
Professor Xia-Ji Liu
PhD, Tsinghua University, China
- School of Science
- Centre for Quantum and Optical Science
- Department of Physics and Astronomy
- AD201a Hawthorn campus
- ORCID profile
Biography
Liu earned her PhD degree from Tsinghua University in 2001. She was a postdoc at European Laboratory for Non-Linear Spectroscopy (LENS, 2002-2003) and at the University of Queensland (2004-2006). Over the last fifteen years, Liu has been employed via continuous fellowships: The University of Queensland Postdoctoral Fellowship (2006-2008), ARC Australian Research Fellowship (2009-2014) and ARC Future Fellowship (step 2, 2015-2019). The latter two were hosted by Swinburne University of Technology. Liu is currently a Professor at CQOS, Swinburne. Liu also serves on the College of Experts of the Australian Research Council.
Her research interests are in the overlapping areas of quantum optics, atomic and molecular physics, and condensed matter physics. Driven by fast-growing experimental capabilities in ultra-cold atoms, her research has resulted in the development of several important quantum theories of ultra-cold Fermi gases, Bose gases, and Bose-Fermi mixtures. These areas of research all have immediate experimental applications and great implications for future advanced technologies. Liu has published over 150+ papers in peer-reviewed journals, including 22 publications in prestigious Nature Physics, Physics Reports and Physical Review Letters. Her career-long ISI (Google) citations and h-index are 4920+ (Google, 6790+) and 37 (Google, 43), respectively (see Web of Science ResearcherID https://publons.com/researcher/2858711/xia-ji-liu/).
Research interests
Ultracold Quantum Gases
PhD candidate and honours supervision
Higher degrees by research
Accredited to supervise Masters & Doctoral students as Principal Supervisor.
PhD topics and outlines
Exotic Superfluidity: Superfluidity - the ability to flow with zero resistance – is a property of many materials. In the work by Bardeen, Cooper and Schrieffer was shown that the essential ingredient for all superfluids is the ability of fermions to form pairs. Yet, not all the pairing mechanisms in superfluids follow the simple BCS picture. Here, we are interested in the characterization of exotic superfluidity.
Quantum Virial Expansion : Quantum virial expansion is an entirely new direction to handle strong correlations. It allows a controllable expansion to be worked out even in three dimensions, in terms of a small parameter - the fugacity. It provides an elegant way to bridge the few-body and the many-body worlds. Our specific schemes in this topic include the high-order virial coefficients et al.
Ultracold Atoms with Synthetic Spin-Orbit Coupling: The key ingredient of quantum simulation of topological materials, spin-orbit coupling between ultracold atoms, was just engineered in 2011, as reported in a Nature paper by NIST. Quantum simulation opens a new paradigm for the study of topological materials. Here, we are interested in the characterization of topological superfluids and Bose-Einstein condensates with non-trivial spin-textures.
Honours
Available to supervise honours students.
Honours topics and outlines
Quantum Fluids of Light: Polaritons - often referred to as quantum fluids of light – are half-light, half-matter “particles” that keep most characteristics of the underlying photons but also possess intrinsic nonlinearities for easy manipulation. In this project we will review recent development in this field and develop theoretical method to investigate quantum fluids of light.
Ultradilute quantum droplets: Over the past few years, a newly discovered phase of ultracold, dilute quantum droplets has attracted increasingly attention in different fields of physics. The purpose of this project is to develop better microscopic theories of quantum droplets and to solve some challenging theoretical difficulties in this field.
Fields of Research
- Degenerate Quantum Gases And Atom Optics - 510801
- Condensed Matter Physics - 510400
- Quantum Optics And Quantum Optomechanics - 510804
Teaching areas
Quantum Mechanics;Quantum Gases
Awards
- 2022, National, Fellow of The Australian Institute of Physics, Australian Institute of Physics
- 2018, Swinburne, 2018 FSET Woman Researcher Award, FSET
- 2014, National, ARC Future Fellowship, ARC
- 2013, Swinburne, Swinburne VC Research Excellence Awards, joint with the experimental Fermi gas team at CQOS, Swinburne
- 2009, National, ARC Australian Research Fellowship (ARF), ARC
- 2006, National, University of Queensland (UQ) Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, University of Queensland
Professional memberships
- 2022 - 2024: Member, Australian Research Council, Australia
- 2018 - 2021: Member, AIP-ATMOP (Atomic and Molecular Physics) Programme Committee, Australia
Publications
Also published as: Liu, Xia-Ji; Liu, Xiaji; Liu, X-J.; Liu, X. J.; Liu, X.-J.; Liu, Xia Ji
This publication listing is provided by Swinburne Research Bank. If you are the owner of this profile, you can update your publications using our online form.
Recent research grants awarded
- 2018: Revealing universal exotic superfluidity with ultracold fermionic atoms *; ARC Discovery Projects Scheme
- 2014: Finding the lost particle: Majorana fermions in ultracold atoms *; ARC Future Fellowships
- 2014: Strongly repulsive ultracold atomic gases as a resource for quantum simulation *; ARC Discovery Projects Scheme
- 2013: Visiting Researcher Scheme 2013 - Prof Sun *; Research Advisory Group - Visiting Researcher Scheme 2013
- 2009: Imbalanced superfluidity: The quantum mystery that defies solution *; ARC Discovery Projects Scheme
* Chief Investigator
Recent media
- 2017-04-01: Moving Majorana Fermions Around - Physics Focus
- 2014-03-14: Ultracold research paves the way to discover new phenomena - Swinburne
- 2013-01-10: Useful Impurities - Phys. Rev. Lett.
- 2012-05-01: Highlights from the Asia Pacific Region - Asia Pacific Physics Newsletter
- 2010-08-30: Jumping from two and three particles to infinitely many - Physics
- 2010-08-09: One relation to rule them all - Phys. Rev. Lett.
- The two-fluid theory and second sound in liquid helium - Physics Today