Rafael Fernandes

Rafael Fernandes
Director of Undergraduate Studies, Distinguished McKnight University Professor, School of Physics and AstronomyContact
John T. Tate Hall Room 130-23 116 Church Street SeMinneapolis, MN 55455
Affiliations
Education
Ph.D., University of Campinas (Brazil), 2008
M.Sc., University of Campinas (Brazil), 2005
B.S., University of Campinas (Brazil), 2003
Professional Background
Before joining the University of Minnesota, I was a postdoc in Ames Laboratory and a joint postdoc in Columbia University/Los Alamos National Lab. I did my Ph.D. at the State University of Campinas, in Brazil.
Scientific & Professional Societies
- Fellow, American Physical Society
My main research activities are in theoretical condensed matter physics, particularly in strongly correlated electronic many-body systems. I am interested in clean and disordered systems in which the collective behavior of the electrons gives rise to ordered states that break different symmetries of the system, such as superconductivity, magnetism, nematic ordering, and orbital ordering. My aim is to understand not only the impact of these individual phases on the electronic structure and macroscopic properties of the system, but also how they interact with each other. To achieve this goal, I rely not only on the theoretical methods from quantum statistical mechanics and many-body theory, but also on the invaluable empirical information obtained from a variety of experimental techniques, such as x-ray diffraction, neutron scattering, optical spectroscopy, thermodynamic measurements, and angle-resolved photo-emission spectroscopy. Here are some of the topics I have been working on:
- Unconventional superconductivity (iron pnictides, cuprates, heavy fermions)
- Twisted bilayer graphene
- Vestigial electronic order (nematics, smectics)
- Quantum Monte Carlo simulations of correlated systems
- Transport in strongly correlated systems
- Quantum criticality in disordered systems
- Finite temperature Mott transition
Honors and Awards
- George Taylor Distinguished Research Award, 2021
- Outstanding Referee, American Physical Society, 2020
- Mercator Fellow, DFG Germany, 2020
- McKnight Presidential Fellow, 2017 - 2020
- George Taylor Career Development Award, 2017
- Fellow of the American Physical Society, 2017
- Cottrell Scholar Award, 2016 - 2019
- Research Corporation for Science Advancement, 2016 - 2019
- McKnight Land-Grant Professorship, 2015 - 2017
- DOE Early Career, 2014 - 2019
Default Pronouns: He/Him/His
Advisees & Collaborators
Graduate Students
- Anzumaan Chakraborty
- Fei Chen
- Ezra Day-Roberts
- Virginia Gali
- Joe Meese
Postdocs
- Matthias Hecker
- Zhentao Wang