Vidya Madhavan is an Indian American physicist who is Professor of Condensed Matter at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research considers the spin and charge of quantum materials. She combines high resolution characterization techniques with precise fabrication and growth techniques. She was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2015.

Vidya Madhavan
Alma materIndian Institutes of Technology
Boston University
Scientific career
InstitutionsBoston College
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
University of California, Berkeley

Early life and education edit

Madhavan studied metallurgical engineering at the Indian Institutes of Technology.[1] She remained there for her graduate studies, where she worked on solid state physics and materials science.[2] She moved to the United States for her doctoral research, where she joined Boston University.[3] After earning her PhD, Madhavan joined the University of California, Berkeley as a postdoctoral researcher.[citation needed]

Research and career edit

In 2002, Madhavan was appointed to the faculty at Boston College, where she found that phonons (lattice vibrations) were involved in superconductivity.[4] She moved to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign as a professor in 2014.[citation needed] Her research considers the interaction between spin, charge and structure in quantum materials. She has developed (spin-polarized) scanning tunnelling microscopy to understand emergent phenomena in unconventional superconductors, topological systems and two-dimensional materials. She has studied unconventional superconductors (with a focus on chiral superconductors), which maintain their superconductivity when in the presence of high magnetic fields likely due to the presence of Majorana particles on their surfaces. Madhavan used STM to identify these Majorana quasiparticles on the surface of uranium ditelluride.[5][6]

Topological insulators exhibit spin momentum locking, a quantum phenomenon in which the spin of an electron depends on its direction of travel. Madhavan has observed spin-polarized tunnelling in anti-feromagnets.[7]

Madhavan has pursued quantum systems with long lifetimes for quantum information science. She is particularly interested in Mott insulators, which can be fabricated using exfoliation and controlled using lithography. She has demonstrated that they can achieve lifetimes of a few seconds at room temperature.[8]

Awards and honors edit

Selected publications edit

  • Madhavan V V; Chen W; Jamneala T; Crommie MF; Wingreen NS (1 April 1998). "Tunneling into a single magnetic atom: spectroscopic evidence of the kondo resonance". Science. 280 (5363): 567–569. Bibcode:1998Sci...280..567M. doi:10.1126/SCIENCE.280.5363.567. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 9554843. Wikidata Q32066854.
  • Hoffman JE; Hudson EW; Lang KM; Madhavan V; Eisaki H; Uchida S; Davis JC (1 January 2002). "A four unit cell periodic pattern of quasi-particle states surrounding vortex cores in Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+delta". Science. 295 (5554): 466–469. arXiv:cond-mat/0201348. doi:10.1126/SCIENCE.1066974. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 11799234. Wikidata Q46861234.
  • Lin Jiao; Sean Howard; Sheng Ran; et al. (25 March 2020). "Chiral superconductivity in heavy-fermion metal UTe2". Nature. 579 (7800): 523–527. arXiv:1908.02846. doi:10.1038/S41586-020-2122-2. ISSN 1476-4687. PMID 32214254. Wikidata Q90665382.

References edit

  1. ^ Communications, Grainger Engineering Office of Marketing and. "Vidya Madhavan". iquist.illinois.edu. Retrieved 2024-05-08.
  2. ^ Anecdotes and Science: Musings on My Career Path by Prof Vidya Madhavan | University of Illinois. Retrieved 2024-05-08 – via www.youtube.com.
  3. ^ Communications, Grainger Engineering Office of Marketing and. "Vidya Madhavan". physics.illinois.edu. Retrieved 2024-05-08.
  4. ^ "Boston College physicists find new explanation for superconductivity's 'glue'". EurekAlert!. Retrieved 2024-05-08.
  5. ^ Communications, Grainger Engineering Office of Marketing and. "New measurements reveal evidence of elusive particles in a newly-discovered superconductor". grainger.illinois.edu. Retrieved 2024-05-08.
  6. ^ Suplee, Anne. "The Many Wonders of Uranium Ditelluride - UMD Physics". umdphysics.umd.edu. Retrieved 2024-05-08.
  7. ^ Aishwarya, Anuva; Cai, Zhuozhen; Raghavan, Arjun; Romanelli, Marisa; Wang, Xiaoyu; Li, Xu; Gu, G. D.; Hirsbrunner, Mark; Hughes, Taylor; Liu, Fei; Jiao, Lin; Madhavan, Vidya (2022-09-09). "Spin-selective tunneling from nanowires of the candidate topological Kondo insulator SmB 6". Science. 377 (6611): 1218–1222. arXiv:2209.04993. doi:10.1126/science.abj8765. ISSN 0036-8075.
  8. ^ Aishwarya, Anuva; Raghavan, Arjun; Howard, Sean; Cai, Zhuozhen; Thakur, Gohil S.; Won, Choongjae; Cheong, Sang-Wook; Felser, Claudia; Madhavan, Vidya (2022-05-31). "Long-lifetime spin excitations near domain walls in 1T-TaS 2". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 119 (22). doi:10.1073/pnas.2121740119. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 9296906. PMID 35617430.
  9. ^ "APS Fellow Archive". www.aps.org. Retrieved 2024-05-08.
  10. ^ "Vidya Madhavan". CIFAR. Retrieved 2024-05-08.
  11. ^ "Investigator Detail". www.moore.org. Retrieved 2024-05-08.
  12. ^ "Vidya Madhavan | American Academy of Arts and Sciences". www.amacad.org. 2024-05-08. Retrieved 2024-05-08.
  13. ^ Forrest, Sharita. "Three Illinois scientists elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences". news.illinois.edu. Retrieved 2024-05-08.