Tailoring Quantum Matter on the Flatland

Designer materials are a key research subject in condensed matter physics offering great opportunities to explore emerging new physics and provide pathways to many-body quantum phenomena that are exceedingly difficult to find intrinsically in isolated materials.

The key challenge is to retain the individual quantum ground states in the different components in hybrid materials, while simultaneously tuning the strength of the interactions between them. This requires careful nanofabrication and the complexity of such systems makes further progress difficult.

In this proposal, I will use vertical heterostructures of van der Waals (vdW) materials as a flexible platform to engineer elusive quantum states of matter.

The general goal of this proposal is the experimental realization of two-dimensional (2D) topological superconductors in vdW heterostructures, and to study the resulting emergent phases of matter.

Subsequently, I will use external stimuli (magnetic field, temperature, and chemistry, external gate) to manipulate them.

I will couple moir? physics with topological superconductivity and show how the moir? is an external factor that allows additional control over the topologically superconducting phase.

Finally, I will combine 2D topological superconductors with ferroelectric materials to fabricate nanoscale reprogrammable topological circuits This will allow controlling topological superconductivity via locally applied electric fields in the heterostructure.

I will use molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) to fabricate high-quality 2D vdW heterostructures and probe the properties of the resulting emergent phases using low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy (LT-STM) and spectroscopy (STS).

The combination of MBE-STM in ultra-high vacuum (UHV) allows me to fabricate extremely clean, atomically well-defined, chemically tunable heterostructures and gives me unprecedented access to their atomic-scale structure and electronic properties.