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SUMMARY:Searching for topological superconductors using ultrasound - Brad 
 Ramshaw (Cornell)
DTSTART:20241127T160000Z
DTEND:20241127T170000Z
UID:TALK221698@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Lucas Sá
DESCRIPTION:For more than a century\, superconductors have been the paradi
 gmatic "quantum material"\, providing fundamental discoveries like gauge s
 ymmetry breaking and impacting technologies from medical imaging to quantu
 m computing. Despite their central importance\, characterizing new types o
 f superconductors is still a difficult task: all superconductors have zero
  resistance\, but their more subtle properties related to entanglement and
  topology are hard to probe experimentally. I will introduce chiral topolo
 gical superconductors in two dimensions - a type of superconductivity with
  a "knot" in the superconducting wave function. These superconductors can 
 host Majorana edge modes and bound states in their vortex cores\, but find
 ing a real-life example has proven challenging. I will show how we use ult
 rasound - deforming a crystalline lattice in a manner not unlike how gravi
 ty waves deform spacetime - to test whether a particular superconductor ha
 s the "right ingredients" to be a 2D topological superconductor. I will pr
 esent the progress we have made thus far - ruling out many proposed candid
 ate materials and discovering an unexpected new type of superconductivity 
 along the way - and give a prognosis for what I think the most promising r
 oute is for discovering a 2D topological superconductor.
LOCATION:Small Lecture Theatre\, Cavendish Laboratory\, J.J. Thomson Avenu
 e
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