PSW 2483 Driven Out of Equilibrium Shining New Light on Quantum Matter | Prineha Narang

Lecture Starts at 10:11
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PSW #2483
October 20, 2023
Driven Out of Equilibrium: Shining New Light on Quantum Matter
Prineha Narang, UCLA
Nonequilibrium systems - systems not in thermodynamic equilibrium, frequently driven by outside forces - range from gas giants in the outer solar system to living organisms and quantized particles. Counter to the notion that the physical world exists in a state of equilibrium, nonequilibrium dynamics play key roles in the evolution of physical processes and their interaction with their surroundings. Understanding how collective nonequilibrium behavior emerges from the fundamental interactions of individual constituents remains a frontier challenge in physics that underpins functional characteristics of complex physical events.
Advancing our understanding of the behavior of quantum matter away from equilibrium is essential to understanding how materials, physical and biological processes work, as well as to building next-generation technologies for an energy-efficient and interconnected society. Nonequilibrium quantum systems are complex and pose formidable theoretical and experimental challenges, thus representing a vast frontier in the panorama of modern physical sciences. Predicting the behavior of nonequilibrium quantum systems, from first principles, is a grand challenge. Research inspired by this challenge focuses on how quantum systems behave away from equilibrium, and how to harness these effects.
This lecture will present advances in theoretical understanding of and computational approaches to describe excited-states in quantum matter, and on predicting emergent states created by strongly non-equilibrium external drives. Understanding the role of such nonequilibrium light-matter interactions is of paramount importance to fields of study across condensed matter physics, quantum optics, and quantum chemistry. The simultaneous contribution of processes that occur on many time and length-scales has remained elusive for state-of-the-art calculations and model Hamiltonian approaches alike, necessitating the development of new methods.
This lecture will discuss the latest results at the intersection of ab initio cavity quantum-electrodynamics and electronic structure methods to treat electrons, photons and phonons on the same quantized footing, and accessing new observables in nonequilibrium light-matter coupling. This approach can access the coupled dynamics of electronic spins, nuclei, phonons and photons, essential to the latest work on driving quantum systems far out-of-equilibrium to control the coupled electronic and vibrational degrees-of-freedom. Looking ahead, controlling such physical systems out-of-equilibrium will enable new medical imaging and diagnostic tools, quantum detectors for climate monitoring and adaptation, and discoveries in fusion science advancing progress towards a clean-energy powered global society.
Prineha Narang is Professor in Physical Sciences and in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where she holds the Howard Reiss Chair. She also currently holds an appointment from the US State Department as US Science Envoy. Before joining the UCLA faculty, Prinhea was an Assistant Professor of Computational Materials Science at Harvard University.
Narang works on theoretical and computational quantum materials, non-equilibrium dynamics, and transport in quantum matter.
Among many honors and awards for her work, she is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Maria Goeppert Mayer Award from the American Physical Society, an Outstanding Early Career Investigator Award from the Materials Research Society, the Mildred Dresselhaus Prize, a Bessel Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, a Max Planck Award from the Max Planck Society, the IUPAP Young Scientist Prize in Computational Physics, an NSF CAREER Award, the Moore Inventor Fellow award of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar award of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, and the Top Innovator award of MIT Tech Review.
Narang has organized and chaired numerous symposia and workshops and serves as an Associate Editor at ACS Nano, Associate Editor at Applied Physics Letters, and has a leadership role in APS’ Division of Materials Physics.
Narang earned an MS and a PhD in Applied Physics at Caltech.
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