Senthil Todadri

Biosketch

Senthil Todadri is a theoretical physicist with interests spanning a wide range of quantum condensed matter physics. His research focus is on exploring novel phases and phase transitions of quantum matter that are beyond the paradigms of Fermi liquid theory and/or broken symmetry that have guided the field for decades. He received his undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 1992, and his PhD from Yale University in 1997. He then moved to a postdoctoral position at the Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics in UC Santa Barbara before joining the physics faculty at MIT in 2001. During the years 2005 and 2006, he was on the faculty of the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru, India, while on leave from MIT.
Senthil is a member of the NAS (2024), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2023), a Simons Investigator (2013-2023) of the Simons Foundation, a Distinguished Visiting Research Chair (2011-2024) at the Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society (2013).

Research Interests

Senthil’s research seeks to develop a theoretical framework for describing the physics of novel quantum many particle systems by combining phenomenological modeling of experiments with abstract theoretical ideas and methods. He is interested in the emergence of novel phenomena when a large number of elementary quantum degrees of freedom interact with each other. An important example is the collection of electrons inside a solid. In some situations new phenomena such as the emergence, at low temperatures, of new particles that carry a fraction of the electrons charge, accompanied by the emergence of gauge fields (like the ones describing the familiar electromagnetic force).

Senthil's work on fractional charges and gauge theories provided key insights and initiated the systematic investigation of gauge structures in many-body systems, now a vital research area. He pioneered the theory of deconfined quantum criticality which describes a class of phase transitions that are beyond the standard Landau paradigm. Senthil is also known for developing a theory of continuous electronic Mott metal-insulator transitions, and for discovering dualities of quantum field theories in two space dimensions which has had application to many problems in condensed matter physics.

His recent interests are in non-fermi liquid metals, where he previously introduced the concept of a `fractionalized fermi liquid', and in two dimensional moire materials, where he previously played a crucial role in recognizing that these systems bring together strong correlation and band topology.