The Biggest Question for My Science
Session 4- The Biggest Question of the Future of Topological Physics
Since the discovery of the quantum Hall effect and its relation to topological properties of the wavefunction, topology has become an essential mathematical tool to understand phases of matter. The discovery of topological insulators around 20 years ago has also contributed to the vast expansion of the field. On the one hand, the use of topology in physics is expanding and diverging. On the other hand, we hear some people saying that most of the important questions have been answered and no major question is left in the field of topological phases of matter. We would like to discuss the following question; where is the field going? Is the field going to an end, or to a beginning of a new field?
Date and Time:
l Beijing Time: January 21, 2025, 10:30 AM - 12:30 PM
l Tokyo Time: January 21, 2025, 11:30 AM - 1:30 PM
l California Time: January 20, 2025, 6:30 - 8:30 PM
Meeting Format: Online @ Zoom
Meeting ID: 360 103 9307
Password: AYSF
Agenda (Beijing Time)
- 10:20 - 10:35 Zoom meeting room open
- 10:35 - 10:40 Opening by Prof. Tomoki Ozawa
- 10:40 - 11:00 “Topological “phases’ for atoms, photons, and classical systems”
l Presentation by Prof. Tomoki Ozawa (15 mins) and Q&A (5 mins)
- 11:00 - 11:20 “ Topological order in strongly interacting systems”
l Presentation by Prof. Xie Chen (15 mins) and Q&A (5 mins)
- 11:20 - 11:40 “Topological electronic materials and their identification through machine learning”
l Presentation by Prof. Hongming Weng (15 mins) and Q&A (5 mins)
- 11:40 - 12:30 Open Discussion (30 mins) + Q&A (20 mins)
l Moderator: Prof. Tomoki Ozawa
l Panelists: Prof. Xie Chen, Prof. Tomoki Ozawa, Prof. Hongming Weng
- 12:30 Group Photo
Convener (AYS Fellow):
Tomoki Ozawa, Associate Professor, Advanced Institute for Materials Research, Tohoku University; 2023 AYS Fellow-Physical Science, Asian Young Scientist Fellowship
Dr. Tomoki Ozawa is Associate Professor and Junior Principal Investigator at the Advanced Institute for Materials Research at Tohoku University. He received PhD in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2012. He then spent five years, first as a postdoc and then as a senior postdoc, at the Bose-Einstein Condensation Center at the University of Trento, Italy. He came back to Japan in 2018 to become a Senior Researcher at RIKEN. He moved to Tohoku University in 2020. Dr. Ozawa is a theoretical physicist, and his research area is in the interdisciplinary intersection between condensed matter physics and AMO (atomic, molecular, and optical) physics. He has been a pioneer in applying concepts of topological insulators to AMO platforms, contributing to the development of concepts such as synthetic dimensions, topological lasers, and topological phenomena in driven-dissipative systems. He has co-authored an influential review on topological photonics in Reviews of Modern Physics, which has received more than 2500 citations (Google Scholar). He has been a Tohoku University Distinguished Researcher since 2021, and is a recipient of the Young Scientists' Award from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan.
Invited Speakers:
Xie Chen, Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology; Science Committee Member, Future Science Prize
Xie Chen is a Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology. Dr. Chen obtained her BSc degree from Tsinghua University in 2006 and PhD degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2012. She was a Miller research fellow at the University of California Berkeley for two years before joining Caltech in 2014. Dr. Chen is a condensed matter theorist. She has made a series of contributions to the study of strongly correlated quantum many-body systems, including the classification of gapped phases in one dimension, discovery and systematic construction of symmetry protected topological phases in bosonic system in two and higher dimensions, classification and anomaly detection in symmetry enriched topological phases, the tensor network representation of topological phases and unitary evolutions, and the study of fracton models. Dr. Chen was the recipient of NSF Faculty Early Career Award and the Sloan Research Fellowship Award. She was awarded the New Horizons in Physics Prize in 2020 by the Breakthrough Foundation for her incisive contributions to the understanding of topological states of matter and the relationships between them. In 2021, she was named a Simons Investigator by the Simons foundation.
Hongming Weng, Professor of Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences; 2025 Physical Science Sub-Committee Chair, Asian Young Scientist Fellowship
Hongming WENG is a professor of physics at Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IOP-CAS). He obtained his PhD from Nanjing University in 2005. He was a postdoc in Institute for Materials Research, Tohoku university (2005-2007) and an assistant professor in Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (2007-2010). He joined IOP-CAS in 2010. He works in the field of computational condensed matter physics, including the method and program for first-principles calculations, topological electronic states and quantum materials. He was awarded JSPS postdoc Fellowship (2007), Nishina Asia Award (2017), CAS Young Scientist Award (2018), NSFC Distinguished Young Scientist (2019) and APS Outstanding Referees (2021).
To enrich the AYS Webinar series, we welcome young scientists to raise your "Biggest Questions"! This is a unique chance to engage with thought-provoking topics or ask our expert speakers directly. Your questions will engage discussions and deepen the conversation. Don’t miss this opportunity to connect, learn, and contribute!