About
I am a theoretical condensed matter physicist working on strongly correlated quantum many-body systems and topological phases of matter.
My research focuses on:
- Moiré materials and 2D heterostructures, including rhombohedral graphene multilayers and twisted transition-metal dichalcogenides.
- Fractional quantum Hall states, with a particular emphasis on graphene-based quantum Hall platforms.
- Unconventional superconductivity, such as fluctuation-mediated pairing and anyon superconductivity.
- Quantum criticality, including continuous transitions out of topological phases and applications of the fuzzy-sphere.
I work closely with experimental groups, combining microscopic modeling, field theory, and large-scale numerical simulations (DMRG and tensor networks) to compare theory with experiment at a quantitative level.
Currently, I am a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University (HQI Prize Fellow, Simons UQM) and a joint postdoctoral fellow at MIT, working with Ashvin Vishwanath, Eslam Khalaf, and Patrick A. Lee.
Selected Publications
View All →Chiral superconductivity near a fractional Chern insulator
Taige Wang, Michael P. Zaletel
arXiv:2507.07921
Fractional Chern insulators and spin-valley-polarized superconductors appear side by side in twisted MoTe2 and rhombohedral graphene, hinting that melting a fractionalized insulator can produce pairing among fully polarized, repulsive electrons. DMRG on spinless lowest-Landau-level electrons with a tunable periodic potential shows that as the FCI gap closes, a chiral f-wave superconductor and a root-3 charge density wave emerge nearly degenerate, mirroring the observed superconducting and re-entrant integer quantum Hall phases, with the superconducting dome robust to Coulomb interactions, doping, and lattice geometry. The work predicts a superconducting dome in larger-angle twisted MoTe2 at filling 2/3 that a magnetic field should convert into a re-entrant quantum Hall state.
Emergent QED$_3$ at the bosonic Laughlin state to superfluid transition
Taige Wang, Xue-Yang Song, Michael P. Zaletel, T. Senthil
arXiv:2507.07611
The conjectured continuous transition between the bosonic Laughlin state and a superfluid is a paradigmatic Landau-forbidden critical point, proposed to be described by QED3-Chern-Simons theory whose stability had been uncertain. Infinite-cylinder DMRG on half-filled bosons in the lowest Landau level with a lattice potential finds a single continuous transition where adiabatic flux insertion exposes massless Dirac quasiparticles and three lattice-related density modes share one critical exponent, evidencing an emergent SO(3) symmetry. The joint observation of Dirac dispersion and symmetry enlargement provides the first microscopic support for a stable QED3-Chern-Simons fixed point, with a numerical blueprint applicable to moire and cold-atom platforms.
Entropy of strongly correlated electrons in a partially filled Landau level
Alexandre Assouline, Taige Wang, Heun Mo Yoo, Ruihua Fan, Fangyuan Yang, Ruining Zhang, Takashi Taniguchi, Kenji Watanabe, Michael P. Zaletel, Andrea F. Young
arXiv:2503.16738
Entropy is a uniquely sensitive thermodynamic probe of strongly correlated Landau levels but is notoriously hard to measure. Using the Maxwell relation between the temperature derivative of the chemical potential and the density derivative of the entropy, high-resolution chemical potential measurements on monolayer and bilayer graphene track the entropy from 300 K down to 200 mK, resolving the sequential onset of quantum Hall ferromagnetism, fractional quantum Hall states, and charge order. Excess low-temperature entropy near the even-denominator states in bilayer graphene is discussed as a possible signature of non-Abelian quasiparticle degeneracy.
Anomalous Hall Crystals in Rhombohedral Multilayer Graphene I: Interaction-Driven Chern Bands and Fractional Quantum Hall States at Zero Magnetic Field
Junkai Dong, Taige Wang, Tianle Wang, Tomohiro Soejima, Michael P. Zaletel, Ashvin Vishwanath, Daniel E. Parker
Phys. Rev. Lett. 133, 206503 (2024)
Fractional quantum Hall states were observed in rhombohedral pentalayer graphene at zero magnetic field under strong displacement fields where the moire potential is weak, posing the puzzle of what stabilizes the required Chern band. Self-consistent Hartree-Fock on the interacting model finds a robust, flat, isolated Chern-one band with good quantum geometry that survives even with the moire potential switched off, and exact diagonalization plus DMRG confirm fractional quantum anomalous Hall states at partial filling. This identifies a new phase, the anomalous Hall crystal, in which interactions spontaneously break continuous translation symmetry while generating the topological band, providing a general mechanism for zero-field fractionalization in rhombohedral graphene.
Diverse magnetic orders and quantum anomalous Hall effect in twisted bilayer MoTe2 and WSe2
Taige Wang, Trithep Devakul, Michael P. Zaletel, Liang Fu
arXiv:2306.02501
Twisted transition metal dichalcogenide homobilayers host flat topological bands whose interplay with interactions produces magnetism and quantum anomalous Hall states. Hartree-Fock calculations on the continuum model of twisted MoTe2 and WSe2 map out displacement-field-driven transitions in both topology and magnetic order, and the computed magnon spectra show that band topology amplifies the easy-axis anisotropy, yielding magnon gaps up to 7 meV that protect two-dimensional ferromagnetism against thermal fluctuations. The results tie the thermal robustness of the observed anomalous Hall states directly to their band topology.
News
Started as an HQI Prize Fellow at Harvard University and a joint postdoctoral fellow at MIT.
Completed my PhD in Physics at UC Berkeley under the supervision of Michael P. Zaletel.
Posted three preprints on chiral superconductivity, quantum criticality, and edge reconstruction in quantum Hall systems.
Completed a Graduate Fellowship at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP).