Welcome, Prof. Elio König!

Posted on September 12, 2024

Elio König

This fall, condensed matter theorist Elio König returned to Madison as an assistant professor of physics. König began his education in Germany and Italy, earning a PhD from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in 2014. He joined UW–Madison physics as a postdoc with Alex Levchenko, then completed a second postdoc at Rutgers University. Most recently, König held a group leader position at the Max Planck Institute of Solid State Research in Stuttgart, Germany.

Please give an overview of your research.

I’m a condensed matter theorist, so I study the collective behavior of quantum particles in materials. We study electronic collective behavior — behavior of electronic systems — and I study strong correlations in that regard. We do all of this with an eye on what’s happening in the quantum computation world. Our study of quantum materials can serve as a source of inspiration for building useful quantum devices in the context of quantum computers and potentially beyond.

And then reversely, the advances in quantum technology are of great use in our studying of quantum materials. We can use them as new probes, as new experimental techniques, and at the same time there is theoretical and conceptual cross-pollination. I’m inspired by these synergies.

What are one or two main projects your group will work on first?

The main directions that I’m heading in right now are 2D materials and trying to work more into concepts related to or at the interface between quantum materials and quantum information.

In the 2D world, what I’m really fascinated by is frustrated magnetism in these 2D materials, and in particular research on quantum spin liquids. Generally, the idea is to study states of matter beyond the standard concept of spontaneous symmetry breaking. We’re interested in topologically ordered states and quantum order, which is essentially based on the entanglement of many, many particles together. And these states of matter are relevant for topological quantum error correction codes. I think there’s also quite a lot of interest at UW already, both theoretically but also particularly experimentally, in 2D materials and I hope to collaborate with my future colleagues in that regard.

On the side of quantum materials and quantum information theory, there are ongoing projects that I want to extend on. I want to look for new setups for very robust quantum computers and topological quantum computation. At the same time, I want to use devices which are available right now for emulation of quantum many body systems.

What attracted you to Madison and the university?

This question is related to the question: why am I coming back to the States? I very much enjoyed my five years in the States, personally but also scientifically. The main aspect that I find more present in the States than in Europe is a more visionary approach to science. And I think this is also true for UW, so this is something that attracted me to UW. I know the department maybe better than other new faculty and it’s a fantastic place to work. I know that there are very inspiring colleagues, and I hope that there will be a chance to collaborate with them. And finally, Madison is a very nice place to live. I think it’s probably the nicest city of this size that I’ve seen in the States.

What is your favorite element and or elementary particle? [editor’s note: this interview was conducted via Zoom while König was on a cycling trip through the Italian Alps]

I read some previous interviews, so I knew this question was coming. And when I was biking today, I was thinking about it. Given that I’m mountain biking in the Alps and it’s really intense, I decided that oxygen is the element I want to go for. I can’t get enough of it right now. Oxygen is of course a symbol for the life that humans and animals have on this planet. Finally, oxygen is also a symbol for the advances of science and scientific revolutions, for example Lavoisier’s pioneering work in this regard.

What hobbies and interests do you have?

I really enjoy biking — mountain biking and gravel biking in particular. This is the third time that I’m transversing the Alps. I got very much into dancing in the last three years in Stuttgart. I still dance forró, or Brazilian couple dancing, from time to time. I also like playing sports, particularly soccer and squash.

Rogerio Jorge receives first grant as a professor

Posted on September 10, 2024

Rogerio Jorge

Congrats to Prof. Rogerio Jorge who was awarded his first grant as a professor! The three-year, $500,000 National Science Foundation grant, titled “Moment Approach to Multiscale Plasmas,” will be used to fund a graduate student and postdoc on the project.

“Astrophysical plasmas appear in more than 90% of the universe — for example, on the surface of the sun or in the intergalactic medium — and there’s still a lot of things that we don’t understand about them,” Jorge says. “We need to study phenomena in astrophysical plasmas and try to replicate them numerically to better understand them.”

Jorge’s work will focus on the so-called collisionless regime of these plasmas, where particles travel for a long time before experiencing any collision. He says this regime is difficult to model, both experimentally and numerically.

“We’ve proposed a new method that has two parts. The first one is to try to simplify the equations using a reduced model, called a moment model,” Jorge says. “Second, it’s using machine learning to reduce it even more.”

Jorge and his team have the moment model theory ready to be applied. For the machine learning step, they will use JAX, an open-source machine learning framework developed by the DeepMind team at Google that many physicists are starting to use in their research.

Jorge plans to investigate one intriguing phenomenon in collisionless plasmas: how the acceleration of super-thermal particles occurs versus thermodynamic heating. This will help scientists understand how charged particles in a plasma become energized, a phenomenon applicable to both laboratory and astrophysical plasmas. He will also apply this new approach to the problem of magnetic reconnection in collisionless plasmas, a problem he says is difficult to model due to the topology changes that occur in short time scales.

“We need new models to try to handle these complex scenarios without spending months and months on a single simulation,” Jorge says.

NSF grants require investigators to address the broader impacts of their research, defined as “the potential to benefit society and contribute to the achievement of specific, desired societal outcomes.” Jorge plans to work with the department’s Wonders of Physics outreach program to create realistic movies that simulate these astrophysical plasma environments. For example, he hopes to show, in detail, what is happening with magnetic reconnection in auroras or around the surface of the sun, with both using the new code developed through his research.

For this research, Jorge is collaborating with experimentalists at UW-Madison’s WiPPL facilities, and computational plasma physicists at UCLA, MIT, and Princeton.

New Chair to continue department’s strengths, commit to diversity and inclusion

Posted on September 10, 2024

The department of physics is pleased to announce that Prof. Kevin Black has been named new department chair. His three-year term began July 1, 2024, succeeding Prof. Mark Eriksson. Black says he is looking to continue the department’s excellence in its mission of research, teaching, and outreach, and to continue developing an intentional commitment to diversity.

“Under Prof. Eriksson’s leadership, our department has attained near-record highs of faculty members as well as graduate and undergraduate students, which will lead to significant successes in our research program,” Black says. “Now, we need to continue to focus on making a commitment to diversity an active component of what we do as a department.”

Two pillars of the department’s mission have always been research and teaching, and Black wants to sustain successes in those areas. He begins his term with over a dozen faculty members who have joined the department in the previous three years, bringing the total number of professors to 56. These faculty members represent a range of seniority levels and a breadth of research fields. He also begins at a time when more students than ever are being taught in department courses.

“Research and education are the core values of a research university,” Black says. “We want to do excellent, cutting-edge research and we want to teach the next generation of scientists.”

Black’s focus on diversity and climate efforts represents a continuing effort from leadership before him. The need to add diversity as a pillar of the department’s mission became evident to him when he saw the list of department chairs who came before him, and he noted that he was the 33^rd white male chair out of 35. He acknowledges the challenge that the broader field of physics faces, and specifically at UW–Madison: both lack adequate representation of students from marginalized groups.

“We need to improve diversity at all levels in this department,” Black says. “There’s no magic wand. It takes a concerted, sustained effort and we need to make it a priority going forward.”

Lastly, Black also believes that the department’s commitment to educational outreach is critical to fulfilling the Wisconsin Idea, the idea that education should influence people’s lives beyond the boundaries of the university. The department has a long-standing tradition of engaging in outreach, including over 100 years of running the Physics Museum and over four decades of running The Wonders of Physics outreach program.

“Physics outreach can inspire the next generation to think about the natural universe and think about how things work,” Black says. “In a world which is increasingly driven by soundbites and nonsense on the internet, it’s crucial to encourage and guide young students to think rationally about science and formulate questions and opinions.”

Black joined the faculty as a full professor in 2018 and works with the high energy experiment group on the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at CERN. He had previously been a professor at Boston University. Black earned a bachelor’s degree at Wesleyan University where he worked in an atomic physics lab. He has a doctorate in physics from Boston University, and much of his thesis work was completed on the Tevatron at Fermilab. He was then a postdoc and research scientist at Harvard University, where his work transitioned to the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.