Spotlight on new faculty: Fahad Mahmood, Condensed Matter

The Department of Physics at Illinois welcomes an extraordinary set of ten new faculty members this year. Eight of them have arrived on campus and have begun setting up their labs and settling into life in Champaign-Urbana. Two more faculty are set to arrive in January. We will feature each of them here over the next couple of weeks. Check back regularly to learn more about the exciting work these new faculty members are doing.

Professor Fahad Mahmood

Fahad Mahmood joins the condensed matter effort at Illinois. In his research on ultra-fast optical spectroscopies of quantum materials, he uses extremely short laser pulses to study problems at the intersection of strongly correlated quantum materials and non-equilibrium physics. He is best known for his work on THz collective modes and fluctuations in cuprate superconductors and on Floquet-Bloch states in topological insulators. His future research will explore the ways in which new quantum phases of matter can be studied and engineered by shining light on electrons. Of his decision to bring his research program to Illinois, he says, “I have excellent inter-disciplinary resources here e.g., from materials science, from electrical engineering, and from chemistry. A lot of my work is based on new materials, and there are already research groups here who are growing and studying interesting materials that one can then characterize and essentially play with using the spectroscopies that I work on.”

For more information about Fahad's research, or to inquire about joining his lab, please visit his website. Undergraduates as well as graduate students are encouraged to reach out.