Colloquium

•  Alexander Watson, University of Minnesota
•  Mathematics of novel materials from atomic to macroscopic scales
•  01/13/2023
•  4:10 PM - 5:00 PM
•  C304 Wells Hall (Virtual Meeting Link)
•  Sabrina M Walton (waltons3@msu.edu)

Materials' electronic properties arise from the complex dynamics of electrons flowing through the material. These dynamics are quantum mechanical and present many surprising phenomena without classical analogues. I will present analytical and numerical work clarifying these dynamics in three novel materials which have attracted intense theoretical and experimental attention in recent years: graphene, the first 2D'' material, whose electronic properties can be captured by an effective Dirac equation, topological insulators, whose edges host surprising one-way edge currents, and twisted bilayer graphene, an aperiodic material whose properties can be captured by an effective system of Dirac equations with periodic coefficients. I will then present ongoing and future work focused on further clarifying the properties of twisted bilayer graphene, which was recently shown to superconduct when twisted to the magic'' twist angle 1 degree.

Contact

Department of Mathematics
Michigan State University