William P. Halperin | |
---|---|
Born | Ottawa | July 16, 1945
Nationality | Canadian-American |
Occupation(s) | Physicist, academic, and researcher |
Awards | National Research Council Fellowship (Canada) Alfred P. Sloan Fellow Fellow, American Physical Society E. LeRoy Hall, Distinguished Teaching Award Fritz London Memorial Prize |
Academic background | |
Education | B.Sc. M.Sc. Ph.D. |
Alma mater | Queen’s University University of Toronto Cornell University |
Academic work | |
Institutions | Northwestern University |
William P. Halperin is a Canadian-American physicist,academic,and researcher. He is the Orrington Lunt Professor of Physics at Northwestern University. [1]
Halperin is an experimentalist in condensed matter physics specializing in ultra-low temperature investigations of quantum liquids and solids,notably liquid and solid 3He (the light isotope of helium),superconducting quantum materials and unconventional superconductivity,magnetic compounds,highly porous materials including aerogels,porous glasses and cements. He has developed specialized acoustic techniques for very low temperatures as well as applications of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) for very high magnetic fields. [2]
Halperin is a fellow and life member of the American Physical Society (APS) and life member of the Division of Condensed Matter Physics (DCMP) of the APS. He was elected chair of DCMP in 2017, [3] and was elected to the Administrative Council of the APS for the period 2020–2024. He has served as an Editor for Progress in Low Temperature Physics (volumes 14–16). [4]
Halperin was born in Ottawa on July 16,1945. He attended the Kingston Collegiate and Vocational Institute in Kingston Ontario and the Lycée Lavoisier in Paris. After receiving his bachelor's degree from Queen's University in 1967 and his master's degree from the University of Toronto in 1968,he moved to the United States,earning his Doctorate in 1975 under the direction of advisor Robert C. Richardson at Cornell University. [1]
Halperin started his career as an assistant professor at Northwestern University in 1975,and was promoted to associate professor in 1981,and to professor in 1986. From 1979 till 1985,he served as resident associate at Argonne National Laboratory. He also held a brief appointment in 1984 at the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique as Chercheur Associéin Grenoble,France. [1]
Halperin was appointed as chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy from 1991 till 1996,and Director of the Integrated Science Program at Northwestern University from 1998 to 2003. [1]
Halperin's research is focused on condensed matter physics,with a particular attention to ultra-low temperature investigations of quantum liquids and solids,notably liquid and solid 3He (the light isotope of helium),unconventional superconductivity,magnetic compounds,highly porous materials including aerogels,porous glasses and cements. His acoustic and nuclear magnetic resonance discoveries include transverse sound and order parameter collective modes in superfluid 3He, [5] quantum size effects in nano-particles, [6] and for solid 3He,the first observation of nuclear magnetic order.
Halperin constructed a Pomeranchuk refrigerator, [7] and with this device in 1974 he reached the lowest temperature achieved at that time in liquid 3He,at a temperature of 0.0007 K. [8] He invented a thermodynamic temperature scale [9] leading to his discovery of antiferromagnetism in solid 3He. This was the first observation of magnetic order in a nuclear system. [8] Otherwise magnetic order was only known to exist among electrons.
Halperin has studied magnetic and acoustic properties of the superfluid phases of 3He,an unconventional,topological superfluid of helium atom pairs at low temperatures below 0.0025 K,discovered by Osheroff,Richardson,and Lee [10] and confirmed by Halperin and coworkers. [7] There are two superfluid phases in zero magnetic field A and B phases. The A phase is a chiral phase that breaks time reversal symmetry. The B phase breaks relative spin-orbit symmetry and is isotropic. The NMR frequency shifts in the A phase were accounted for by Leggett [11] within a framework of the theory of electron superconductivity by Bardeen,Cooper,and Schrieffer (1957). [12]
According to an accepted point of view at the time,the direction of polarization of sound waves in liquids must be aligned with their direction of propagation,so-called longitudinal sound. However,Halperin and coworkers,notably with his student Yoonseok Lee,discovered that sound with transverse polarization propagates robustly in superfluid 3He,rather similar to the well-known propagation of electromagnetic waves of light. This was the first demonstration of propagating transverse sound waves in any liquid. [13] They also discovered that these transverse sound waves in 3He exhibit Faraday rotation of their polarization in the presence of a magnetic field. The analogous behavior for light waves was discovered by Michael Faraday in 1845. [14] These observations,replicated in superfluid helium,are in close agreement with theoretical predictions by Moores and Sauls. [15] The phenomenon is closely related to an as yet experimentally unconfirmed prediction by Landau (1957) [16] that transverse sound waves might propagate in normal liquid 3He in its degenerate Fermi liquid state at temperatures above those of its superfluid phases. Superconductivity in some quantum materials,such as the compound UPt3,is thought to be closely related to superfluidity in 3He,exhibiting chiral symmetry and breaking time reversal symmetry. [17] [18]
A new area of research in quantum fluids opened with the discovery of impurity phases of superfluid 3He by Parpia [19] and by Halperin [20] described theoretically by Sauls. [21] These are superfluid phases of liquid 3He imbibed in highly porous silica aerogel. It was found that the stability of A and B superfluids could be engineered with anisotropy introduced with strain in the aerogel,positive strain favoring stabilization of the chiral A-phase and negative strain stabilizing the isotropic B-phase. [22]
Superfluid helium-4 is the superfluid form of helium-4,an isotope of the element helium. A superfluid is a state of matter in which matter behaves like a fluid with zero viscosity. The substance,which looks like a normal liquid,flows without friction past any surface,which allows it to continue to circulate over obstructions and through pores in containers which hold it,subject only to its own inertia.
Unconventional superconductors are materials that display superconductivity which does not conform to conventional BCS theory or its extensions.
In chemistry,thermodynamics,and other related fields,a phase transition is the physical process of transition between one state of a medium and another. Commonly the term is used to refer to changes among the basic states of matter:solid,liquid,and gas,and in rare cases,plasma. A phase of a thermodynamic system and the states of matter have uniform physical properties. During a phase transition of a given medium,certain properties of the medium change as a result of the change of external conditions,such as temperature or pressure. This can be a discontinuous change;for example,a liquid may become gas upon heating to its boiling point,resulting in an abrupt change in volume. The identification of the external conditions at which a transformation occurs defines the phase transition point.
Liquid helium is a physical state of helium at very low temperatures at standard atmospheric pressures. Liquid helium may show superfluidity.
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 . 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"
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.
In physics,a quantum vortex represents a quantized flux circulation of some physical quantity. In most cases,quantum vortices are a type of topological defect exhibited in superfluids and superconductors. The existence of quantum vortices was first predicted by Lars Onsager in 1949 in connection with superfluid helium. Onsager reasoned that quantisation of vorticity is a direct consequence of the existence of a superfluid order parameter as a spatially continuous wavefunction. Onsager also pointed out that quantum vortices describe the circulation of superfluid and conjectured that their excitations are responsible for superfluid phase transitions. These ideas of Onsager were further developed by Richard Feynman in 1955 and in 1957 were applied to describe the magnetic phase diagram of type-II superconductors by Alexei Alexeyevich Abrikosov. In 1935 Fritz London published a very closely related work on magnetic flux quantization in superconductors. London's fluxoid can also be viewed as a quantum vortex.
A Josephson junction is a quantum mechanical device which is made of two superconducting electrodes separated by a barrier. A π Josephson junction is a Josephson junction in which the Josephson phase φ equals π in the ground state,i.e. when no external current or magnetic field is applied.
Second sound is a quantum mechanical phenomenon in which heat transfer occurs by wave-like motion,rather than by the more usual mechanism of diffusion. Its presence leads to a very high thermal conductivity. It is known as "second sound" because the wave motion of entropy and temperature is similar to the propagation of pressure waves in air (sound). The phenomenon of second sound was first described by Lev Landau in 1941.
In a standard superconductor,described by a complex field fermionic condensate wave function,vortices carry quantized magnetic fields because the condensate wave function is invariant to increments of the phase by . There a winding of the phase by creates a vortex which carries one flux quantum. See quantum vortex.
Subir Sachdev is Herchel Smith Professor of Physics at Harvard University specializing in condensed matter. He was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2014,and received the Lars Onsager Prize from the American Physical Society and the Dirac Medal from the ICTP in 2018. He was a co-editor of the Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics from 2017–2019.
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.
In condensed matter physics,a quantum spin liquid is a phase of matter that can be formed by interacting quantum spins in certain magnetic materials. Quantum spin liquids (QSL) are generally characterized by their long-range quantum entanglement,fractionalized excitations,and absence of ordinary magnetic order.
In condensed matter physics,the quantum dimer magnet state is one in which quantum spins in a magnetic structure entangle to form a singlet state. These entangled spins act as bosons and their excited states (triplons) can undergo Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC). The quantum dimer system was originally proposed by Matsubara and Matsuda as a mapping of the lattice Bose gas to the quantum antiferromagnet. Quantum dimer magnets are often confused as valence bond solids;however,a valence bond solid requires the breaking of translational symmetry and the dimerizing of spins. In contrast,quantum dimer magnets exist in crystal structures where the translational symmetry is inherently broken. There are two types of quantum dimer models:the XXZ model and the weakly-coupled dimer model. The main difference is the regime in which BEC can occur. For the XXZ model,the BEC occurs upon cooling without a magnetic field and manifests itself as a symmetric dome in the field versus temperature phase diagram centered about H = 0. The weakly-coupled dimer model does not magnetically order in zero magnetic field,but instead orders upon the closing of the spin gap,where the BEC regime begins and is a dome centered at non-zero field.
Thierry Giamarchi is a French physicist.
An electron-on-helium qubit is a quantum bit for which the orthonormal basis states |0⟩and |1⟩are defined by quantized motional states or alternatively the spin states of an electron trapped above the surface of liquid helium. The electron-on-helium qubit was proposed as the basic element for building quantum computers with electrons on helium by Platzman and Dykman in 1999.
GrigoryEfimovich Volovik is a Russian theoretical physicist,who specializes in condensed matter physics. He is known for the Volovik effect.
YuryMikhailovich Bunkov is a Russian experimental physicist,specializing in condensed matter physics. He is known as one of the co-discoverers of the quantum spin liquid state.
Dale J. Van Harlingen is an American condensed matter physicist.
Quantum turbulence involves the chaotic dynamics of many interacting quantum vortices. In highly excited bulk superfluid,many vortex lines interact with each other forming quantum turbulent states. By introducing tight confinement along one direction the Kelvin wave excitations can be strongly suppressed,favouring vortex alignment with the axis of tight confinement. Vortex dynamics enters a regime of effective 2D motion,equivalent to point vortices moving on a plane. In general,2D quantum turbulence (2DQT) can exhibit complex phenomenology involving coupled vortices and sound in compressible superfluids. The quantum vortex dynamics can exhibit signatures of turbulence including a Kolmogorov −5/3 power law,a quantum manifestation of the inertial transport of energy to large scales observed in classical fluids,known as an inverse energy cascade.