Department of Physics and Astronomy

Rutgers Condensed Matter Group study published in proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

(Sept 4, 2026)

A new study from the Rutgers Condensed Matter Theory group that was recently published in PNAS (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2535297123).

In addition to Daniel Kaplan (who recently took up a faculty position at the University of Central Floirda after several years here as a postdoc in the CMT group), the collaboration includes Prof. Premi Chandra, former Rutgers postdoc (currently faculty at UConn) Pavel Volkov and Max Planck-Hamburg director Andrea Cavalleri (experimentalist).

Daniel writes:
This collaboration enabled us to show that Faraday waves, a feature of nonlinear classical systems (like water, sand dunes or complex patterns in biological systems) can actually appear in strongly correlated quantum materials, and moreover, that the pattern formation which underlies this phenomenon can be induced and shaped by light. In effect, we have connected an observation previously only observed in classical fluids to quantum matter. We also demonstrated how it can be tuned for applications in the intricate world of electrons. It is a profound example of an interdisciplinary discovery in physics, bridging high and low energy physics and the classical and quantum realms.