Searching for New Particles in Quantum Condensed Matter

Vito Scarola

Department of Physics, Virginia Tech.

Studies of solids aim to explore the role of interactions in creating novel and potentially useful quantum states.  Unwanted dirt and disorder in ordinary solids complicate the identification of quantum effects.  But semiconductors and other new materials, carefully designed to be clean, can reveal rich quantum collective behavior, including new types of emergent particles.  Such collective excitations can exhibit fascinating particle-like properties, for example, fractional charge.  My group builds and studies models of dense quantum matter to see if these interesting new particles can be seen in laboratories.  I will talk about examples of our work on particles such as quantum Hall rotons and Majorana fermions, as emergent particles in semiconductors.  I will also discuss how time spent in Bennett Goldberg's lab as an undergraduate at BU working on semiconductor processing helped prepare me for a career studying related materials.