Vidya Madhavan is a condensed matter physics professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She investigates fundamental problems in quantum materials where interactions between the spin, charge and structural degrees of freedom lead to emergent phenomena.
Through the Emergent Phenomena in Quantum Systems Initiative, the foundation has supported her work on projects including the development of photon- and gated- scanning tunneling microscopy, capable of monitoring non-equilibrium electron dynamics and quantum critical phenomena in atomically thin materials.
Check out her lab website if you’re interested in learning more about her work, and if you would like to contact Vidya, you can reach out via e-mail to vm1@illinois.edu.
What made you want to become a researcher in the first place?
I grew up in India and at that time, it's hard to believe, but we had no computers, no internet. I had very little access to information, but my father used to bring home issues of Scientific American and at that time, there were series of articles on high-energy physics, the Big Bang Theory, expanding universe and much more. I was totally fascinated by the Grand Unification Theory, which is the theory of the early universe where the strong force, the electromagnetic force and the weak force were actually united into one.
I didn't realize how much it had influenced me, but I studied engineering in college and when it came time to choosing between getting a job and going to graduate school, I chose to do graduate school in physics, inspired by reading all those articles. And even though I ended up doing something completely different – condensed matter physics – I still remember how I felt when I read about the theories. So, I became a scientist, because of the awe I felt when I read those articles.
My favorite thing is when there's a story about a scientist who has a very strong view of how something must be working and that view goes against the prevailing norm. Then the person goes and tries to prove their theory, and they find out that they're right. I'm really inspired by those against-all-odds type of stories, the imagination and creativity it takes to go against the prevailing norm.
How would you describe the types of problems that you and your colleagues are trying to solve?
In the field of condensed matter physics or quantum materials we have this giant playground of 1023 electrons and atoms, which can be arranged in countless ways. With such a large collection of quantum particles interacting with one another there are endless possibilities for realizing physics that can really defy our imaginations.
I really believe that condensed matter systems are a window into the physics of all of our Universe. Let me give you one example: we know the electron, it has very well-defined properties, it’s got a very well-defined charge, and when it's at rest, we know its exact mass. But when you take this electron and put it in the environment of a solid where it's surrounded by trillions of other electrons, then it can exhibit unbelievable properties.
For instance, an electron or collective excitations of solids, including electrons, can behave like a Majorana fermion which has no mass and no charge. So how do you get from an electron which has a well-defined mass and a well-defined charge to a Majorana fermion, which is essentially a quantum superposition of an electron and a hole, and has no mass and no charge?
We believe we can realize these unbelievable properties in condensed matter physics. It is incredible that the theories that we develop and the discoveries that we make are relevant not just to condensed matter, but also to other fields including high-energy physics and biophysics. Majorana fermions, for example, were predicted in the context of high-energy physics but have never been seen in nature.
There are huge unexplored areas in my field. And one such unexplored area is the time-dependent behavior of particles, electrons and atoms, we call that dynamics. Electrons and solid whizz around at crazy speeds.
Many people don't know this, but they move at 106 meters per second. The speed of light is 108 meters per second, so this is just 100 times slower than the speed of light. And the dynamics of electrons and atoms and solid happen at a time scale of 10-12 seconds or even faster, like 10-15 seconds, so we're talking about femtosecond time scales.
One of the frontiers in condensed matter physics is being able to measure dynamics with atomic-scale resolution. Basically, what we'd like to do is to see, control and harness the behavior of particles at these time scales. With Moore Foundation support, we have built a new instrument to do precisely this.
What are some of the main challenges you have faced so far in your career?
I studied engineering in undergrad, and I only decided after I finished undergrad that I wanted to go to grad school and study physics. Therefore I did not have the preparatory courses that people usually have going into physics graduate school. I don't know what I thought I was doing! The first few years of grad school were very difficult, because I had to play catch up. Unfortunately, this is not uncommon. People have different kinds of problems during grad school.
Then during my postdoc, I was pregnant with twins. I'm an experimentalist and balancing two babies with experimental work – which requires climbing ladders and other physical work for helium transfer – it was pretty tough. And even after that, once I had the babies, getting zero sleep was not a good situation to be in as an experimentalist.
For my first faculty position, I joined a physics department that was pretty small. It was a great department, my colleagues were fantastic, and the administration was very supportive. But it was not easy for me to establish myself in the greater field and get the prestigious grants that you need to get as a young assistant professor, even though we wrote some really nice papers and published good work.
It was really hard for me to get invited to give talks at seminars, and even get invited to conferences. And I think being a woman made it even harder because of the usual problems of perception.
And what have you found the most fulfilling during your career?
A lot of things are fulfilling. It’s the discoveries that we've made, the thrill I get when we find something unexpected and then the “aha” moment when you figure out what's going on with the help of your colleagues and students. There's a huge amount of satisfaction you get when you spend years and years building an instrument, especially if it's a cutting-edge new instrument and you don't even know if it's going to work. And then when it works, it's extremely satisfying.
It’s also extremely fulfilling when your students and postdocs go off, set up their own labs and find success.
What type of advice do you give to students and early-career researchers?
If you’re a young, starting scientist, I would say spend at least some of your time chasing after big questions. Sometimes you forget and you start doing the little work, but you have to remember the big picture.
Also find people you can work with. This is extremely important as the best discoveries are made by people working together.
Recognize your strengths and use that to chart your own path, don’t follow someone else's path blindly. Remember why you wanted to be a scientist in the first place. Let that passion guide you and don't forget to live your life.
Where do you see yourself in five years?
In terms of research, we've recently developed a new instrument that allows us to observe electron dynamics at incredibly fast time scales, called an ultrafast scanning tunneling microscopy or a time-resolved scanning tunneling microscopy.
There have been some experiments that have suggested that you can excite a solid to get extremely high temperature superconductivity, and people have been searching for materials that superconduct at room temperature for a very long time. This kind of superconductivity would exist for very short time scales. If true, then it opens up new doors for realizing high-temperature superconductivity. But there are very few techniques that can directly measure superconductivity in materials at these time scales.
With the instrument that we've developed, we can actually answer the question: can you dynamically get a high-temperature superconductor? So, in five years, I hope to have found the answer to this question.
What are some of your interests outside of research or teaching?
I like to run, work out, do yoga, cycle, those kinds of things. I like to go for walks with my friends, travel, see new places, go to museums and read. There are also some really nice “Netflix-like” streaming programs – one is Curiosity Stream – and there are a lot of science documentaries there. I typically don't watch physics, but I watch genetics and biology.
Is there anything else you’d like people to know about you?
I feel strongly that we are incredibly lucky to live at a time where society believes that science is worth supporting. And I would never take that for granted because I know how lucky we are.
Image credit: Fred Zwicky, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
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