)
These seminars are part of the IAS Frontiers Seminars: Quantum Horizons series, jointly organised and supported by the Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) and the School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (SPMS).
**Participants are kindly requested to register for each talk individually via the respective links provided below.
About the talk "Floquet Engineering of Quantum Materials"
Time-periodic light-field can dress the electronic states of quantum materials, providing a fascinating controlling knob for transient modifications of the electronic structure with versatile light-induced emergent phenomena. In this talk, I will present our recent experimental progress on the Floquet engineering of quantum materials using time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (TrARPES). In particular, experimental progress on the Floquet engineering of black phosphorus and topological insulator will be presented. I will also provide some experimental insights on Floquet engineering and light-matter interactions in quantum materials.
About the speaker
Shuyun Zhou is a professor of Physics at Tsinghua University. She received her PhD in physics from University of California, Berkeley in 2007. She was a postdoc and project scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory before she joined the Department of Physics at Tsinghua University in 2012.
Shuyun Zhou’s research focuses on the electronic structure and ultrafast dynamics of low-dimensional materials and heterostructures, in particular Floquet engineering of quantum materials. Her recognitions include the Xplore Prize, Huang Kun Physics Prize, Sir Martin Wood Low Temperature Prize, L’Oréal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science, China.
Read the article for Prof Shuyun Zhou's seminar here.
About the talk "Improving and Speeding Up Quantum Measurements"
I will present novel results concerning the problem of 'measurement reproduction'. I will first consider the problem of reproducing one quantum measurement given the ability to perform another. For example, I will show how to use available "imperfect" measurements a small number of times to implement a target measurement with average error that drops off exponentially with the number of imperfect measurements used. In the most general setting, both the available and target measurements are arbitrary generalised quantum measurements. I will then show how this insight can be used to speed-up quantum measurement. In particular, by performing multiple measurements in parallel, it is possible to maintain (or even improve) the quality of a measurement, while reducing its duration, exhibiting an interesting 'space-time trade-off'.
About the speaker
I obtained an MSci in Theoretical Physics from the University of Sussex. At the end of my degree I won the national Science, Engineering & Technologies Student of the Year Award for the best Physics student in the UK in 2007, based upon my final year project on "One-dimensional Coulomb scattering" under the supervision of Professor Gabriel Barton. After completing my degree, I came to Bristol to study for a PhD under the supervision of Professor Sandu Popescu, where I focused on quantum nonlocality and quantum thermodynamics.
After completing my PhD in 2011, I spent two years at University of Cambridge as a postdoctoral researcher in Centre for Quantum Information and Foundations, before moving to the Institute for Photonic Sciences (ICFO) in Barcelona, as an ICFONest Research Fellow in the group of Professor Antonio Acin. I returned to Bristol as a postdoctoral researcher in 2015 and obtained a Royal Society University Research Fellowship a year later in 2016, which I held until 2024. In 2018 I became a proleptic Lecturer in the School of Physics, and in 2022 a proleptic Associate Professor.
Read the article for Prof Paul Skrzypczyk's seminar here.
About the talk "Quantum Optics Meets Correlated Electronic States"
Given tremendous progress in controlling individual photons and other excitations such as spin, excitonic, phononic in solid-state systems, it is intriguing to explore whether these quantum optical control techniques could pave a radically new way to prepare, detect and manipulate non-local and correlated electronic states. First, we discuss how optical probes can reveal various aspects of magnetism in 2D materials. In particular, we report the first observation of quantum anomalous Hall states in twisted bilayer WSe₂, made possible by optically measuring the average magnetisation ⟨S⟩. Next, we explain how one can access higher-order observables such as ⟨S·S⟩ and ⟨S·(S×S)⟩ by measuring higher-order correlations of scattered photons. Such an approach could enable unambiguous detection of chiral spin liquids. Finally, inspired by progress in cold atom systems, we introduce a method to optically engineer magnetic Hamiltonians, such as a generalised Heisenberg model.
About the speaker
Mohammad Hafezi is a Minta Martin Professor with a joint appointment in the Physics and Electrical and Computer Engineering Departments at the University of Maryland and a fellow of the Joint Quantum Institute. He studied at Sharif University before completing his undergraduate degree in École Polytechnique. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from Harvard University in 2009. His research interests include quantum optics, topological physics, condensed matter, and quantum information sciences. He is the recipient of several awards including the Sloan Fellowship, the Young Investigator Award of the US Naval Research Office, Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship, and the Simons Foundation Investigator.
Read the article for Prof Mohammad Hafezi's seminar here.
About the talk "Probing 2D Magnetic Materials with Magnetotransport"
The ability to exfoliate van der Waals crystals of magnetic compounds is giving access to a vast, unexplored family of two-dimensional magnetic materials, with a variety of different magnetic ground states. Most of these compounds are semiconductors that offer –besides the possibility to explore magnetism in highly controlled 2D crystals— a new playground to combine magnetic and semiconducting functionalities. In this talk I will discuss how magnetotransport experiments allow the investigation the magnetic phase diagram of 2D magnetic material down to the ultimate limit of individual monolayers, to reveal phenomena that are difficult –or cannot—be accessed with other existing experimental techniques. After a short introduction, in my talk I will discuss vey recent experiments on field effect transistors realised on exfoliated crystals of CrPS4 –ranging from relatively thick multilayers, to double-gated bilayers, and to individual monolayers– and discuss results that illustrate the wealth of physical phenomena that become accessible with these systems.
About the speaker
Alberto Morpurgo is a condensed matter physicist, with a broad interest in the electronic properties of materials and devices. He received his PhD in 1998 from the University of Groningen (the Netherlands) for his thesis on mescocopic physics, for which he also received the Miedema Prize 1998 for the best Dutch PhD thesis. After a postdoctoral stay at Stanford University, Alberto Morpurgo moved to Delft University, where he became associate professor. In 2008, Alberto Morpurgo moved to University of Geneva, Switzerland, as full professor. The research of Prof Morpurgo has covered a broad variety of material systems (III-V heterostructures, carbon nanotubes, superconductors, organic semiconductors, topological insulators) and physics problems (superconductivity, phase coherent transport, semiconductor physics, electron-electron interaction effects, magnetism etc.). Since the original discovery of graphene, Prof Morpurgo has been working with increasing intensity in the field of 2D materials and heterostructures.
About the talk "Physics and Applications of Andreev Spin Qubits"
Superconducting qubits and semiconducting qubits are two leading solid-state platforms for quantum computation, each coming with distinct strengths and challenges. Hybrid structures made of both semiconductors and superconductors aim to combine the best features of both platforms. One such hybrid structure is the Andreev spin qubit, which hosts a microscopic, fermionic spin degree of freedom inside a Josephson weak link. The key feature is the spin-dependent supercurrent – this physics enables long-range, quantum coherent interactions between spins despite their microscopic sizes. In this talk, I will first introduce Andreev spin qubits and what makes them unique. I will then describe our experiments to better understand coherence of Andreev spins hosted in InAs nanowires. Finally, I will outline the unique quantum hardware opportunities that Andreev spins offer, as well as the key experimental challenges to achieving them.
About the speaker
Valla Fatemi received his PhD in Physics in the group of Pablo Jarillo-Herrero at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2018. There he worked on electronic and quantum transport in topological insulator materials, including discovery superconductor and topological insulator states in monolayer tungsten ditelluride. He also contributed to the project that discovered superconductivity and correlated insulator states in magic angle twisted bilayer graphene. He then joined the group of Michel Devoret at Yale University as the post-doctoral associate on the teams researching the physics of Andreev bound states in superconductor-semiconductor quantum devices, where the Andreev spin qubit was first demonstrated. In 2022 he joined the faculty of the School of Applied and Engineering Physics at Cornell University, where he is building a lab researching the basic and applied physics of quantum materials, quantum control, superconducting quantum circuits, and their intersections.