Chiranjib Mitra's research interests

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Background:

I joined Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Kolkata in December 2007. Prior to that I was working at the London Centre for Nanotechnology (LCN) as a Research Fellow for about Four years. I obtained my PhD in physics from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Bombay in 2001. Thereafter I moved to Germany, holding a Joint Post-Doc Position at the Max Planck Institute for the Chemical Physics of Solids and at the Institute for Solid State and Materials Research in Dresden. There I carried out research in Magnetic Tunnel Junction Devices. Having stayed in Dresden for about One and a Half years, I went to the University of Cambridge, where I worked at the Device Materials Group  for Two years. Here also I continued working on Magnetic Tunnel Junction and learned a lot of lithographic techniques and was introduced to the world of Nanotechnology. However, in my last year in TIFR, I had become interested in the rapidly emerging area of Quantum Computers, having taken a course in the Dept of Theoretical Computer Science at TIFR. Since then my heart was in the world of Quantum Computers and I had been looking for an opportunity to shift in this very interesting field. When I got an opportunity to work in this field at the London Centre for Nanotechnology, affiliated to University College London, I moved here. Here I learnt was introduced to Quantum Magnetism by Gabriel Aeppli and to Quantum Information Processing by Andrew Fisher and the late Marshall Stoneham.

 

My background is Experimental Condensed Matter Physics, where, I have mostly been working in Strongly Correlated Electron Systems.

 

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Current research interests:

  • Quantum Magnetism.
  • Build and characterise solid-state quantum gates for quantum computing.
  • Topological Insulators and device physics using Dirac Fermions.
  • Development of Pulsed ESR setup for manipulating spins for quantum information processing.
  • Magneto-optics.

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Research summary:

I work on Strongly Correlated Electron systems, probing certain aspects of Magnetism and Transport in localized moments as well as itinerant electron moments based compounds, which include both intermetallic and oxide compounds in addition to some molecular magnets, which are essentially low-dimensional systems. I study Kondo Lattices (Heavy Fermions), dilute Kondo Systems, Non-Fermi liquid like behavior in the localized moment systems where as doped manganites and spin polarized tunnelling in granular materials as well as artificially fabricated tunnel junctions in the itinerant moment magnetic systems. In the molecular magnets, I am interested in studying low dimensional, low spin systems where the system will behave like quantum mechanical system at low temperatures and the ensuing spin system will be like a Heisenberg chain. One can probe the quantum nature of the ground state in an antiferromagnetic ground state; the system will be in an entangled state. This entangled nature of the ground state can be used in Quantum Information Processing and quantum communication through spin chains. In addition to these I also work on Topological Insulators, where, the surface is conducting but the bulk is insulating. These surface states are topologically protected and can be used to encode quantum information, which is resistant to decoherence and can be used for fault tolerant quantum computation.

 

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Last update: February 2013