Dag Group: Quantum many-body physics in and out of equilibrium

We are a newly established theoretical research group at Indiana University Bloomington. Our research resides at the intersection of atomic, molecular and optical (AMO) physics, condensed matter theory and quantum information science. 

When graphene is placed inside a chiral cavity –one whose vacuum fluctuations are circularly polarized, such as a recent one fabricated in Kono Lab– the interaction between electrons and the quantized cavity field alters the topology of the bands. In our recent work, we show that this interaction gives rise to unidirectional edge states that are of hybrid nature composed of an electron and a photon. These glowing edges carry current in only one direction and can be switched on by tuning the cavity field, without any external drive or magnetic field. The result demonstrates that chiral vacuum fluctuations alone can create and control topological edge channels in graphene, connecting cavity quantum electrodynamics with topological condensed-matter physics. 

Now read on arXiv.

• October 2025: 

  • Our work on anti-scarring in spinor Bose-Einstein condensates is now published in Physical Review A. Read here.

  • Volker's preprint on Hybrid light-matter boundaries of graphene in a chiral cavity is out on arXiv!

  • Our collaboration work with Fabio Franchini's group in Europe is now out on arXiv too: Experimental preparation of W states through many-body physics on a quantum simulator, where Ceren remotely performed experiments on Aquila Rydberg atom array and conducted experimental data analysis. 

  • Ceren participated in Scialog funding competition for Quantum Matter and Information in Tucson, AZ, in mid-October and took part in two different seed proposals, fingers crossed!

  • Ceren visited UT Austin to give the CM seminar on Engineering topological bands in materials with chiral cavities in the Department of Physics and Center for Complex Quantum Systems, and is heading to the University of Notre Dame Department of Physics and Astronomy this week to deliver their CM seminar. 

• September 2025: 

  • Realization of a Chiral Photonic-Crystal Cavity with Broken Time-Reversal Symmetry, our collaboration work with Kono Lab at Rice University is out on ArXiv!

  • Ceren is visiting Institute for International Centre for Theoretical Physics - South American Institute for Fundamental Reseach (ICTP-SAIFR) to give a talk on "Quantum scarring in many-body quantum systems" in the workshop Quantum Many-Body Dynamics: Thermalization and its Violations. See the talk video here. 

  • Zhongling's paper on anti-scarring in spinor condensates got accepted to Physical Review A. Congrats Zhongling!

• August 2025: 

  • Ceren was conference crawling this month: three talks on three different topics in three weeks! First talk was on "Quantum simulations with neutral atoms" in University of Tokyo Institute for Solid State Physics (ISSP) workshop Physics of Open Systems: Resonance, Symmetry and Topology, where she presented the recent insights regarding the role of atom motion in quantum many-body dynamics simulated with Rydberg atom arrays and the crystalline symmetry protected topological order measured in Hubbard Quantum simulator. The second talk was on "Engineering topology in materials with chiral cavities" in Oka Group at ISSP, where she discussed the unpublished results of Kono Lab photonic crystal chiral cavity. Final talk was on "Quantum scarring in many-body quantum systems" in the International Conference on Quantum Chaos 2025 in Puebla City, Mexico. 

  • Ceren is also now teaching: grad level solid state physics where she will be lecturing on lattice structures and symmetries, quantization of lattice vibrations, electronic band theory and topology. 

• July 2025: Genuine quantum scars in many-body spin systems, next chapter of our research program on quantum scarring has been now published in Nature Communications!

• See older news here.

Physical Address: 

Swain West 302, Department of Physics, 

Indiana University Bloomington

727 E Third St, Bloomington, IN 47405