Pedro Vianez

Department of Physics

Pedro is a final year PhD student in Physics in the Semiconductor Physics Group at the Cavendish Laboratory, Department of Physics. Prior to Cambridge he did his BSc in Physics at the University of Porto, followed by an MSc in Physics at UCL and an MSc in Optics and Photonics at Imperial College. In 2019 he was also a Visiting Assistant in Research at the Yale Quantum Institute.

Pedro’s work looks at how electrons, one of the most fundamental particles in nature, interact with one another when confined to lower dimensions. In particular, he uses gallium arsenide-based quantum electronic devices to look at the physics of electron transport in one-dimensional systems, and the underlying dynamical properties that they exhibit. This has allowed him to recently report on the existence of a previously unknown state of matter where the spin and charge properties fully separate, across the entire energy range, as if the electrons themselves were breaking apart. This knowledge is now being used to develop systems for improved energy efficiency and could prove crucial in designing the next generation of sustainable materials.

His expertise includes device fabrication, electron-beam lithography, low-temperature, and low-noise measurements. Currently, his main research interests are strongly interacting many-body systems, quantum spin liquids, thermoelectricity, and energy harvesting.