Quantum condensed matter, broadly defined, constitutes the study of quantum many-body systems sufficiently dense to render correlations relevant. Experimental and theoretical studies of quantum condensed matter reveal remarkable collective phenomena, establish new trends in physics and can lead to engineering applications. Cornerstone examples of cooperative quantum condensed matter behavior include superfluidity of helium, field effects on the electron gas at semiconductor interfaces, the alignment of spins in ferromagnetic materials, the pairing of electrons in superconductors and quantum degeneracy of atomic gases in optical traps.

Our group uses advances in computational techniques to connect quantum models and experiments on quantum condensed matter systems. Examples of recent topics of interest include:

Quantum Hall Rotons: Science Perspectives

Optical Lattice Supersolids: Nature News and Views

Cooper Pairing of Composite Fermions: Nature News and Views

Dispersion of the Excitations of Fractional Quantum Hall States,
I. V. Kukushkin, J. H. Smet, V. W. Scarola, V. Umansky, and K. von Klitzing,
Science 324 , 1044 (2009). [ Science Magazine ]

Quantum Phases of the Extended Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian:
The Possibility of a Supersolid State of Cold Atoms in Optical Lattices,
V. W. Scarola and S. Das Sarma,
Phys. Rev. Lett. 95 , 033003 (2005).
[cond-mat/0503378 ,pdf ]

Cooper Instability of Composite Fermions,
V. W. Scarola, K. Park, and J.K. Jain,
Nature 406 , 863 (2000).
[cond-mat/0012030 ,pdf ]