Sarang Gopalakrishnan
Princeton University, NJ·Physics
Electrons are light and fast. When a voltage or a light pulse pushes them away from their equilibrium state, they reorganize almost instantly and settle into a new steady state.
- Fields
Physics
Materials Science
- Topics
nonlinear response
nonequilibrium quantum dynamics
quantum materials
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2028
What they work on
- Predict how clean and disordered superconductors respond when driven strongly, and show how these nonlinear signals could measure the lifetimes of excitations and test whether energy stays localized.
- Determine how nonlinear response could detect disorder-driven localization in Luttinger liquids, the theory of interacting electrons in one-dimensional wires, and how it could characterize the spin-incoherent Luttinger liquid with and without disorder.
- Develop a precise way to characterize quantum chaos and eigenstate thermalization (how isolated quantum systems act as their own heat bath), and identify testable signatures of these ideas in present-day nonequilibrium experiments.
- Establish how nonlinear response could give insight into strange-metal phases, which lack well-defined particle-like excitations, and use out-of-equilibrium predictions to distinguish between theoretical models that agree at equilibrium.
More about the research
Ultrafast lasers can now catch electrons during that brief far-from-equilibrium window. However, apart from isolated examples, there is no theory for interpreting what these experiments reveal about the quantum behavior of electrons. Building that theory could clarify how materials conduct charge and heat, how magnetism works, and which materials might have new functions.
Why it matters
Ultrafast laser experiments on quantum materials are producing data that current theory cannot fully interpret. A framework for nonlinear response would let experimenters use these measurements to tell competing models apart and to characterize materials such as superconductors and strange metals. This understanding could eventually guide the search for materials with new functions related to charge transport, heat flow and magnetism.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Qimiao Si
Rice University, TX·Physics
Analyze quantum criticality in heavy fermion metals, where electrons behave as if very heavy, focusing on new regimes marked by singular charge responses near zero-temperature phase transitions.
Nir Navon
Yale University, CT·Physics
Test whether short-time spectral properties, measured with radio-frequency probes of synthetic spins, already encode the final outcome of thermalization in a strongly interacting ultracold Fermi gas.
Ruichao Ma
Purdue University, IN·Physics·Early-career
Develop a dynamically tunable broadband bath, an engineered reservoir the circuit can exchange energy with on demand, and use it to stabilize and manipulate collective photon phases in superconducting circuits.
The school
Princeton University: 26 labs on PI Pages, $559M a year on research, 403 research doctorates a year.
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