Associate Professor Luiz Santos has just recevied 2 grants recognizing his work at the forefront of quantum materials research. The first is a prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER award, titled “Developing New Paradigms for Hybrid Light-Matter Quantum Materials,” which recognizes early-career researchers with ambitious scientific ideas in their field. The second award is a Department of Energy Award, titled “Theory of Topological and Competing Orders in Quantum Materials,” which continues his prior work indentifying novel states of matter with non-trivial topological order. Such materials are being used in the development of quantum computers.
Specifically, Prof. Santos’ research explores a new frontier of topological and competing electronic orders in van der Waals quantum materials. These systems offer exceptional tunability—through layer composition, twist angle, and external fields—but their intricate band structures pose significant challenges for modeling correlated quantum phenomena. This project aims to optimize the interplay between electronic band structure and interactions in moiré materials, a key ingredient for stabilizing topological orders. It develops a theoretical framework for fractionalized phases with Abelian statistics by characterizing new classes of composite fermions emerging in systems with strong lattice effects, where electronic bands are characterized by non-uniform Berry curvature, and nontrivial quantum geometry. These investigations are expected to shed light on the organizing principles of fractional matter and coexisting or competing phases across transition metal dichalcogenide and graphene heterostructures and may uncover unanticipated pathways for their realization.