Arnab Banerjee

NOTE: E-mail addresses end with @purdue.edu

Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy

Group:

Faculty

Office:

PHYS 168

Phone:

(765) 494-3028

E-mail:

arnabb

Website:

[Homepage]

Education

Experience

Updates

I am now at Purdue University and open to collaborations! I also have a guest scientist appointment with the Quantum Computing Institute at ORNL. Stay tuned.

I am hiring in low-temperature physics (milli-Kelvin electronics) and material characterization. If you are interested in working with me, please email me. 

Research Theme

A significant amount of human progress has been driven by the discovery and control of materials with exceptional properties. This includes the development of modern computers which derived from the control of Silicon or the electric cars which have followed the advancement of Lithium batteries. In the past few decades, the power of material-derived electronics has grown exponentially fast as described by Moore's Law. However, it is now very apparent that the growth will slow down unless we can capture and control the quantum effects in materials that arise from quantum zero-point motion and Heisenberg's uncertainty. How do we do that? The goal of my research is to understand the quantum properties of materials towards making them useful for tomorrow's technology. My research provides insights into new quantum phenomenology in new magnetic materials both in the bulk and device geometries using reciprocal space, such as neutron scattering, and millikelvin transport techniques when the data is mapped into appropriate, preferably quantum models to capture the effects of zero-point motion, fractionalization, quantization, and coherence. 

Teaching

I am teaching Physics-461, Quantum Physics II, in the Spring semester to physics Honors and masters students. My class hours are Tu/Th 1:00 - 3:00 PM. I am teaching Physics-416, Statistical Physics I, in the Fall semester to physics Honors students and masters students. Bring on the uncertainty!

Previous courses taught: Physics-172, Matter and Interactions (Freshman Engineering students) Fall, Spring - 2021,2022

Honors and Awards

Group Members Fall 2021 (Please feel free to contact any of them for more information):

• Current Post-Doc: Arjun Unnakrishnan (Ph.D., IISER Trivendrum, Inspire Faculty - IISc Bangalore)
• Current PhD students in our group: Kiranmayi Dattareya Dixit (Experimental Physics), Norhan Eassa Mahmoud (Computational Physics), Guga Khundzakishvili (Experimental Physics), Jhinkyu Choi (Experimental Physics), Ammar Ali (Computational Physics), Mehmoud Moustafa (Computational Physics), Bishnu Belbase (Experimental Physics).
• Current PhD students affiliated with our group: Hanjing Xu (Computer Science, working with Prof. Alex Pothen), Keerthi Kumaran (Physics, working jointly with Prof. Sabre Kais).
• Current UG students: Amit Rajapurohita, George Economou, Gustavo Suez-Cruz(Physics), Pravin Mahendran (Computer Science).
• Close collaborators and past group members: Samudra Dasgupta (PhD candidate at ORNL and Bredesen Center), Dimitrios Kromyddas (PhD candidate, Leiden University), Paul Kairys (Director's Post-doctoral Fellow, Argonne National Laboratory), Akshat Jha (Imperial College, London). Prof. Gavin Hester (Brock University, Canada)

News and Updates:

April-2023: CONGRATULATIONS: Amit Rajapurohita and George Economou for getting accepted for PhD programs in Cornell University and Purdue University, respectively.

Mar-2023: PUBLICATION: Hanjing Xu and Samudra Dasgupta for paper published in Entropy https://doi.org/10.3390/e25030541 on novel use of Ising qubit machine for a societal problem.

January-2023: CONGRATULATIONS: Dr. Gavin Hester (first post-doc in my group) for starting new position as Assistant Professor in Physics (tenure-track) at Brock University, Hamilton, Canada. https://www.physics.brocku.ca/People/Faculty/Hester/ 

May-2021: THANK YOU: Students for nominating me for the Ruth and Joel Spira Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching for Quantum Physics II.

April-2021: CONGRATULATIONS: Norhan Eassa (Ph.D. Candidate) and Kiranmayi Dixit (Ph.D. Candidate) from our group for Lijuan Wang Award for Women Excellence in Research.

January-2021: CONGRATULATIONS Kiranmayi Dixit (Ph.D. Candidate), for paper published in Physical Rev. Research, on phonon measurements on RuCl3. Kiran is co-first and co-corresponding author. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.4.013067 

December-2021: CONGRATULATIONS, Alshat (UG), Eliana (UG), and Guga (Ph.D. Candidate), for the paper accepted in IEEE - Reeboting Computing for work with Fujitsu Inc on the Shastry-Sutherland model.

July-2021: Our group is now Slacking. If you want to be a part of the discussion in the group as a guest and to know the work in the group, please email me.

July-2021: CONGRATULATIONS: Akshat Anand Jha, (UG-Physics 2021) from our group for getting accepted for graduate studies at Imperial College, London.

May-2021: CONGRATULATIONS: Eliana Soyanoff, (UG-Computer Science, 2023) for securing NSF-REU Fellowship in our group for working on a joint project on frustrated magnetism and applications to neutron scattering.

April-2021: WELCOME: Gavin Hester (Ph.D., Kate Ross group at U-Colorado), joins the group as our first post-doctoral candidate.

April-2021: CONGRATULATIONS: Hanjing Xu, (PhD candidate, Department of Computer Science), working closely with our group, for securing a summer internship at Fujitsu Corp. working on Ising Digital Annealing.

April-2021: CONGRATULATIONS: Norhan Eassa Mahmoud, (PhD candidate, Department of Physics), in our group for securing Summer Internship at IBM-Q, Almaden with Jeffrey Cohn and Barbara Jones.

December-2021: DOE GRANT: Our group secured the DOE - Quantum Science Center (www.qsc.org) grant under the National Quantum Initiative, to study avenues aiding future quantum computing technologies. The total project is worth $115M and is administered by ORNL. Our laboratory is participating in two subprojects:  (1) Material Design, Characterization and Transport studies of Kitaev Quantum Spin Liquid platforms for future applications (Grad Student: Kiranmayi Dixit), (2) Use of near-term NISQ quantum hardware for the analysis of neutron scattering data on frustrated quantum magnets towards the search for topological physics. (Grad Students: Norhan Eassa Mahmoud, Bilal Khlid).

July-2020: CONGRATULATIONS: Kiranmayi Dixit (PhD Candidate, Department of Physics) from our group for the Ralf Scharenberg Fellowship.

April-2020: CONGRATULATIONS: Samudra Dasgupta, for getting accepted in Bredesen Center at Univ. Tenn., Knoxville for doing research with the Quantum Computing Institute at ORNL.

January-2020: Joined Purdue formally. Teaching PHYS-172 and then Oh! Covid.