Assistant Professor Jörn Venderbos has received a five-year National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Grant (NSF-CAREER) award from the Condensed Matter and Materials Theory program in the Division of Materials Research. His project titled “CAREER: Advancing the Many-body Band Inversion Paradigm for Correlated Quantum Materials” will allow his group to lay the theoretical groundwork for better understanding the impacts of strong electronic correlations in materials with band inversion.
To date, most quantum materials derive their interesting properties from either electron correlations or band topology (from band inversions). The central physics behind these two regimes are very different and to date have largely been treated distinctly. Venderbos’ project aims to build the materials theory needed to understand and identify materials with both features (correlations + band inversions), thus potentially enabling discovery of new classes of quantum materials.