Jay Deep Sau

About

I am a theoretical condensed matter physicist with a broad interest in quantum many-body physics relevant to experiments. At present, I am predominantly interested in applying topological principles to create protected solid-state and cold-atomic systems for quantum information processing. Such topological phenomena might provide the basis for quantum information processing.

Advances in experimental physics have pushed the design of materials and devices towards the regime of quantum many-body physics. At the same time conceptual advances at the boundary of theoretical condensed matter, quantum information and high-energy physics such as topological quantum field theories, entanglement entropy, holography and many-body localization all point to a new era of understanding new quantum mechanical many-body phenomena. I am primarily interested in searching for manifestations of these beautiful ideas in phenomena in the real world. One such phenomenon, which is at the heart of topological quantum field theory, is topological degeneracy of quantum states. Such degeneracy is a macroscopic quantum phenomenon where two many-body quantum states of the system are at exactly the same energy in a way that is immune to external perturbations. Potential candidates for topological superconductors that could support Majorana fermions and are being studied in on-going experiments provide examples of phases with similarly protected degeneracy. This creates the potential of storing and manipulating quantum information in macroscopic states of quantum materials, and ultimately, of leading to platforms for topological quantum computation. I am also interested in the search for quantum many-body phenomena in other systems where topological principles such as Weyl systems and spin-orbit coupled Bose gases as well as Josephson junction arrays.

Affiliations

Research Interests

People

News

• August 5, 2025

  JQI research news: Researchers report new progress in the Majorana-qubit direction.

• July 14, 2023

  Promoted to Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland.

• February 3, 2016

  Jay Deep Sau receives National Science Foundation CAREER Award.

• February 23, 2016

  Jay Deep Sau receives Sloan Research Fellowship.

Publications

Selected recent publications (from CV dated July 14, 2023)

• Disorder suppression in topological semiconductor-superconductor junctions, Phys. Rev. B 106, 174501 (2022)
• A random matrix theory for the robustness, quantization, and end-to-end correlation of zero-bias conductance peaks in class D ensemble, Phys. Rev. B 106, 115413 (2022)
• Quality factor for zero-bias conductance peaks in Majorana nanowire, Phys. Rev. B 106, 094504 (2022)
• Signatures of nontopological patches on the surface of topological insulators, Phys. Rev. B 105(3) (2022)
• Acoustic phonon mediated superconductivity in Bernal bilayer graphene, Phys. Rev. B 105, L100503 (2022)

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Teaching