Yiyuan Chen is a PhD student in Physics at Columbia University and a Joaquin Luttinger Fellow at the Center for Computational Quantum Physics (CCQ). His research interests lie broadly at the intersection of quantum many-body physics, nonequilibrium dynamics, disordered systems, and quantum information. He is particularly interested in understanding how collective behavior emerges in strongly interacting systems, and in developing analytical and numerical methods for studying their dynamics.
He previously studied the digital quantum simulation of the SYK model, and also worked on strong-disorder renormalization group (SDRG) techniques applied to bosonic SYK-like chains. More recently, he has been studying slow quantum quenches and critical dynamics in quantum spherical models. His current work seeks to understand the scaling of excitations generated near the quantum critical point, including the anomalous behavior at the spectral edge and its relation to the conventional Kibble--Zurek scaling.