The Project
Emergent complexity in electronically frustrated correlated electron systems.
Winner
Dr Christos Panagopoulos
Foundation of Research and Technology Hellas
Institute for Electronic Structure and Lasers
Vassilika Vouton
Heraklion, Crete 71110
Greece
Born in Melbourne, Australia, of Greek parents, Christos Panagopoulos, aged 39, is an accomplished linguist speaking English, Japanese and Greek. He was educated at secondary level in Athens, fulfilled military service in the Greek Navy and came back to Melbourne to take his first degree in physics and chemistry. Married to a Japanese national he then took a Masters degree in physics in Japan. After that he took his Ph.D in physics at Cambridge University, UK, where he decided to settle. Since then Panagopoulos has led a research team at Cambridge, and has gained visiting professorships at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing; University of Salermo, Italy; and University of Kyoto, Japan.
Dr Panagopoulos said: “This award will make immense difference to my work, and become the seed for the creation of a laboratory dedicated on electronic complexity, setting the foundations for this field as a fundamental area of co-ordinated research in Europe.”
Provisional Award
€ 1,195,000
Project Description
Panagopoulos’ project is studying the nature of quantum order in materials on the border of magnetism. In the quantum world changes of state between different electronic configurations are driven not by temperature but by other factors such as variations in charge carrier concentration. These quantum phase changes take place at absolute zero, but the states can be preserved locally at higher temperatures. In “quantum-tuned” materials the correlation of electrons produces a variety of states, typically through the interplay between magnetism and electrical conductance. That interplay has itself been a long-standing research topic among condensed matter physicists. But since the discovery of high-temperature superconductors, the materials Panagopoulos’ team concentrates on, a more general interest in the metal-insulator transition (MIT) in a correlated-electron system has emerged. Close to the MIT, competition between distinct ground states gives rise to spatially extended slow density fluctuations, and coexistence of different ordered phases separated by one or more quantum critical points. The charge, spin, and orbital degrees of freedom, and their coupled dynamics in these materials, produce complex phases presenting profound challenges in fundamental physics, and important consequences for applications because in addition to spin and charge, the lattice and orbital degrees of freedoms are active, leading to large responses to small perturbations. The team aims at identifying a physical picture describing the dynamics of spin and charge in materials near disorder-driven MIT’s and study the most dramatic consequence of all: The possibility of extended and slow density fluctuations acting in favour of superconducting pairing. Electronically frustrated correlated electron systems can be then tuned to be exactly at or on the cusp of the transition, enabling us to build highly sensitive instruments where we alter matter to extreme cases starting from an insulator to a high temperature superconductor.
