Research

One of the central themes of modern physics is the quest for the identification of fundamental constituents of matter (particles). Although this reductionist approach provides one part of the puzzle necessary to understand the physical world, an equally important issue is to understand how particles interact with each other since it is the interactions between particles that lead to the emergence of the overwhelming complexity of states of matter found around us. As such, it becomes obvious that a collection of interacting particles can be much more than just the sum of its constituents. Indeed, interactions between particles can lead to breaking conservation laws, the emergence of new collective excitations, and the proliferation of exotic states of matter. The study of emergence and competition between different collective quantum phases of matter and their, often topological, excitations is a key focus area of condensed matter physics.

At the heart of my interest is the experimental study of topologically correlated quantum matter. Most of the experiments are performed in state-of-the-art, large-scale facilities such as synchrotrons, neutron sources, or high magnetic field facilities. Thanks to close collaboration with the Dresden High Magnetic Field Laboratory, I can focus on the study of properties of quantum matter under extreme conditions: sub-Kelvin temperatures and high magnetic fields up to 70 Tesla. Although at first glance, performing experiments in such extreme environments seems impractical, it grants access to some of the most fascinating and potentially technologically relevant physical phenomena of modern physics, including unconventional superconductivity, electron fractionalization, and even access to quantum violations of classical conservation laws—quantum anomalies.