Brief Introduction
Dr. Yanan Dai is an assistant professor in the department of physics, Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech). He obtained his B.S. degree in space science and technology at Shandong University in 2013, and Ph.D degree in physics at the University of Pittsburgh in 2019. Before joining SUSTech in Aug. 2022, he worked as a postdoctoral research scientist in the department of chemistry at the Columbia University. His research interest is to probe exotic excited state dynamics in condensed matter materials, such as plasmonic spin topology and 2D polaron formation. By developing ultrafast interferometric time resolved photoemission electron microscopy (ITR-PEEM), he was the first to discover and image meron (half-skyrmion) like plasmonic spin textures that exist on the nanometer and femtosecond (nano-femto) spatiotemporal scales, which granted him the outstanding dissertation award from the international organization of Chinese physicists and astronomers. He is also an expert in developing extreme-UV probed time- and angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy (TR-ARPES), and achieved full-Brillouin zone detection of hot electron dynamics and electron-phonon couplings in 2D thermoelectric materials. His group at SUSTech will develop novel ultrafast optical and photoelectron spectromicroscopies to focus on the multi-dimensional probing of excited state dynamics, and further design structured light sources based on polarization passage on the Poincaré sphere, to perform vectorial Floquet engineering of quantum materials on the nano-femto scales, i.e. the Poincaré engineering.
Research Interests
◆Dynamics of excited quantum states
◆Strong-field nano-optics
◆Ultrafast spectroscopy & microscopy
Educational Background
◆2009-2013 B.S. Shandong University
◆2013-2019 Ph.D. The University of Pittsburgh
Professional Experience
◆2019-2022 Postdoctoral Research Scientist
Honors & Awards
◆2020 Outstanding Dissertation award, the International Organization of Chinese Physicists and Astronomers
◆2020 Outstanding Thesis award, Springer
Selected Publications
# equal contribution, * corresponding author
1. Yanan Dai, Atreyie Ghosh, Sena Yang, Zhikang Zhou, Chen-bin Huang, and Hrvoje Petek*. “Poincaré engineering of surface plasmon polaritons.” Nature Reviews Physics (2022): 1-3.
2. Yanan Dai, Zhikang Zhou, Atreyie Ghosh, Karan Kapoor, Maciej D?browski, Atsushi Kubo, Chen-Bin Huang, and Hrvoje Petek*. “Ultrafast microscopy of a twisted plasmonic spin skyrmion.” Applied Physics Reviews 9, no. 1 (2022): 011420.
3. Atreyie Ghosh, Sena Yang, Yanan Dai*, Zhikang Zhou, Tianyi Wang, Chen-Bin Huang*, and Hrvoje Petek*. “A topological lattice of plasmonic merons.” Applied Physics Reviews 8, no. 4 (2021): 041413.
4. Yanan Dai, Qijing Zheng, Mark E. Ziffer, Daniel Rhodes, James Hone, Jin Zhao*, and Xiaoyang Zhu*. “Ultrafast Ferroelectric Ordering on the Surface of a Topological Semimetal MoTe2.” Nano Letters 21, no. 23 (2021): 9903-9908.
5. Yanan Dai*, Zhikang Zhou, Atreyie Ghosh, Roger SK Mong, Atsushi Kubo, Chen-Bin Huang, and Hrvoje Petek*. “Plasmonic topological quasiparticle on the nanometre and femtosecond scales.” Nature 588, no. 7839 (2020): 616-619.
