JQI welcomes new Fellow Maissam Barkeshli

This Fall, theoretical condensed matter physicist Maissam Barkeshli joined the UMD Department of Physics as an Assistant Professor and a JQI Fellow. In 2010 he received a PhD from MIT under the supervision of Xiao-Gang Wen. Since then he has been a Simons Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University (2010-2013) and a postdoctoral researcher at Microsoft's Station Q, located at UC Santa Barbara (2013-2016).

At UMD he will be working on topics in complex quantum many-body phenomena. These include the interplay of symmetry and topology in interacting fractionalized phases of matter, experimental signatures of fractionalization, and novel universal topological phenomena that occur at interfaces of topological phases of matter and their applications to new quantum computing platforms.

Some of his recent publications are:

M. Barkeshli, "Charge 2e/3 Superconductivity and Topological Degeneracies without Localized Zero Modes in Bilayer Fractional Quantum Hall States,"Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 096803 (2016)

M. Barkeshli, P. Bonderson, M. Cheng, Z. Wang, Symmetry, Defects, and Gauging of Topological Phases," arXiv:1410.4540

M. Barkeshli, E. Berg, S. Kivelson, "Coherent transmutation of electrons into fractionalized anyons," Science, 346 6210 (2014)