Electrons in flatland

15:15   Inaugural Lecture Prof. Mitali Banerjee
16:05  Inaugural Lecture Prof. Pasquale Scarlino

Electrons, when restricted to move in a two-dimensional (2D) space, often do not behave like fermions in 3D space, due to strong correlations originating from the topological character of the hosting band structure (e.g., band’s flatness leading to slow electrons and strong interactions). Prime examples are heterostructures of twisted monolayers of graphene, which offer rich phases like superconductivity, ferromagnetism, correlated insulating state, etc. Under quantizing magnetic field, topological quantum Hall states emerge, hosting exotic, fractionally charged, quasiparticles (Anyons), which are non-local and thus fundamentally distinct from fermions (aka, para-fermions), being more resilient to the deleterious effects of the environment.
In this talk, I will give some background (motivation) behind the work I am currently pursuing in my laboratory and share some new results we have recently measured in EPFL.

Biography
Mitali Banerjee received her Ph.D. degree from S. N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, (Kolkata, 2012); Postdoctoral studies at the Indian Institute of Science (Bangalore, 2013); and the Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel, 2018), where she received the Institute Outstanding Postdoctoral Fellow Award (2018). Followed by a Research Associate at Columbia University (USA, 2019). She joined EPFL as an Assistant Professor at 2020, where she is studying quantum states of matter at low temperatures and high magnetic field. She received the Eccellenza grant from FNS in 2020 and the QuantERA consortium grant in 2022.