JQI Fellow Sankar Das Sarma Elected to the National Academy of Sciences

JQI Fellow Sankar Das Sarma has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences for his outstanding accomplishments in quantum science. 

He is among the 120 American and 25 international scientists selected this year “in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.” He joins fewer than 2,800 American scientists from all disciplines who have been chosen by academy members for outstanding contributions.

The recognition underscores UMD’s position as a leading global center of quantum science and technology, with more than 200 dedicated researchers, key partnerships with the National Institute of Standards and Technology and other federal agencies, and several on-campus research institutes.

“This recognition is testament to his pathfinding work in condensed matter theory," says JQI Fellow Steven Rolston, who is also the chair of the UMD Department of Physics. "As one of the founding members of JQI, he has embodied the spirit of the institute with contributions spanning condensed matter and AMO physics and its intersection with quantum information."

Das Sarma, who is also the Richard E. Prange Chair of Physics and director of the Condensed Matter Theory Center, is internationally known for groundbreaking work on the theory of topological quantum computation, a field that is poised to dramatically expand the capabilities of future designs and devices.

He earned his Ph.D. in physics from Brown University, studying under the late UMD alum John Quinn (Ph.D. ’58, physics). Das Sarma has been a faculty member at UMD since 1980. He was elected fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) in 1992, was named a Distinguished University Professor in 1995, and received the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences’ Board of Visitors Distinguished Faculty Award in 2013. 

His research explores the quantum properties of condensed matter systems and theoretical predictions for how those properties could be used to create a stable, fault-tolerant basis for a quantum computer.

Conventional computers are based on the on-off, 0-or-1, switch-like electrical nature of transistors; they store and process data in the form of binary digits (bits). Quantum computers, by contrast, exploit a superposition of many states at once. That is, a quantum bit (qubit) can have a value of 0, 1 or some combination of the two.

Qubits can be stored in quantum states of superconductors, ions, atoms or photons. In each case, however, those fragile states are notoriously prone to errors known as decoherence, even if carefully protected from the environment.

More than 20 years ago, Das Sarma, with others, theorized that robust qubits could emerge in the form of unusual collective excitations in certain solid-state materials. The reliance on the geometry of these excitations along with operations knotting them together provides a quantum computing platform potentially orders of magnitude less likely to have errors than current methods.

That research, first published in 2005 in the journal Physical Review Letters, essentially created the theoretical basis for the entire field of topological computing and proposed a way to test it.

This is just one aspect of Das Sarma’s extensive work in diverse areas of condensed-matter physics. He has published over 750 papers, garnering more than 100,000 citations.

This text has been adapted from a story originally written by College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences Staff.