Lu Li
University of Michigan, MI·Physics
Electrons carry heat as well as electricity, and following how heat moves through a solid can reveal hidden quantum behavior. In some materials, called strongly correlated materials, electrons interact so strongly that they cannot be understood one at a time.
- Fields
Physics
Materials Science
- Topics
strongly correlated materials
quantum materials
thermal transport
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Nov 2026
What they work on
- Use thermoelectric and thermal Hall measurements to determine the nature of the magnetic-field-driven insulator-to-metal transition and the origin of quantum oscillations in Kondo insulators.
- Find what causes the strong thermal Hall signals, the sideways heat flow in a magnetic field, in undoped and doped Mott insulators, including the parent cuprates.
- Use thermal transport to test whether the fundamental excitations in Kagome quantum spin liquids are fermions or bosons.
- Identify experimental signatures of flat electronic bands, energy levels where electrons barely move, in Kagome metals using thermoelectric measurements.
More about the research
These materials produce puzzling effects that could point to new quantum phases and to new functions for future electronics. A key debate is which particles are responsible. Charge-neutral excitations carry heat but no electric current, so the culprit might be magnons (waves of magnetic order), phonons (vibrations of the crystal lattice), or more exotic particles such as Majorana excitations.
Why it matters
The work could add to the understanding of how strong interactions between electrons and topology (properties of a material's electronic structure that stay robust when the material is deformed) combine to create new quantum phases. This knowledge could eventually inform the design of quantum materials with new functions for future electronics.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Pengcheng Dai
Rice University, TX·Physics
Grow and characterize single crystals of layered 2D magnetic materials with honeycomb and kagome lattices, the structures of interest for spintronics and exotic magnetism.
Nirmal Ghimire
University of Notre Dame, IN·Physics·Early-career
Synthesize kagome lattice magnets, materials with magnetic atoms on a corner-sharing triangle network, and use magnetotransport measurements to study how topological effects in real and momentum space interact.
Stephen Winter
Wake Forest University, NC·Physics·Early-career
Implement first-principles calculations of low-energy effective Hamiltonians, simplified models of real materials, using fermionic matrix product state methods that capture electron entanglement across large orbital spaces.
The school
University of Michigan: 124 labs on PI Pages, $2.1B a year on research, 963 research doctorates a year.
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