National Institute Of Materials Physics - Romania

Aim:

Our team employs and develops theoretical methods and computational tools to investigate new phenomena in open quantum systems and quantum materials.

Main research topics:

      A. Hybrid quantum systems.

State-of-the-art experimental techniques from quantum optics and mesoscopic physics are nowadays jointly employed to tune the spin-photon and spin-mechanical interactions to the nanoscale. As a result, certain classes of so called hybrid quantum systems (HQSs) were realized and identified as most suitable platforms for solid-state qubit gates and quantum sensing operations. Our theoretical investigations are focused on the effects of the coupling between the electronic/spin degrees of freedom and quantized optical/vibrational modes in: i) cavity-coupled quantum dots (QDs) and ii) nano-electromechanical systems (NEMS). We also aim to model the dynamics of various HQSs in the strong coupling regime, for which the well-known effective models and approximations from quantum optics are no longer appropriate.

      B. 2D systems and topological insulators.

The discovery of 2D materials (e.g. graphene and phosphorene) and of the symmetry-protected surface states in topological insulators triggered tremendous progress in condensed matter physics. Moreover, the rapidly increasing amount of experimental studies confirms that 2D heterostructures allow the simultaneous manipulation of spin and “valley” degrees of freedom. Nonetheless, appropriate theoretical and numerical methods are still needed to calculate transport coefficients and to describe topological quantum phase-transitions in 2D systems which exhibit chiral edge states or anomalous quantum Hall effect. Recent topological classifications of non-Hermitian systems also motivate extensive investigations of their transport properties.

• Last but not least, we are also committed to our previous research topics (e.g modeling the time-dependent transport in many-body quantum systems and the interference effects in artificial molecules).