Maia Garcia Vergniory is a Spanish computational physicist who is a group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids.[1] Her work in topological quantum chemistry investigates the phases of topological materials.[2] She was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2022.[3]

Maia Vergniory
Born
Maia Garcia Vergniory
Alma materUniversity of the Basque Country
Joseph Fourier University
Scientific career
FieldsElectronic structure
Magnetism
Spin
Metals
Topological insulators[1]
InstitutionsDonostia International Physics Center
Ikerbasque
Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids
ThesisGorputz anitzen eta banda-egituraren efektuak egoera elektroniko kitzikatuen zein oio higikorren eta gainazal solidoen arteko elkerrekintzaren gainean (2008)
Doctoral advisorJose Maria Pitarke de la Torre and Pedro Miguel Echenique
Websitemaiagv-dipc.org Edit this at Wikidata

Early life and education

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Vergniory was born in Getxo.[4] She was a doctoral researcher at the University of the Basque Country. Her research considered many-body effects on the interactions between excited electronic states and the mobile ions on surfaces.[5] She started working on topological materials in 2012.[6]

Research and career

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Vergniory worked as a research fellow at the Ikerbasque and the Donostia International Physics Center.[7] She studied novel materials and computational strategies to realise new condensed matter systems.[8]

Verginory became interested in the design of new topological materials with optimised functional properties.[9][10] Topological materials are insulators in the bulk but conductive on their surfaces.[11] The conducting channels that facilitate current flow are robust and independent of size.

Vergniory studied the Inorganic Crystal Structure Database to identify topologically nontrivial materials.[12] She designed a computational effort to simulate real materials and determine whether or not they showed topological properties.[13] This included complex theoretical analysis that could classify topological phases, and information from materials scientists on whether materials were suitable or not.[14] Vergniory uses her supercomputers to perform her calculations ab initio.[6] In an interview with Physics World, Verginory said that she had been surprised by how many materials she identified with topological properties.[14] As an output of this work, the high-order topological insulator Bi4Br4 was synthesised and studied experimentally. She showed that if it was possible to identify the symmetry of the crystalline symmetry of a material, she could easily anticipate the behaviour of the charge.[14] She has since started investigating organic materials.[14] She believes that topological crystals with a chiral structure will display several exotic physical phenomena.[15]

Awards and honours

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Selected publications

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  • Frank Schindler; Ashley M Cook; Maia G Vergniory; Zhijun Wang; Stuart Parkin; Andrei Bernevig; Titus Neupert (1 June 2018). "Higher-order topological insulators". Science Advances. 4 (6): eaat0346. arXiv:1708.03636. doi:10.1126/SCIADV.AAT0346. ISSN 2375-2548. PMC 5983919. PMID 29869644. Wikidata Q55280643.
  • Barry Bradlyn; Luis Elcoro; Jennifer Cano; M G Vergniory; Zhijun Wang; Claudia Felser; Mois Ilia Aroyo; B Andrei Bernevig (1 July 2017). "Topological quantum chemistry". Nature. 547 (7663): 298–305. arXiv:1703.02050. doi:10.1038/NATURE23268. ISSN 1476-4687. PMID 28726818. Wikidata Q59066613. (erratum)
  • Barry Bradlyn; Jennifer Cano; Zhijun Wang; M G Vergniory; C Felser; R J Cava; B Andrei Bernevig (21 July 2016). "Beyond Dirac and Weyl fermions: Unconventional quasiparticles in conventional crystals". Science. 353 (6299): aaf5037. arXiv:1603.03093. doi:10.1126/SCIENCE.AAF5037. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 27445310. Zbl 1355.81174. Wikidata Q53057429.

References

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  1. ^ a b Maia Vergniory publications indexed by Google Scholar  
  2. ^ Maia Vergniory publications from Europe PubMed Central
  3. ^ a b "APS fellowship awarded to Maia G. Vergniory". EurekAlert!. Retrieved 2022-11-09.
  4. ^ ""Nuestro logro ha sido desarrollar la teoría que ganó el Premio Nobel"". El Diario Vasco (in Spanish). 2017-07-20. Retrieved 2022-11-09.
  5. ^ "Gorputz anitzen eta banda-egituraren efektuak egoera elektroniko kitzikatuen zein oio higikorren eta gainazal solidoen arteko elkerrekintzaren gainean | WorldCat.org". www.worldcat.org. Retrieved 2022-11-09.
  6. ^ a b "Maia G. Vergniory: "Se han encontrado 200 materiales topológicos, pero aún no tenemos el candidato ideal"". Quo (in Spanish). 2018-12-07. Retrieved 2022-11-09.
  7. ^ "Department of Applied Physics Research Seminar: Maia G. Vergniory | Aalto University". www.aalto.fi. 29 March 2021. Retrieved 2022-11-09.
  8. ^ "Research". This is the website of Maia G. Vergniory. 2020-04-22. Retrieved 2022-11-09.
  9. ^ Goikoetxea, Jakes (10 June 2022). "Ezezaguna bai, exotikoa ez". Berria (in Basque). Retrieved 2022-11-09.
  10. ^ ""Para el ordenador cuántico queda como mínimo una década"". Agencia SINC (in Spanish). Retrieved 2022-11-09.
  11. ^ "Donostia International Physics Center –2018/09/05 Maia Garcia Vergniory in the cover of Nature Physics". dipc.ehu.eus. Retrieved 2022-11-09.
  12. ^ Vergniory, Maia G.; Wieder, Benjamin J.; Elcoro, Luis; Parkin, Stuart S. P.; Felser, Claudia; Bernevig, B. Andrei; Regnault, Nicolas (2022-05-20). "All topological bands of all nonmagnetic stoichiometric materials". Science. 376 (6595): eabg9094. arXiv:2105.09954. doi:10.1126/science.abg9094. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 35587971. S2CID 235125620.
  13. ^ "Topological Materials Database". topologicalquantumchemistry.com. Retrieved 2022-11-09.
  14. ^ a b c d "A periodic table for topological materials". Physics World. 2022-11-01. Retrieved 2022-11-09.
  15. ^ Schröter, Niels B. M.; Pei, Ding; Vergniory, Maia G.; Sun, Yan; Manna, Kaustuv; de Juan, Fernando; Krieger, Jonas A.; Süss, Vicky; Schmidt, Marcus; Dudin, Pavel; Bradlyn, Barry; Kim, Timur K.; Schmitt, Thorsten; Cacho, Cephise; Felser, Claudia (August 2019). "Chiral topological semimetal with multifold band crossings and long Fermi arcs". Nature Physics. 15 (8): 759–765. arXiv:1812.03310. Bibcode:2019NatPh..15..759S. doi:10.1038/s41567-019-0511-y. ISSN 1745-2481. S2CID 118941556.
  16. ^ "Donostia International Physics Center –2017/11/22 - Maia García-Vergniory, researcher from DIPC and UPV/EHU, winner of the Prize L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science". dipc.ehu.es. Retrieved 2022-11-09.
  17. ^ Taibo, Por Marieta (2017-11-23). "Estas científicas pueden cambiar tu vida". Cosmopolitan (in European Spanish). Retrieved 2022-11-09.