Jainendra Jain


Jainendra K. Jain
Erwin W. Mueller Professor of Physics
Department of Physics
The Pennsylvania State University
104 Davey Laboratory
University Park, PA 16802                                                         
Tel: (814) 574-7497
Fax: (814) 865-3604
Email: jain at phys.psu.edu

B.Sc. Maharaja College, Jaipur , India,1979
M.Sc. Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India, 1981             
Ph.D. SUNY @ Stony Brook, 1985


I had my schooling in Sambhar, a tiny village located at the eastern margin of the Thar desert in Rajasthan, India. After earning my Bachelor's degree from the Maharaja College, Jaipur, and Master's degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, I joined the Stony Brook University in 1981 for my Ph.D. in physics, which I completed in 1985 under the guidance of Professor Philip B. Allen. Subsequent to postdoctoral work at the University of Maryland and the Yale Univeristy, I returned to the Stony Brook University as an Assistant Professor in 1989, and was promoted to Associate Professor and Full Professor before moving to the Pennsylvania State University in 1998 as the Erwin W. Mueller Professor of Physics.

As a many body condensed matter theorist, my primary focus has been the study of unexpected conceptual structures that emerge when electrons behave cooperatively. Closest to my heart has been the fractional quantum Hall effect, which provides a new paradigm for collective behavior that rivals superconductivity and superfluidity in its scope and elegance. My most important contribution has been the introduction of exotic particles that I named "composite fermions," and the explanation of the mysterious fractional quantum Hall effect as the integral quantum Hall effect of composite fermions, thus unifying the two phenomena.  Composite fermions, topological bound states of electrons and quantized vortices, provide a coherent account of a vast body of experimental facts, exhibit phenomena and states beyond the fractional quantum Hall effect, and have been directly observed in numerous experiments. More information can be found in the padagogical articles and text books listed here.



    Selected Publications
    Honors
    Collaborators
    EPQHS2 (Emergent Phenomena in Quantum Hall Systems-2)
    Penn State Physics Home