C.N. Yang Award
Divisions
Working Groups
City University of Hong Kong
Institute of Theoretical Physics,
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Beijing Normal University
Baptist University of Hong Kong
Dr. Ma's main research interests lie in the realms of topological physics, non-Hermitian physics in classical-wave platforms and metamaterials. He studies topological physics using classical waves. His works have not only exemplified the universality of topology as a foundation in physics but have also vitalized the study of classical waves by bringing new tools for wave manipulations. For instance, his research opens a new frontier for topological physics by linking it to non-Hermitian systems - a new physical formalism that describes open systems. Singularities called "exceptional points" (EPs) can emerge in the parameter space of non-Hermitian systems. Dr. Ma was the first to experimentally realize higher-order exceptional points.
Peking University
Dr. Wang is currently leading a group called the "Integrated Quantum Optics Lab" in the Physics School of Peking University. His research focuses on quantum information science and technologies with photons. He has developed large-scale integrated quantum photonic circuits and devices in silicon, and has developed versatile technologies to understand quantum foundations and to explore applications of quantum information theory in communications, simulations and computing. Dr. Wang realized the world's first integrated optical quantum chip with over 500 components, which significantly pushed the development of the field. He has made significant contributions to on-chip generation, manipulation and measurement of complex entanglement structures, including multiphoton entanglement and multidimensional entanglement.
Academia Sinica
Dr Wu, with his collaborators, studied theoretical topics related to r-process nucleosynthesis and neutrino flavor conversions in mergers and supernovae. His work showed that r-process nucleosynthesis in outflows ejected viscously from post-merger black-hole accretion disk systems can robustly produce elemental abundance distributions that match well with what is inferred from the solar system and metal-poor star observations. For the theoretical modeling of kilonova lightcurves powered by the nuclear energy released from the decay of unstable nuclei made in the r-process, Dr. Wu and his collaborators found that the thermalization of particle species produced by different decay channels can largely affect the observable. He performed neutrino detection analysis and nucleosynthesis calculations to predict the elemental yields. For neutrino flavor conversions, he showed that neutron star merger remnants generally host favorable conditions for novel fast neutrino flavor conversions to occur within a length scale of centimeters.
Institute of Physics,
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Dr. Fang has played a key role in solving two important problems in this field, known as "diagnosis" and "classification", with the key concept of "topological invariant", a global quantum number that is used to distinguish topological materials from non-topological ones and to classify various types of topological materials. Note that the types and forms of all topological invariants depend only on two factors: symmetry and dimensionality. Identifying all invariants for a given dimension and symmetry group of interest is, therefore, an important "classification problem" for theorists. Dr. Fang's recent works in Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 246402 (2017) and Nature Communications 9, 3530 (2018), for the first time, identify four new Z2 topological invariants in 3D for the following spatial symmetries: rotation, screw rotation, roto-reflection, and inversion. He then used a theoretical tool, "layer construction", to solve the classification problem.
The High Energy Accelerator
Research Organization (KEK)
Dr. Otani has succeeded in high-frequency acceleration of muons for the first time in the world. He devised the unique combination of muon cooling through generating negative muonium ion(the bound state of a positive muon and two electrons), decelerating muons down to less than 1 KeV (by simply injecting muons into a thin metal film), and then accelerating and bunching muons with a radio-frequency quadrupole linear accelerator (RFQ). This unique method has solved the decades-old problem in a limited experimental environment and will be the basis for a variety of future projects in high energy physics, including precise measurement of muons, neutrino factory, muon collider, and so on.
Nuclear Physics,
China Institute of Atomic Energy
Dr. Shen's works mainly focus on the direct and indirect measurement on this "Holy Grail" reaction. He develops the indirect technique based on the independent (11B, 7Li) transfer reaction with less breakup effect and experimentally determines the external-capture contribution in the 12C(α, γ)16O for the first time. This work results in a significant increase of the total S factor which is now in good agreement with the value obtained by reproducing supernova nucleosynthesis calculations with the solar-system abundances.
Physics Department,
Tsinghua University
Dr. Jinsong Zhang's research has focused on the low-temperature transport study of topological quantum matter and two-dimensional (2D) layered materials under electric and magnetic fields, including topological insulators (TI), the quantum anomalous Hall effect (QAHE), and quantum phase transitions. His techniques and works include (1) band structure engineering in topological insulators, (2) the first experimental realization of QAHE, (3) topology-driven magnetic quantum phase transition, and (4) the axion insulator and Chern insulator phases in intrinsic 2D magnetic TI MnBi2Te4, which have demonstrated new approaches to study fundamentally new and unexpected physical behaviors in metastable materials.
Shandong University
Dr. Liu is an experimentalist working on particle physics and nuclear physics, with the Beijing Spectrometer III (BES III), Belle/Belle II, and anti-Proton ANnihilation at Darmstadt (PANDA) experiments. He participated in the discovery of a charged charmonium-like state Zc(3900) at the BES III experiment in 2013, and made the same observation at the Belle experiment. Note that the Zc(3900) particle is regarded as the first convincing candidate for a tetraquark particle by the hadron physics community, a highly acclaimed event reported in Physics and selected by the American Physics Society as the number one standout story of the "Top Eleven Highlighted Events" in physics in 2013.
RCNP,
Osaka University
Dr. Kobayashi has led the research field of halo formation in unstable nuclei using radioisotope (RI) beams at RIKEN Radioactive Isotope Beam Factory (RIBF). His main achievements include spectroscopic studies on novel halo nuclei 37Mg, 31,29Ne, and 22C via inclusive breakup reactions. In addition, he worked on a lifetime measurement of the excited states of the unstable nucleus 43S at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL), Michigan State University (MSU) and a study of pygmy dipole resonances on 208Pb via (p,p'γ) reactions at the Research Center for Nuclear Physics (RCNP), Osaka University.
University of Technology Sydney
Aharonovich's group explores new quantum emitters in wide bandgap materials and aims to fabricate quantum nanophotonic devices on single chips for the next generation's quantum computing, quantum cryptography, and quantum bio-sensing needs. In 2016, Aharonovich led his team to discover the first quantum emitter in 2D materials operating at room temperature. He co-authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications, including one of the most cited reviews on diamond photonics. More recently, he has led his team to realize a new generation of plasmonic devices.
Peking University
Liu is one of the pioneers in quantum simulation for synthetic gauge field and topological quantum phases. He proposed the first model of the (quantum) spin Hall effect for ultracold atoms and has successfully realized one-dimensional spin-orbit coupling (Abelian synthetic gauge field) and two-dimensional spin-orbit coupling (non-Abelian synthetic gauge field) for ultracold atoms, in addition to establishing a systematic theory for realizing, engineering, and detecting topological phases. These works have advanced quantum simulation for synthetic gauge field and topological quantum phases to a highly active and broadly recognized research topic in ultracold atoms. Importantly, for condensed matter physics, he proposed the concept of symmetry protected non-Abelian statistics of Majorana zero modes in topological superconductors, which has added a new family member of non-Abelian statistics to quantum statistics and has fundamentally overturned the traditional view of non-Abelian statistics. His works have creatively changed the theory and has had a crucial impact on the related experimental investigations.
Institute of Theoretical Physics,
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Song He has played a key role in recent advances in better understanding the scattering amplitudes in gauge theories, gravity, and string theory. He is renowned for discovering new ways of computing scattering amplitudes and unraveling their elegant mathematical structures and hidden relations. Since Witten's celebrated proposal of twistor string theory in 2003, there has been enormous progress in computing and understanding the scattering amplitudes of quantum field theory (QFT), which is conceivably the foundation of particle physics. In this fast-growing frontier of theoretical high energy physics, Song He's works not only enable more precise predictions of the Standard Model for high-energy experiments, such as the LHC, but also shed new light on the structures of QFT and the fundamental issues in quantum gravity and string theory.
Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
Australian National University, Australia
Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan
Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
Konkuk University, Korea
Tohoku University, Japan
Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan
Fudan University, China
Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China
University of Chicago, USA
Yonsei University, Korea
Rutgers University, USA
IMS, VAST, Vietnam
College of Applied Sciences and Technology, Vietnam Nat'l Univ, Vietanam
Dept of Electric Engineering, Nat'l Taiwan Univ, Taiwan
Dept of Physics, Nat'l TsingHuaUniv, Taiwan
Dept of Physics, Tsinghua Univ, China
IOP, CAS, Chin