The Moore Foundation’s Emergent Phenomena in Quantum Systems Initiative supports exploratory research to increase our understanding of how complex quantum matter organizes and behaves, including development of new materials, measurement tools and theoretical frameworks. One of the strategies the initiative uses to achieve these goals is community building. Since the start of this initiative in 2013 several active communities have formed, including one around the field of twistronics. The field exploded in 2018 after the discovery of superconductivity in twisted bilayer graphene by EPiQS investigator Pablo Jarillo-Herrero’s lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In this community, researchers across different career stages have benefitted from the freedom to explore novel ideas and connect with colleagues from varied backgrounds, leading to a rapid growth in twistronics research.
Jarillo-Herrero’s 2022 Nature paper establishes magic-angle twisted multilayer graphene as a family of robust moiré superconductors, which cleared any doubt as to whether magic angle bilayer and trilayer were two unique and isolated superconductors. They are not – they are part of a larger family of superconductors. Speaking about the effort that led to that paper, Jarillo-Herrero noted that foundation support enables his group to tackle ambitious, high-risk projects. “Having the Moore Foundation funding allowed me to focus and concentrate on the exciting research, with full flexibility and agility to adapt to the fast-changing research landscape in my group,” he said. He also emphasized that his group is very collaborative and has worked with institutions and diverse groups both within and outside the United States, bringing together researchers with unique complementary expertise. Yuan Cao, a postdoctoral scholar at Harvard who previously was one of Jarillo-Herrero’s graduate students, credits Jarillo-Herrero’s willingness to explore new directions and work with others as factors that enabled explosive growth in the field, saying, “When we encounter a problem, he always knows who to consult with, and brings other's problems for us to try to solve, which benefits everyone.” Such collaborative academic relationships have been critical for early career researchers such as Cao. “Pablo spends a lot of effort to find opportunities for his students and postdocs, and I have greatly benefitted from this when I was looking for an academic job,” Cao said.
Princeton graduate student Kevin Nuckolls was a co-author of another important 2022 twistronics publication. "The work of D. Calugaru et al. has provided the twistronics community with distinguishing experimental signatures of a series of candidate correlated electronic phases in magic-angle graphene, which has aided in their subsequent experimental identification in early 2023," Nuckolls said. He also reflected on the unique opportunity for younger researchers to make an impact early in a field’s development. “Crucially, the Moore Foundation’s sustained support of collaborative efforts between experimentalists and theorists has given us the freedom to bring together groups of researchers from different scientific backgrounds and distinctive perspectives. This has led to rapid progress on seemingly insurmountable problems because we’re able to achieve much more together,” Nuckolls said. He also noted that the work has yielded additional benefits, resulting in new tools and techniques that have enhanced the community’s materials characterization capabilities.
Stanford graduate students Joe Finney and Connie Hsueh collaborated on a third 2022 twistronics publication. “This work presented an unexpected set of measurements in twisted bilayer graphene away from the magic angle. It showed that the electronic properties of twisted bilayer graphene, even without electron-electron interactions, were both rich and poorly understood at the time. In a later work we showed that unintended uniaxial heterostrain was the cause of these unexpected results,” Finney said. They also stressed the value of flexibility and being enabled to pursue collaborative opportunities. “Before we could publish this paper, we spent a long time trying to understand our unusual measurements. This process involved sharing the results with basically anyone who would listen, experimentalist or theorist. This was mostly done during COVID lockdown. The freedom to collaborate was invaluable, and our Moore Foundation funding made it possible,” Finney said. Hsueh emphasized the importance of bringing together diverse perspectives in the field, saying, “When devices did work and yielded new and sometimes surprising measurements, we needed to comprehensively rule out other, more trivial explanations before declaring a novel result. This benefited from the perspectives of others who had experiences with quantum effects in different materials or designing sensitive instruments.”
The Moore Foundation’s Emergent Phenomena in Quantum Systems Initiative aims to enable exploratory and risky projects that may be difficult to accomplish through other means. In a rapidly developing field like twistronics, support and community building has led to vibrant growth, and has had far-reaching benefits with the development of tools and techniques for investigations of solid materials.
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