Cheng-Chien Chen

Cheng-Chien Chen
Associate Professor

Associate Scientist (C), Ctr Nanoscale Mat & Biointegration , College of Arts and Sciences
Associate Professor (P), Physics , College of Arts and Sciences

Overview

Dr. Cheng-Chien Chen joined UAB Physics as an Assistant Professor in 2016. Dr. Chen received his B.S. in Physics from the National Tsing Hua University in 2004 and Ph.D. in Physics from Stanford University in 2011. He was a Postdoctoral Scholar at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (2011-2012) and an Aneesur Rahman Postdoctoral Fellow at the Argonne National Laboratory (2012-2015). Dr. Chen is currently an NSF EPSCoR RII Track-4 Research Fellow and an LRAC Awardee to use the NSF-funded Frontera Supercomputer. He also serves as a Member-at-Large for the APS Physics Topical Group on Data Science (2019-2021).

Selected Publications

Academic Article

Year	Title	Altmetric
2022	Dispersionless orbital excitations in (Li,Fe)OHFeSe superconductors. npj Quantum Materials. 7. 2022
2022	Evolution of electronic and magnetic properties of Sr2IrO4 under strain. npj Quantum Materials. 7. 2022
2022	Publisher Correction: Evolution of electronic and magnetic properties of Sr2IrO4 under strain (npj Quantum Materials, (2022), 7, 1, (90), 10.1038/s41535-022-00496-w). npj Quantum Materials. 7. 2022
2022	Discovering Superhard B-N-O Compounds by Iterative Machine Learning and Evolutionary Structure Predictions. ACS Omega. 7:21035-21042. 2022
2022	High-Entropy Borides under Extreme Environment of Pressures and Temperatures. Materials. 15. 2022
2022	Experimental and Computational Studies of Compression and Deformation Behavior of Hafnium Diboride to 208 GPa. Materials. 15. 2022
2021	Fluctuating Nature of Light-Enhanced d -Wave Superconductivity: A Time-Dependent Variational Non-Gaussian Exact Diagonalization Study. Physical Review X. 11. 2021
2021	LaN structural and topological transitions driven by temperature and pressure. Computational Materials Science. 200. 2021
2021	Machine learning and evolutionary prediction of superhard B-C-N compounds. npj Computational Materials. 7. 2021
2021	Theoretical and experimental studies of compression and shear deformation behavior of osmium to 280 GPa 2021
2021	First-principles study of strain effect on the thermoelectric properties of LaP and LaAs. Journal of the Chemical Society, Faraday Transactions. 23:18189-18196. 2021
2021	Experimental and theoretical P-V-T equation of state for Os2B3. High Pressure Research. 41:27-38. 2021
2020	First-Principles Predictions and Synthesis of B50C2 by Chemical Vapor Deposition. Scientific Reports. 10. 2020
2020	Electronic structure and anisotropic compression of Os2B3to 358 GPa. Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter. 32. 2020
2020	Superhard boron-rich boron carbide with controlled degree of crystallinity. Materials. 13. 2020
2020	Experimental and computational studies on superhard material rhenium diboride under ultrahigh pressures. Materials. 13. 2020
2019	Probing Cerium 4 f States across the Volume Collapse Transition by X-ray Raman Scattering. Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. 10:7890-7897. 2019
2019	Lattice frustration in spin-orbit Mott insulator Sr3Ir2O7 at high pressure. npj Quantum Materials. 4. 2019
2019	Evidence for a strain-tuned topological phase transition in ZrTe5. Science Advances. 5. 2019
2019	Numerical investigation of spin excitations in a doped spin chain. Physical Review B. 99. 2019
2018	Theory of time-resolved Raman scattering in correlated systems: Ultrafast engineering of spin dynamics and detection of thermalization. Physical Review B. 98. 2018
2018	Evolution of a Novel Ribbon Phase in Optimally Doped Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+δ at High Pressure and Its Implication to High- TC Superconductivity. Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. 9:4182-4188. 2018
2018	Computational predictions and microwave plasma synthesis of superhard boron-carbon materials. Materials. 11. 2018
2018	Light-Enhanced Spin Fluctuations and d -Wave Superconductivity at a Phase Boundary. Physical Review Letters. 120. 2018
2018	Influence of magnetism and correlation on the spectral properties of doped Mott insulators. Physical Review B. 97. 2018
2017	Numerically exploring the 1D-2D dimensional crossover on spin dynamics in the doped Hubbard model. Physical Review B. 96. 2017
2016	Fermionic Symmetry-Protected Topological Phase in a Two-Dimensional Hubbard Model. Physical Review Letters. 117. 2016
2016	Pressure-Induced Confined Metal from the Mott Insulator Sr3Ir2 O7. Physical Review Letters. 116. 2016
2016	Characterizing the three-orbital Hubbard model with determinant quantum Monte Carlo. Physical Review B. 93. 2016
2016	Using Nonequilibrium Dynamics to Probe Competing Orders in a Mott-Peierls System. Physical Review Letters. 116. 2016
2015	Sr2Ir1-xRhx O4(x < 0.5): An inhomogeneous jeff= 12 Hubbard system. Physical Review B. 92. 2015
2015	Origin of strong dispersion in Hubbard insulators. Physical Review B. 92. 2015
2015	The many faces of quantum kagome materials: Interplay of further-neighbour exchange and Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction 2015
2015	Fractionalization, entanglement, and separation: Understanding the collective excitations in a spin-orbital chain. Physical Review B. 91. 2015
2015	Spin chain in magnetic field: Limitations of the Large-N mean-field theory 2015
2014	Numerical exploration of spontaneous broken symmetries in multiorbital Hubbard models. Physical Review B. 90. 2014
2014	Persistent spin excitations in doped antiferromagnets revealed by resonant inelastic light scattering. Nature Communications. 5. 2014
2014	Novel high-pressure monoclinic metallic phase of v 2 O 3. Physical Review Letters. 112. 2014
2013	Existence of orbital order and its fluctuation in superconducting Ba(Fe1-xCox)2As2 single crystals revealed by x-ray absorption spectroscopy. Physical Review Letters. 111. 2013
2013	Time-dependent charge-order and spin-order recovery in striped systems. Physical Review B. 88. 2013
2013	Doping evolution of the oxygen K-edge x-ray absorption spectra of cuprate superconductors using a three-orbital Hubbard model. Physical Review B. 87. 2013
2012	Uncovering selective excitations using the resonant profile of indirect inelastic x-ray scattering in correlated materials: Observing two-magnon scattering and relation to the dynamical structure factor. New Journal of Physics. 14. 2012
2012	Phase transitions in spin-orbital models with spin-space anisotropies for iron pnictides: Monte Carlo simulations. Physical Review B. 85. 2012
2011	Fidelity study of the superconducting phase diagram in the two-dimensional single-band Hubbard model. Physical Review B. 84. 2011
2011	Revealing the degree of magnetic frustration by non-magnetic impurities. New Journal of Physics. 13. 2011
2011	Theory of two-Magnon Raman scattering in iron pnictides and chalcogenides. Physical Review Letters. 106. 2011
2011	Numerical studies of photon-based spectroscopies on high-Tc superconductors. Computer Physics Communications. 182:106-108. 2011
2010	High-pressure evolution of Fe2O3 electronic structure revealed by x-ray absorption. Physical Review B. 82. 2010
2010	Unraveling the nature of charge excitations in La2CuO4 with momentum-resolved Cu K-edge resonant inelastic x-ray scattering. Physical Review Letters. 105. 2010
2010	Orbital order and spontaneous orthorhombicity in iron pnictides. Physical Review B. 82. 2010
2010	Strong energy-momentum dispersion of phonon-dressed carriers in the lightly doped band insulator SrTiO3. New Journal of Physics. 12. 2010
2009	Finite-temperature spin dynamics and phase transitions in spin-orbital models. Physical Review B. 80. 2009
2009	Evidence for weak electronic correlations in iron pnictides. Physical Review B. 80. 2009
2008	Stability of nodal quasiparticles in superconductors with coexisting orders. Physical Review Letters. 100. 2008

Research Overview

Dr. Chen's research topics concern computational x-ray sciences and condensed matter physics. His group uses quantum many-body theories, first-principles calculations, and machine learning simulations to study novel quantum and functional materials, such as quantum magnets, unconventional superconductors, topological states of matter, and superhard materials. He is currently the PI for an NSF grant titled "RII Track-4: Big Data and Massive Computation Approaches to Non-Equilibrium Dynamics of Strongly Correlated Materials" (award No. OIA-1738698) and a Co-PI for an NSF grant titled "Shear Strength and Phase Transformations in Transition Metals and Their Diborides Under Terapascal Pressures" (award No. DMR-1904164).

Principal Investigator On

CAREER: Correlated Superconductors under Extreme Conditions awarded by NSF - National Science Foundation

Magnetic Topological Critical Materials awarded by Air Force Office of Scientific Research

RII Track-4: Big Data and Massive Computation Approaches to Non-Equilibrium Dynamics of Strongly Correlated Materials awarded by NSF - National Science Foundation

Travel Grant for NSF Frontera LRAC Award: Technical Coordination with TACC and Attendance to a PI Meeting awarded by NSF - National Science Foundation

Investigator On

FTTP: Future Technologies Enabled by Plasma Processes awarded by UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA (HUNTSVILLE)

MRI: Acquisition of a Spark Plasma Sintering System for Engineering Advanced Materials and Composites for Use in Extreme Environments awarded by NSF - National Science Foundation

Neutron Diffraction Study of Magnetic Structures in Heavy Lanthanides under Extreme Conditions awarded by Department of Energy

New Frontiers in Synthesis of High-Entrophy Transition Metal Borides Enabled by Microwave-Induced Plasma awarded by NSF - National Science Foundation

Rll Track 1: CPU2AL: Connecting the Plasma Universe to Plasma Technology in AL awarded by UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA (HUNTSVILLE)

Shear Strength and Phase Transformations in Transition Metals and Their Diborides Under Terapascal Pressures awarded by NSF - National Science Foundation

Teaching Overview

After joining UAB in 2016, Dr. Chen has taught various undergraduate and graduate courses in Physics, such as General Physics, Classical Mechanics, and Quantum Mechanics. He also has actively developed new courses, including "Computational Solid State Physics" and "Machine Learning Applications in Physics and Materials Science."