Ashvin Vishwanath

Biosketch

Ashvin Vishwanath is a theoretical physicist focused on quantum condensed matter physics. His research seeks to understanding how collective properties of matter, such as superconductivity, magnetism and metallic or insulating behavior arise from underlying physical laws like quantum mechanics. His research includes pioneering studies on Weyl semimetals, applications of gauge theories to quantum magnets, the characterization of topological bands in moire’ materials and the extension of topological concepts beyond the independent electron approximation.

Ashvin earned his undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur and his Ph.D. from Princeton University. Between 2001-2004 he was a Pappalardo Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT, following which he joined the physics faculty at U.C. Berkeley. He moved to the Harvard Physics department in Fall 2016 where he is now the George Vasmer Leverett Professor of Physics.

Vishwanath is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an APS Fellow, a a Sloan Fellow, a Simons Investigator in Physics, a Guggenheim Fellow and a recipient of the 2016 Europhysics Prize, for his work on skyrmions in metallic magnets. He is Director of the Simons Collaboration on Ultra-quantum Matter, that brings together an inter-disciplinary team of theorists focused on researching highly entangled quantum states. In 2024 he received the APS Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Physics Prize for his work on the topological properties of electronic materials.

Research Interests

Vishwanath’s research explores the quantum behavior of many particles, particularly in electronic materials and quantum platforms. His research often takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on ideas from other fields like topology and quantum information theory. The concept of `emergent’ gauge field has been central to his research, beginning when he and a fellow MIT postdoc noted the key role of `hedgehog’ topological defects in magnets and identified how to correctly model them. The model has been applied to describe an exotic family of (deconfined) phase transitions and to link superconductivity with magnetism. His recent research extends this model to frustrated magnets that are actively being studied in experiments.

At Berkeley, Vishwanath and his collaborators adopted a quantum entanglement approach to diagnose topological bands, leading to their discovery of Weyl semimetals, and of their unique `Fermi arcs’ surface states, which were later confirmed in experiments. Generalizations of these techniques led them to a comprehensive `symmetry indicators’ approach to diagnosing topological bands.

Vishwanath’s current research at Harvard explores the interplay between topology and interactions, particularly at the boundaries of topological phases and within newly discovered moiré materials—twisted stacks of two-dimensional layers that are unveiling a wealth of novel properties. His group is also actively exploring how to harness topological phases to encode and process quantum information, aiming to make quantum computers more resistant to errors.