Title: Fractional quantum Hall fluid: Status report and unresolved issues
Abstract: Compared to superconductors and superfluids, the fractional quantum Hall fluid represents a distinct paradigm or emergent quantum behavior that does not subscribe to the concept of Bose-Einstein condensation, order parameter or off-diagonal long-range order. In spite of its strongly correlated nature, the fractional quantum Hall fluid has, perhaps surprisingly, turned out to be one of the best understood quantum fluids. In this talk I will provide a review of what is securely understood, open issues, and ongoing experimental and theoretical directions.
Biography: Jain is a theoretical condensed matter physicist interested in exotic quantum states of electrons in low dimensions. He is known for predicting the topological particle called composite fermion, namely an electron binding an even number of quantum mechanical vortices, and for explaining the fractional quantum Hall effect as the integral quantum Hall effect of composite fermions, thereby unifying these two phenomena. He grew up and obtained his elementary, middle and high school education in Sambhar, a rural village in Rajasthan, and proceeded to earn his bachelor's degree at Maharaja College, Jaipur (1979), master's degree at Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (1981), and Ph.D. at Stony Brook University (1985), all in physics. After postdoctoral fellowships at University of Maryland and Yale University, he returned to Stony Brook University as a faculty in 1989, before finally moving to the Pennsylvania State University in 1998. He is Evan Pugh University Professor and Erwin W. Mueller Professor of Physics at Pennsylvania State University. He has held many visiting professorships, most recently the Infosys Visiting Chair at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, member of the National Academy of Sciences, and recipient of the Oliver E. Buckley Prize of the American Physical Society.
