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MENGKUN LIU
Associate Professor
Physics and Astronomy
mengkun.liu@stonybrook.edu | (631)-632-8175, Physics B-105
Research Group Website


Biography
Mengkun Liu earned his PhD from Boston University, where he worked with Prof. Richard D. Averitt (now in UCSD). He later joined Prof. D. N. Basov's lab at UC San Diego (now at Columbia) and was appointed as an assistant professor at Stony Brook University in 2015. He currently holds a joint appointment at Brookhaven National Laboratory and was promoted to associate professor at Stony Brook University in 2020.

Research Statement
Liu's Ultrafast & Near-field Infrared Laboratory (UNI-Lab) explores the future of materials science using advanced infrared and THz near-field microscopy and nano-Fourier transform IR spectroscopy. Their nanoscale imaging and manipulation of light-matter interactions boasts a spatial resolution over 1000 times higher than conventional optics. The lab studies complex materials like transition metal oxides, low-dimensional Dirac/Weyl microstructures, superconductors, and multiferroics by accessing the native length and time scales of electron and lattice motion and monitoring energy excitations, unlocking the mysteries of Mott physics and other many body effects and bringing closer to practical applications.

Recent Publication Hightlights

Machine Learning for Optical Scanning Probe Nanoscopy, Xinzhong Chen, Suheng Xu, Sara Shabani, Yueqi Zhao, Matthew Fu, Andrew J Millis, Michael M Fogler, Abhay N Pasupathy, Mengkun Liu*, DN Basov*, Advanced Materials,  2109171 (2022).

Probing subwavelength in-plane anisotropy with antenna-assisted infrared nano-spectroscopy, Ziheng Yao, Xinzhong Chen, Lukas Wehmeier, Yinming Shao, Zimeng Zeng, Fanwei Liu, Alexander S. Mcleod, Stephanie N. Gilbert Corder, Makoto Tsuneto, Suheng Xu, Wu Shi, Zihang Wang, Wenjun Zheng, Hans A. Bechtel, G. L. Carr, Michael C. Martin, Alex Zettl, D. N. Basov, Xi Chen, Lukas M. Eng, Susanne C. Kehr, Mengkun Liu*, Nature Communications  12, 2649 (2021).

Moiré Engineering of Electronic Phenomena in Correlated Oxides, Xinzhong Chen, Xiaodong Fan, Lin Li*, Nan Zhang, Zhijing Niu, Tengfei Guo, Suheng Xu, Han Xu, Dongli Wang, Huayang Zhang, A. S. McLeod, Zhenlin Luo, Qingyou Lu, Andrew J. Millis, D. N. Basov*, Mengkun Liu*, Changgan Zeng*, Nature Physics  16, 631–635 (2020).

THz near-field imaging of extreme subwavelength metal structures, Xinzhong Chen, Xiao Liu, Xiangdong Guo, Shu Chen, Hai Hu, Elizaveta Nikulina, Ziheng Yao, Hans A. Bechtel, Michael C. Martin, G. L. Carr, Qing Dai*, Songlin Zhuang, Qing Hu, Yiming Zhu*, Rainer Hillenbrand, Mengkun Liu*, ACS Photonics  7, 687 (2020).

Chiral terahertz wave emission from the Weyl semimetal TaAs, Y. Gao, Y. Qin, Sahal Kaushik, Evan J. Philip, Y. P. Liu, Y. L. Su, X. Chen, Z. Li, H. Weng, Dmitri E. Kharzeev*, M. K. Liu*, J. Qi*, Nature Communications  11, 720 (2020).

Nano-resolved current-induced insulator-metal transition in the Mott insulator Ca2RuO4, Jiawei Zhang, Alexander. S. McLeod, Qiang Han, Xinzhong Chen, Hans A. Bechtel, Ziheng Yao, S. N. Gilbert Corder, Thomas Ciavatti, Hu (Tiger) Tao, Meigan Aronson, G. L. Carr, Michael C. Martin, Chanchal Sow, Shingo Yonezawa, Fumihiko Nakamura, Ichiro Terasaki, D. N. Basov, Andrew J. Millis*, Yoshiteru Maeno*, Mengkun Liu*, Physical Review X  9, 011032 (2019).