Hi! I am Prof. Saswata Bhattacharya, a Condensed Matter Theorist working at the interface of condensed matter physics, computational materials science, and materials chemistry. My research aims to understand how electrons, spins, and atoms interact in materials, and how these interactions can be harnessed to design technologies of the future.

Our group combines physics, chemistry, materials science, and artificial intelligence to discover and predict new functional materials with useful electronic, optical, and quantum properties. Broadly, our research is driven by two complementary directions:
(1) developing advanced first-principles and machine-learning-based computational methods, and
(2) applying these tools to discover next-generation semiconductor, optoelectronic, and quantum materials.

Core Research Areas

• Excited-State Physics and Light–Matter Interaction: We study how materials interact with light at the quantum level. This includes understanding band-gap engineering, excitons, carrier dynamics, and anharmonic lattice effects that govern the performance of solar cells, LEDs, photodetectors, and quantum optoelectronic devices.
• Quantum Materials and Spin Physics: Our research explores emerging quantum phenomena such as persistent spin textures, valley-selective physics, altermagnetism, and nonrelativistic spin effects in two-dimensional and centrosymmetric materials. These studies are relevant for future low-power spintronic and quantum-information technologies.

By integrating rigorous theoretical modeling at a realistic environmental condition (finite T, p) combined with various state-of-the-art first principles based methods starting from Density Functional Theory (DFT) to Manybody Perturbative Methods (viz. GW/BSE), our work provides predictive insights that help guide the synthesis, characterization, and application of advanced materials for future technologies.

For more details, please explore the Research and Publications sections of our webpage.