Vedika Khemani

Last updated
Vedika Khemani
Alma mater Princeton University
Harvey Mudd College
La Martiniere Calcutta
Scientific career
Thesis Quantum order, entanglement and localization in many body systems.  (2016)
Doctoral advisor Shivaji Sondhi

Vedika Khemani (born 1988) is an Indian-American physicist and Associate Professor of Physics at Stanford University. Her research lies at the intersection of many-body quantum condensed matter physics and quantum information theory.

Contents

Early life and education

Khemani was born in India and was educated through high-school at La Martiniere Calcutta. She moved to the United States to study physics at Harvey Mudd College, where she completed a senior thesis on gravitational holography. Her undergraduate thesis was awarded the Thomas Benjamin Brown Memorial Award. Alongside her physics courses, Khemani completed courses in mathematics, computer science, economics, linguistics and creative writing. [1] She also took part in robotics programs and competed at national robotics competitions. After completing her undergraduate degree in 2010, she moved to Princeton University as a graduate student. [1] Following her PhD studies, Khemani was a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows. [2] [3]

Research and career

Khemani's research focuses on non-equilibrium many-body quantum dynamics. As part of her doctoral research, Khemani identified a novel non-equilibrium phase of matter known as a Floquet time-crystal. [4] Such crystals demonstrate spontaneous breaking of time translation symmetry. [5] [6] [7] In conventional crystals, atoms are arranged in regular and ordered patterns, whereas in time crystals they are arranged in both space and time. [6] [7]

Awards and honours

Select publications

Personal life and education

In 2013 Khemani married David Coats, whom she met at Harvey Mudd College. [14]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniel C. Tsui</span> Chinese-American physicist

Daniel Chee Tsui is an American physicist. He is currently serving as the Professor of Electrical Engineering, emeritus, at Princeton University. Tsui's areas of research include electrical properties of thin films and microstructures of semiconductors and solid-state physics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spin ice</span>

A spin ice is a magnetic substance that does not have a single minimal-energy state. It has magnetic moments (i.e. "spin") as elementary degrees of freedom which are subject to frustrated interactions. By their nature, these interactions prevent the moments from exhibiting a periodic pattern in their orientation down to a temperature much below the energy scale set by the said interactions. Spin ices show low-temperature properties, residual entropy in particular, closely related to those of common crystalline water ice. The most prominent compounds with such properties are dysprosium titanate (Dy2Ti2O7) and holmium titanate (Ho2Ti2O7). The orientation of the magnetic moments in spin ice resembles the positional organization of hydrogen atoms (more accurately, ionized hydrogen, or protons) in conventional water ice (see figure 1).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arthur Jaffe</span> American mathematician

Arthur Michael Jaffe is an American mathematical physicist at Harvard University, where in 1985 he succeeded George Mackey as the Landon T. Clay Professor of Mathematics and Theoretical Science.

The Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics (SITP) is a research institute within the Physics Department at Stanford University. Led by 16 physics faculty members, the institute conducts research in high energy and condensed matter theoretical physics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nitrogen-vacancy center</span> Point defect in diamonds

The nitrogen-vacancy center is one of numerous photoluminescent point defects in diamond. Its most explored and useful properties include its spin-dependent photoluminescence, and its relatively long (millisecond) spin coherence at room temperature. The NV center energy levels are modified by magnetic fields, electric fields, temperature, and strain, which allow it to serve as a sensor of a variety of physical phenomena. Its atomic size and spin properties can form the basis for useful quantum sensors. It has also been explored for applications in quantum computing, quantum simulation, and spintronics.

John Lawrence CardyFRS is a British–American theoretical physicist. He is best known for his work in theoretical condensed matter physics and statistical mechanics, and in particular for research on critical phenomena and two-dimensional conformal field theory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Duncan Haldane</span> Professor of physics at Princeton University

Frederick Duncan Michael Haldane, known as F. Duncan Haldane, is a British-born physicist who is currently the Sherman Fairchild University Professor of Physics at Princeton University. He is a co-recipient of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics, along with David J. Thouless and J. Michael Kosterlitz.

In quantum mechanics, fractionalization is the phenomenon whereby the quasiparticles of a system cannot be constructed as combinations of its elementary constituents. One of the earliest and most prominent examples is the fractional quantum Hall effect, where the constituent particles are electrons but the quasiparticles carry fractions of the electron charge. Fractionalization can be understood as deconfinement of quasiparticles that together are viewed as comprising the elementary constituents. In the case of spin–charge separation, for example, the electron can be viewed as a bound state of a 'spinon' and a 'holon ', which under certain conditions can become free to move separately.

Roderich Moessner is a theoretical physicist at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden, Germany. His research interests are in condensed matter and materials physics, especially concerning new and topological forms of order, as well as the study of classical and quantum many-body dynamics in and out of equilibrium.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Time crystal</span> Structure that repeats in time; a novel type or phase of non-equilibrium matter

In condensed matter physics, a time crystal is a quantum system of particles whose lowest-energy state is one in which the particles are in repetitive motion. The system cannot lose energy to the environment and come to rest because it is already in its quantum ground state. Time crystals were first proposed theoretically by Frank Wilczek in 2012 as a time-based analogue to common crystals – whereas the atoms in crystals are arranged periodically in space, the atoms in a time crystal are arranged periodically in both space and time. Several different groups have demonstrated matter with stable periodic evolution in systems that are periodically driven. In terms of practical use, time crystals may one day be used as quantum computer memory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quantum scar</span> Phenomenon in quantum systems

In quantum mechanics, quantum scarring is a phenomenon where the eigenstates of a classically chaotic quantum system have enhanced probability density around the paths of unstable classical periodic orbits. The instability of the periodic orbit is a decisive point that differentiates quantum scars from the more trivial observation that the probability density is enhanced in the neighborhood of stable periodic orbits. The latter can be understood as a purely classical phenomenon, a manifestation of the Bohr correspondence principle, whereas in the former, quantum interference is essential. As such, scarring is both a visual example of quantum-classical correspondence, and simultaneously an example of a (local) quantum suppression of chaos.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sergej Flach</span> German theoretical physicist

Sergej Flach is a theoretical physicist whose research has spanned a number of scientific fields in his career. With about 240 publications to his name, his research has been cited over 16,000 times giving him an h-index of 58 and i10-index of 174. He is a member of the American Physical Society, German Physical Society, Korean Physical Society, and New Zealand Institute of Physics. He is an editorial board member of Chaos (2016-) and was an editorial board member of Physical Review E (2009–2011).

Many-body localization (MBL) is a dynamical phenomenon occurring in isolated many-body quantum systems. It is characterized by the system failing to reach thermal equilibrium, and retaining a memory of its initial condition in local observables for infinite times.

Many-body localization (MBL) is a dynamical phenomenon which leads to the breakdown of equilibrium statistical mechanics in isolated many-body systems. Such systems never reach local thermal equilibrium, and retain local memory of their initial conditions for infinite times. One can still define a notion of phase structure in these out-of-equilibrium systems. Strikingly, MBL can even enable new kinds of exotic orders that are disallowed in thermal equilibrium – a phenomenon that goes by the name of localization-protected quantum order (LPQO) or eigenstate order.

Shivaji Lal Sondhi is an Indian-born theoretical physicist who is currently the Wykeham Professor of Physics in the Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics at the University of Oxford, known for contributions to the field of quantum condensed matter. He is son of former Lok Sabha MP Manohar Lal Sondhi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Qaisar Shafi</span> Theoretical physicist

Qaisar Shafi is a Pakistani-American theoretical physicist and the Inaugural Bartol Research Institute Professor of Physics at the University of Delaware.

Krzysztof Sacha is a Polish theoretical physicist. He is currently Professor of Physics at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow.

David Alan Huse is an American theoretical physicist, specializing in statistical physics and condensed matter physics.

Rahul Nandkishore is a physicist and academic. He is an Associate Professor of Physics and Director of the Center for Theory of Quantum Matter at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

References

  1. 1 2 Khemani, Vedika (2012-02-01). "Why a Liberal Arts Education Matters". India Ink. Retrieved 2020-08-20.
  2. "LMG two blaze Harvard trail". www.telegraphindia.com. Retrieved 2020-08-20.
  3. "Senior & Junior Fellows (current academic year)". socfell.fas.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2020-08-20.
  4. Khemani, Vedika; Lazarides, Achilleas; Moessner, Roderich; Sondhi, S. L. (2016-06-21). "Phase Structure of Driven Quantum Systems". Physical Review Letters. 116 (25): 250401. arXiv: 1508.03344 . doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.250401. ISSN   0031-9007.
  5. "Creating time crystals: Physicists create new form of matter that may hold the key to developing quantum machines". ScienceDaily. Retrieved 2020-08-20. Led by Professors of Physics Mikhail Lukin and Eugene Demler, a team consisting of post-doctoral fellows Renate Landig and Georg Kucsko, Junior Fellow Vedika Khemani, and Physics Department graduate students Soonwon Choi, Joonhee Choi and Hengyun Zhou built a quantum system using a small piece of diamond embedded with millions of atomic-scale impurities known as nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers. Other co-authors of the study are Junichi Isoya, Shinobu Onoda,and Hitoshi Sumiya from University of Tsukuba, Takasaki Advanced Research Institute and Sumitomo, Fedor Jelezko from University of Ulm, Curt von Keyserlingk from Princeton University and Norman Y. Yao from UC Berkeley.
  6. 1 2 "Researchers create 'time crystals' envisioned by Princeton scientists". phys.org. Retrieved 2020-08-20. Princeton postdoctoral researcher Curt von Keyserlingk, who contributed additional theoretical work with Khemani and Sondhi, said, "We explained how the time crystal systems lock into the persistent oscillations that signify a spontaneous breaking of time translation symmetry." Additional work by researchers at Microsoft's Station Q and the University of California-Berkeley led to further understanding of time crystals. As a result of these theoretical studies, two groups of experimenters began attempting to build time crystals in the laboratory.
  7. 1 2 "Eternal Change for No Energy: A Time Crystal Finally Made Real". Quanta Magazine. 2021-07-30.
  8. "McMillan Award | ILLINOIS PHYSICS". physics.illinois.edu. Retrieved 2020-08-20.
  9. "2021 George E. Valley Jr. Prize Recipient". www.aps.org. Retrieved 2020-08-20.
  10. "Five Indian Americans Receive US DoE Early Career Award". The Indian Panorama. 2020-07-18. Retrieved 2020-08-20.
  11. Staff Writer. "Several Indian-Americans Among 2020 Sloan Research Fellows | News India Times" . Retrieved 2020-08-20.
  12. "2020 Fellows". sloan.org. Retrieved 2020-08-20.
  13. "WINNERS OF THE 2022 BREAKTHROUGH PRIZES IN LIFE SCIENCES, FUNDAMENTAL PHYSICS AND MATHEMATICS ANNOUNCED". BreakthroughPrize.org. September 9, 2021. Retrieved September 10, 2021. Beyond the main prizes, six New Horizons Prizes, each of $100,000, were distributed between 13 early-career scientists and mathematicians who have already made a substantial impact on their fields....[including a 2022 New Horizons in Physics Prize to Dominic Else, Vedika Khemani, Haruki Watanabe, and Norman Y. Yao for] pioneering theoretical work formulating novel phases of non-equilibrium quantum matter, including time crystals.
  14. "David Coats ('08) and Vedika Khemani ('10) Marry". physics.hmc.edu. Retrieved 2020-08-20.