Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Quantum materials exhibit exotic effects widely expected to underpin revolutionary advances across diverse technologies, including high-performance batteries and supercapacitors, scalable quantum computers, novel architectures to improve conventional computer microprocessors and memory, superconductors to enhance the electrical grid and high-speed transportation, ultra-sensitive magnetic sensors to image brain activity with high resolution, and many others. Elucidating these effects is difficult because they emerge from complex correlations between electrons and cannot be understood in terms of the behaviour of individual electrons. Current advanced spectroscopic tools such as scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) interrogate electrons individually and yield only indirect information about electron correlations.     To address this critical gap, we will study quantum materials with a novel technique - the first of its kind in the world - to directly probe electron correlations: coincidence two-electron angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (2e-ARPES). This approach uniquely combines coincidence electron-pair detection with high momentum-, energy-, and dynamic time-resolution. Specifically, to achieve the anticipated scientific breakthroughs, the research program will target four research themes: (1) cuprate superconductors and charge density waves systems; (2) multi-band iron-based superconductors; (3) optical tailoring of quantum matter; and (4) Majorana modes in topological insulators and superconductors. The goal is that the knowledge developed through this research program may allow us to precisely engineer quantum materials and optimize their properties to serve as the foundation for next-generation technologies.     The unprecedented insights into the physics and application of quantum materials - allowing us to more fully understand the emergent phenomena and harness them into new technological capabilities - will advance UBC and Canada to the very forefront of this exciting and rapidly growing field.