James P. Eisenstein

Last updated
James P. Eisenstein
Born (1952-05-15) May 15, 1952 (age 72)
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater Oberlin College
University of California, Berkeley
Known for Fractional Quantum Hall effect
Exciton condensation
Awards Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize (2007)
Scientific career
Fields Physics
Institutions Bell Laboratories
California Institute of Technology

James P. Eisenstein is an American physicist noted for his experimental research on strongly interacting two-dimensional electron systems. He is currently the Frank J. Roshek Professor of Physics and Applied Physics, Emeritus, at the California Institute of Technology. [1]

Contents

Academic career

Eisenstein received his AB degree from Oberlin College in 1974 and a PhD in physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1980. Following a few years as an assistant professor of physics at Williams College, Eisenstein became a member of the technical staff at Bell Laboratories at Murray Hill, New Jersey in 1983. In 1996 Eisenstein accepted a professorship in physics at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. In 2005 he became the Frank J. Roshek Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Caltech. [1] [2] Eisenstein assumed emeritus status in 2018 and suspended his experimental research program in 2021.

He has served on various National Research Council committees including the Solid State Sciences Committee and the Board on Physics and Astronomy. He was an associate editor of the Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics from 2014 to 2017.

Research

Following doctoral research on the hydrodynamic properties of superfluid 3-He, [3] at Bell Labs Eisenstein switched his focus to the experimental properties of two-dimensional electron systems in semiconductor heterostructures. At very low temperatures and high magnetic fields, such systems exhibit a host of exotic phenomena, notably the integer and fractional quantum Hall effects.

Among Eisenstein's most significant research contributions is the discovery of the first "even denominator" fractional quantized Hall state, the first observation of "stripe" and "bubble" 2D quantum electronic phases, and the first detection of the long-sought phenomenon of excitonic Bose condensation.

The even-denominator fractional quantum Hall state, at filling v=5/2, is believed to possess quasiparticles with non-abelian braiding statistics, [4] a property key to proposed topological quantum computer architectures. [5]

The stripe and bubble phases [6] [7] reveal that in the quantum regime point-like electrons can organize themselves into configurations [8] which resemble classical liquid crystals comprising complex asymmetric molecules.

Exciton condensation was originally theorized, in the 1960's, to occur in bulk semimetals in the absence of a magnetic field. [9] [10] [11] Surprisingly, the phenomenon was first detected in closely-spaced double layer 2D electron systems at high magnetic field. In effect, at low temperature electrons in one layer can bind onto the vacancies between electrons in the other layer. The condensed phase has numerous exotic properties. [12]

Awards and honors


Publications


Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bose–Einstein condensate</span> State of matter

In condensed matter physics, a Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) is a state of matter that is typically formed when a gas of bosons at very low densities is cooled to temperatures very close to absolute zero, i.e., 0 K. Under such conditions, a large fraction of bosons occupy the lowest quantum state, at which microscopic quantum-mechanical phenomena, particularly wavefunction interference, become apparent macroscopically. More generally, condensation refers to the appearance of macroscopic occupation of one or several states: for example, in BCS theory, a superconductor is a condensate of Cooper pairs. As such, condensation can be associated with phase transition, and the macroscopic occupation of the state is the order parameter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Exciton</span> Quasiparticle which is a bound state of an electron and an electron hole

An electron and an electron hole that are attracted to each other by the Coulomb force can form a bound state called an exciton. It is an electrically neutral quasiparticle that exists mainly in condensed matter, including insulators, semiconductors, some metals, but also in certain atoms, molecules and liquids. The exciton is regarded as an elementary excitation that can transport energy without transporting net electric charge.

The fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE) is a physical phenomenon in which the Hall conductance of 2-dimensional (2D) electrons shows precisely quantized plateaus at fractional values of , where e is the electron charge and h is the Planck constant. It is a property of a collective state in which electrons bind magnetic flux lines to make new quasiparticles, and excitations have a fractional elementary charge and possibly also fractional statistics. The 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Robert Laughlin, Horst Störmer, and Daniel Tsui "for their discovery of a new form of quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations". The microscopic origin of the FQHE is a major research topic in condensed matter physics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Topological order</span> Type of order at absolute zero

In physics, topological order is a kind of order in the zero-temperature phase of matter. Macroscopically, topological order is defined and described by robust ground state degeneracy and quantized non-abelian geometric phases of degenerate ground states. Microscopically, topological orders correspond to patterns of long-range quantum entanglement. States with different topological orders cannot change into each other without a phase transition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wigner crystal</span> Solid (crystalline) phase of electrons

A Wigner crystal is the solid (crystalline) phase of electrons first predicted by Eugene Wigner in 1934. A gas of electrons moving in a uniform, inert, neutralizing background will crystallize and form a lattice if the electron density is less than a critical value. This is because the potential energy dominates the kinetic energy at low densities, so the detailed spatial arrangement of the electrons becomes important. To minimize the potential energy, the electrons form a bcc lattice in 3D, a triangular lattice in 2D and an evenly spaced lattice in 1D. Most experimentally observed Wigner clusters exist due to the presence of the external confinement, i.e. external potential trap. As a consequence, deviations from the b.c.c or triangular lattice are observed. A crystalline state of the 2D electron gas can also be realized by applying a sufficiently strong magnetic field. However, it is still not clear whether it is the Wigner crystallization that has led to observation of insulating behaviour in magnetotransport measurements on 2D electron systems, since other candidates are present, such as Anderson localization.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">String-net liquid</span> Condensed matter physics model involving only closed loops

In condensed matter physics, a string-net is an extended object whose collective behavior has been proposed as a physical mechanism for topological order by Michael A. Levin and Xiao-Gang Wen. A particular string-net model may involve only closed loops; or networks of oriented, labeled strings obeying branching rules given by some gauge group; or still more general networks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Xiao-Gang Wen</span> Chinese-American physicist

Xiao-Gang Wen is a Chinese-American physicist. He is a Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Distinguished Visiting Research Chair at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. His expertise is in condensed matter theory in strongly correlated electronic systems. In Oct. 2016, he was awarded the Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize.

In condensed matter physics, biexcitons are created from two free excitons, analogous to di-positronium in vacuum.

A composite fermion is the topological bound state of an electron and an even number of quantized vortices, sometimes visually pictured as the bound state of an electron and, attached, an even number of magnetic flux quanta. Composite fermions were originally envisioned in the context of the fractional quantum Hall effect, but subsequently took on a life of their own, exhibiting many other consequences and phenomena.

A trion is a bound state of three charged particles. A negatively charged trion in crystals consists of two electrons and one hole, while a positively charged trion consists of two holes and one electron. The binding energy of a trion is largely determined by the exchange interaction between the two electrons (holes). The ground state of a negatively charged trion is a singlet. The triplet state is unbound in the absence of an additional potential or sufficiently strong magnetic field.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Piers Coleman</span> British-American physicist

Piers Coleman is a British-born theoretical physicist, working in the field of theoretical condensed matter physics. Coleman is professor of physics at Rutgers University in New Jersey and at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Bilayer graphene is a material consisting of two layers of graphene. One of the first reports of bilayer graphene was in the seminal 2004 Science paper by Geim and colleagues, in which they described devices "which contained just one, two, or three atomic layers"

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Allan H. MacDonald</span> Canadian-American physicist (born 1951)

Allan H. MacDonald is a theoretical condensed matter physicist and the Sid W. Richardson Foundation Regents Chair Professor of Physics at The University of Texas at Austin. His research interests are centered on the electronic properties of electrons in metals and semiconductors. He is well known for his work on correlated many-electron states in low-dimensional systems. In 2020, he became one of the laureates of the Wolf Prize in Physics, for predicting the magic angle that turns twisted bilayer graphene into a superconductor.

Bose–Einstein condensation can occur in quasiparticles, particles that are effective descriptions of collective excitations in materials. Some have integer spins and can be expected to obey Bose–Einstein statistics like traditional particles. Conditions for condensation of various quasiparticles have been predicted and observed. The topic continues to be an active field of study.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Electronic properties of graphene</span>

Graphene is a semimetal whose conduction and valence bands meet at the Dirac points, which are six locations in momentum space, the vertices of its hexagonal Brillouin zone, divided into two non-equivalent sets of three points. The two sets are labeled K and K′. The sets give graphene a valley degeneracy of gv = 2. By contrast, for traditional semiconductors the primary point of interest is generally Γ, where momentum is zero. Four electronic properties separate it from other condensed matter systems.

Thierry Giamarchi is a French physicist.

Aron Pinczuk was an Argentine-American experimental condensed matter physicist who was professor of physics and professor of applied physics at Columbia University. He was known for his work on correlated electronic states in two dimensional systems using photoluminescence and resonant inelastic light scattering methods. He was a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Alan Harold Luther is an American physicist, specializing in condensed matter physics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sung Ryul Eric Yang</span> Physics professor

Sung Ryul Eric Yang is a theoretical condensed matter physicist. He is a full professor in the Department of Physics of Korea University.

Leo Radzihovsky is a Russian American condensed matter physicist and academic serving as a professor of Distinction in Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder.

References

  1. 1 2 "James Eisenstein". Division of Physics, Math, and Astronomy. California Institute of Technology . Retrieved 2024-10-02. James Eisenstein: Frank J. Roshek Professor of Physics and Applied Physics, Emeritus
  2. Zierler, David (July 2, 2020). "James Eisenstein". Caltech Heritage Project. California Institute of Technology . Retrieved 2024-10-02.
  3. Eisenstein, James P. (1980). "Flow Properties of Liquid Helium-3 below 5 millidegrees".
  4. Moore, Gregory; Read, Nicholas (1991). "Nonabelions in the fractional quantum hall effect". Nuclear Physics B. 360 (2–3): 362. Bibcode:1991NuPhB.360..362M. doi: 10.1016/0550-3213(91)90407-O .
  5. Kitaev, A. Yu. (1997). "Fault-tolerant quantum computation by anyons". Annals of Physics. 303: 2–30. arXiv: quant-ph/9707021 . doi:10.1016/S0003-4916(02)00018-0.
  6. Koulakov, A.A.; Fogler, M.M.; Shklovskii, B.I. (1996). "The Ground State of a Two-Dimensional Electron Liquid in a Weak Magnetic Field". Physical Review B. 54 (3): 1853–1871. arXiv: cond-mat/9601110 . Bibcode:1996PhRvB..54.1853F. doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.54.1853. PMID   9986033.
  7. Moessner, R.; Chalker, J.T. (1996). "Exact results for interacting electrons in high Landau levels". Physical Review B. 54 (7): 5006–5015. arXiv: cond-mat/9606177 . Bibcode:1996PhRvB..54.5006M. doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.54.5006.
  8. Fradkin, Eduardo; Kivelson, Steven A.; Lawler, Michael J.; Eisenstein, James P.; Mackenzie, Andrew P. (2010). "Nematic Fermi Fluids in Condensed Matter Physics". Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics. 1: 153–178. arXiv: 0910.4166 . Bibcode:2010ARCMP...1..153F. doi:10.1146/annurev-conmatphys-070909-103925.
  9. Blatt, John M.; Boer, K.W.; Brandt, Werner (1962). "Bose-Einstein Condensation of Excitons". Physical Review. 126 (5): 1691–1692. Bibcode:1962PhRv..126.1691B. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.126.1691.
  10. Keldysh, L.V.; Kopaev, Yu.V. (1964). "Possible instability of the semimetallic state toward Coulomb interaction". Soviet Physics Solid State. 6: 41–46. doi:10.1142/9789811279461_0006. ISBN   978-981-12-7945-4.
  11. Jerome, D.; Rice, T.M.; Kohn, Walter (1967). "Excitonic Insulator". Physical Review. 158 (2): 462–475. Bibcode:1967PhRv..158..462J. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.158.462.
  12. Eisenstein, J. P. (2014). "Exciton Condensation in Bilayer Quantum Hall Systems". Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics. 5: 159–181. arXiv: 1306.0584 . Bibcode:2014ARCMP...5..159E. doi:10.1146/annurev-conmatphys-031113-133832.
  13. "2007 Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize Recipient". Prize Recipient. American Physical Society. Archived from the original on 2009-10-11. Retrieved 2024-10-02.
  14. "James P. Eisenstein". www.nasonline.org. Retrieved 2024-10-02.
  15. Eisenstein, James (2002). "Loeb and Lee Lectures, Harvard University".
  16. "APS Fellows Archive". APS.