News – Rademaker Group

New book by our group: Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking

loukrademaker — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 09:18:09 +0000

The laws of physics are highly symmetric, yet the world around us often isn’t. A pencil balanced on its tip falls in one particular direction. A magnet chooses one direction to point in. A crystal decides where to place its atoms. The underlying laws have no preference in any of these cases. This phenomenon is called spontaneous symmetry breaking, and it connects areas of physics that seem far…

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Theory of twisted mono-bilayer graphene with spin-orbit coupling

loukrademaker — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 08:46:56 +0000

Earlier we predicted the quantum Anomalous Hall effect in twisted mono-bilayer graphene (tMBG), and we showed how spin-orbit coupling can be induced in graphene by placing it on top of a TMD. The next natural step is to study the combination of these two: what happens to tMBG when spin-orbit coupling is induced? In collaboration with Jeyong Park from the research group of Laura Classen and…

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New Flat Club schedule for Spring ’26

loukrademaker — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 08:30:45 +0000

The regular Flat Club meetings will continue in the spring of 2026 with another set of amazing speakers. Please check the Flat Club website https://flatclub.dqmp.ch/, and register there for the mailing list to keep up to date! The Flat Club is an interactive biweekly meeting on the broad topic of two-dimensional materials, interfaces and techniques. Most of the participants are working…

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Postdoctoral opening Fall 2026

loukrademaker — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 09:05:42 +0000

For the fall of 2026 our group has an opening for a postdoctoral position, based at Leiden University, The Netherlands. Interested candidates can read more ánd apply at AcademicJobsOnline: https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/31696 The deadline is Tuesday 17 March, but exceptional candidates can always contact us after the deadline until the position is filled.

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PhD defense of Dario Rossi

loukrademaker — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 09:22:02 +0000

On Thursday 23 January, our group member Dario Rossi successfully defended his PhD thesis “Quantum Magnetism in Synthetic Systems“. Dario was jointly supervised by Louk Rademaker and Dima Abanin from Princeton. His work spans two major experimental platforms — moiré materials and quantum simulators — both of which offer fine-grained control over lattice geometry, interaction strengths…

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Angular momentum of vortex-core Majorana zero modes

Giulia Venditti — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 13:53:12 +0000

We recently published a paper reporting that vortex-core Majorana zero modes (MZMs) can carry a nontrivial angular momentum. We study a modified Fu-Kane model, with a d+id superconducting order parameter on top of a strong topological insulator. We found non-trivial spin and angular-momentum textures, resulting in the emergence of four “flavors” of Majorana zero modes (MZMs). We classify the MZMs…

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Prize for best Master thesis for Vincent Lombardo

loukrademaker — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 08:57:07 +0000

Vincent Lombardo, who wrote his Master thesis “Single-particle spectral function of a fractional Chern insulator using exact diagonalization” in our group, has received the Prix Jean Würth for best Master thesis of the Physics Section. During the Ceremony to honor the graduates of 2025 he received his prize, which also comes with a 2000 CHF reward. We congratulate Vincent with his great work!

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New Flat Club meetings in Spring ’25

loukrademaker — Fri, 24 Jan 2025 15:54:31 +0000

We are happy to announce the schedule for the Flat Club meetings in Spring 2025. You can see the full list of participants here: The Flat Club is an interactive biweekly meeting on the broad topic of two-dimensional materials, interfaces and techniques. Most of the participants are working at the Department of Quantum Matter Physics or the Department of Theoretical Physics in Geneva.

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Concealed Mott Criticality: Unifying the Kondo Breakdown and Doped Charge-Transfer Insulators

loukrademaker — Thu, 02 Jan 2025 09:54:55 +0000

The field of strongly correlated physics revolves, traditionally, around two classes of materials: the heavy fermions and the cuprates. In both, there are signatures of a quantum critical point (QCP). The main features of both these QCPs can be understood by a simple picture of having a Mott localization transition in the presence of additional metallic charge carriers. In a new manuscript…

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Giulia Venditti won a SNSF postdoctoral fellowship

Giulia Venditti — Fri, 16 Aug 2024 09:14:26 +0000

Dr. Giulia Venditti obtained a highly competitive SNSF postdoctoral fellowship. The main aim of her project Xtra-Ordinary Vortices (XVORTEX) is to study the intertwining of topological defects and the topology of the electronic degrees of freedom in novel 2D systems. We are in fact witnessing a real “2D revolution” in the engineering and study of low dimensional materials. The 2D nature of…

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