M. Zahid Hasan

Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics at Princeton University. PhD (Stanford University & SLAC, 2002). Robert H. Dicke fellow at Princeton (2002). Visiting Miller Professor at UC Berkeley/Visiting Faculty Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. Research Areas: Quantum Physics of Matter; Quantum Topology; Emergent Phenomena. Topological Quantum Science and Engineering. Current research focus: Novel phases of topological & correlated quantum matter and exotic superconductors. Hasan helped launch the field of Topological Insulators by directly detecting the predicted novel surface states and thoroughly demonstrating their unusual topological properties using advanced spin-sensitive spectroscopic techniques (50,000+ citations). Subsequently, he has theoretically and experimentally discovered many novel classes of topological matter and topological phase transitions including Topological Magnets (via the demonstration of Chern gap in 2012) using novel instrumentations and innovative methods and introduced designed discovery methods. The field expanded to include topological semimetals, notably Weyl Semimetals, whose states mimic massless fermions considered in quantum field theory. In 2015 Hasan observed the emergent Weyl fermions and novel topological Fermi arc surface states in several topological semimetals he and his team theoretically predicted in arsenide and other materials. His Weyl fermion work is based on his and his team's theoretical predictions in several spin-orbit materials. Subsequently, he has theoretically and experimentally discovered many novel classes of magnetic topological semimetals. He has also made groundbreaking contributions (theoretical and experimental) in the subfields of topological phase transitions, topological magnets in 2D and 3D, topological nodal-line and drumhead metals, topological magnetic semimetals, topological chiral crystals, topological Hopf link semimetals, topological superconductors, Helicoid-arc quantum states and Kagome magnets and materials, Chern magnets and charge-ordered Kagome superconductors enabled by innovative applications and development of experimental methods. He identified room temperature topological materials. These materials are broadly important for future device applications with higher energy efficiency, as quantum information science platforms, and for exploring new emergent or many-body quantum physics. He has also contributed to the conceptual design and theoretical development of some of these topics and written several comprehensive review articles by invitation. The methodologies introduced by him to explore and discover topological materials and phenomena are being used by others world-wide to further advance the field and led to new discoveries. His experiments and methods have been seminal in giving rise to the field of "Topological Quantum Matter" with more than 80,000 citations (over 250 publications with h-factor 100+), which is now growing vigorously at the nexus of condensed matter physics, materials engineering, nano-science, device physics & quantum engineering, chemistry and relativistic quantum field theory as evidenced in all citation tracks. His results have extended our old textbook level understanding of quantum matter and are now being featured in many standard textbooks of condensed matter physics used in universities world-wide. His research works have been featured in Physics Today, Physics World, Scientific American, Nature News, Science News, Discover magazine, New Scientist and similar media multiple times over the last decade. He is the Principal Investigator of the Laboratory for Topological Quantum Matter and Advanced Spectroscopy at Princeton University. He has held visiting positions at Bell Laboratories, UC Berkeley, Stanford University, SLAC and California Institute of Technology's IQIM (National Science Foundation Physics Frontiers Center) and MIT.