Ali Yazdani

By visualizing electrons with the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) he has made fundamental discoveries in correlated and topological electronic materials. Pioneering STM studies on superconductors, he showed that electron pairs from locally above the bulk critical temperature in high-Tc cuprates. His measurements detected charge-ordering in these materials, and clarified how it competes with superconductivity. Extending STM spectroscopy to milli-Kelvins, he unveiled the emergence of heavy-fermion states and visualized their d-wave superconductivity. Imaging topological surface states he confirmed that their helical spin texture protects them from backscattering. Recently, he has realized a new platform for topological superconductivity providing evidence for emergent Majorana fermions in a condensed matter system. His group is focused on visualizing other exotic quasi-particles that emerge in interacting and topological quantum states of materials.