Darian Hall is currently a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Physics where he is advised by Professor James Analytis. He received his B.A. in Physics and Mathematics from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he researched topologically protected vortex reconnections in chiral nematic liquid crystals under Professor Ivan Smalyukh.
Darian’s doctoral research focuses on synthesizing and characterizing novel superconductors with unconventional Cooper pairing mechanisms driven by strong electronic correlations. These correlations can originate from a multitude of mechanisms influencing the electronic density of states near the Fermi energy, such as heavy fermion physics, flat bands, and chirality of the host lattice. By manipulating the Fermi energy of the lattice through doping and disorder, the strength of electronic correlations can be tuned.
As a Kavli ENSI fellow, Darian will investigate the interplay between quenched disorder and electronic correlations. Preliminary results from the Analytis Group demonstrate global disorder can tune strongly correlated intermetallic alloys toward a competition between ferromagnetism (FM) and superconductivity (SC). To bypass the challenges of characterizing global disorder, Darian will move to the quasi-2D limit. He will extract thin lamellae from bulk single crystals using a focused ion beam, then use a nanoscale tip to locally pattern disorder, generating distinct SC and FM domains. This approach enables him to directly link engineered disorder to changes in the electronic band structure and the superconducting gap. Darian’s studies will offer a new framework to explore how quenched disorder influences emergent quantum states in correlated materials.