M. Zahid Hasan

M. Zahid Hasan is an endowed chair Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics at Princeton University.^[1] He is known for his pioneering research on quantum matter exhibiting topological properties. In a series of papers he and his team elucidated the topological structure of quantum matter which opened new vistas for further research work in the field.^[2] Born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Hasan completed his higher secondary schooling at Dhaka College, then studied physics and mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin.^[3] He obtained his Ph.D. in 2002 from Stanford University, working at SLAC/Stanford National Accelerator Laboratory and Brookhaven National Laboratory. He was then a Robert H. Dicke Fellow in fundamental physics at Princeton and held several visiting appointments at Bell Labs (in Murray Hill, New Jersey) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and joined the faculty rank at Princeton University.^[4] In 2016-2017 he joined Miller Institute of Basic Research in Science as a Visiting Miller Professor at the University of California at Berkeley.^[5] Since 2017, he holds the Eugene Higgins endowed professorship at Princeton University.^[6]

He is an expert in the physics of quantum matter in relation to quantum field theory, topological phenomena,^[7] and advanced spectroscopic high resolution imaging techniques. His research has focused on quantum Hall-like topological phases, exotic superconductors, quantum phase transitions, and topological quantum matter.^[8] He played a pioneering role in demonstrating momentum-tuned resonant X-ray scattering technique and in the experimental discoveries of bulk topological insulators, topological crystalline insulators, helical topological superconductors, topological metals, Weyl fermion materials and related new forms of quantum matter using spin-resolved spectroscopic techniques.^[9]

A highly cited researcher,^[10] Hasan has published more than 160 research papers (receiving more than 28,000 GS-citations^[11]) in high impact journals unraveling the exotic physics of quantum matter and novel topological states of matter exhibiting unprecedented electrical, entanglement and Berry's phase spin properties.^{[12][13][14][15][16][17]} His research works have been featured in APS-Physics, Nature News, Science News, Physics Today and Physics World.^[18][19][20]

Selected Works

• "Electronic Structure of Mott Insulators Studied by Inelastic Resonant X-ray Scattering" [Science 288, 1811 (2000)];^[21]

• "Emergence of Fermi Pockets in a New Excitonic Charge-Density-Wave Melted Superconductor" [Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 117007 (2007).];^[22]

• "A topological Dirac insulator in a quantum spin Hall phase" [Nature 452, 970 (2008)];^[23]

• "A tunable topological insulator in the spin helical Dirac transport regime" [Nature 460, 1101 (2009)];^[24]

• "Observation of a large-gap topological-insulator class with a single Dirac cone on the surface" [Nature Physics 5, 398 (2009)];^[25]

• "Observation of Unconventional Quantum Spin Textures in Topological Insulators" [Science 323, 919 (2009)];^[26]

• "Half-Heusler ternary compounds as new multifunctional platforms for topological quantum phenomena" [Nature Materials 9, 546 (2010)];^[27]

• "Topological phase transition and texture inversion in a tunable topological insulator" [Science 332, 560 (2011)];^[28]

• "Observation of topological order in a superconducting doped topological insulator" [Nature Physics 6, 855 (2010)];^[29]

• "Hedgehog spin texture and Berry's phase tuning in a magnetic topological insulator" [Nature Physics 8, 616 (2012)];^[30]

• "Momentum-space imaging of Cooper pairing in a half-Dirac-gas topological superconductor" [Nature Physics 10, 943 (2014)];^[31]

• "Unconventional transformation of spin Dirac phase across a quantum phase transition" [Nature Commun. 6, 6870 (2015)];^[32]

• "Observation of quantum-tunnelling-modulated spin texture in ultrathin topological insulator Bi2Se3 films" [Nature Commun. 5, 3841 (2014)];^[33]

• "Topological electronic structure and Weyl semimetal in the TlBiSe2 class of semiconductors" [Phys. Rev. B 86, 115208 (2012)];^[34]

• "A Weyl Fermion semimetal with surface Fermi arcs in the monopnictide TaAs class" [Nature Commun. 6:7373 (2015)];^[35]

• "Discovery of a Weyl fermion semimetal and topological Fermi arcs" [Science 349, 613 (2015)];^[36]

• "Discovery of a Weyl fermion state with Fermi arcs in niobium arsenide" [Nature Physics 11, 748 (2015)];^[37]

• "Observation of Fermi Arc Surface States in a Topological Metal" [Science 347, 294 (2015)];^[38]

• "Experimental discovery of a topological Weyl semimetal state in TaP" [Science Advances 10, e1501092 (2015)];^[39]

• "Discovery of Lorentz violating Weyl fermions in LaGeAl" [Science Advances 3, e1603266 (2017)];^[40]

• "New type of Weyl semimetal with quadratic double Weyl fermions" [PNAS 113, 1180 (2016)];^[41]

• "A strongly robust type II topological Weyl fermion semimetal state in Ta3S2" [Science Advances e1600295 (2016)];^[42]

• "Signatures of Fermi Arcs in the Quasiparticle Interferences of the Weyl Semimetals" [Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 066601 (2016)];^[43]

• "Spin polarization and texture of the Fermi arcs in the Weyl Fermion semimetal TaAs" [Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 096801 (2016)];^[44]

• "Criteria for Directly Detecting Topological Fermi Arcs in Weyl Semimetals" [Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 066802 (2016)];^[45]

• "Signatures of the Adler-Bell-Jackiw chiral anomaly in a Weyl semimetal" [Nature Commun. 7:10735 (2016)];^[46]

• "Weyl semimetals, Fermi arcs and chiral anomaly" (Cover Story) [Nature Materials 15, 1140-1144 (2016)];^[47]

• "Prediction of an arc-tunable Weyl Fermion metallic state in MoxW1-xTe2" [Nature Commun. 7:10639 (2016)];^[48]

• "Atomic-scale visualization of quasiparticle interference on a type-II Weyl semimetal" [Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 266804 (2016)];^[49]

• "Topological Nodal-Line Fermions in Spin-Orbit Metal PbTaSe2" [Nature Commun. 7:10556 (2016)];^[50]

• "A novel artificial condensed matter lattice and a new platform for 1D topological phases" [Science Advances 3, e1501692 (2017)];^[51]

• [Review] "Three Dimensional Topological Insulators" [Annual Reviews of Condensed Matter Physics 2, 55 (2011)];^[52]

• [Review] "Topological Insulators" [Reviews of Modern Physics 82, 3045 (2010)];^[53]

References