The Nanoscale and Quantum Phenomena Institute (NQPI) Seminar Series is pleased to welcome Ramon Carrillo Bastos, UABC/Mexico, as our featured speaker on Thursday, April 16 at 4:10 p.m. All seminars take place in CLIPPINGER 194 and are also accessible virtually via Teams.

Title: Controlling Valley Degrees of Freedom in Dirac Materials

Abstract: Dirac materials offer a unique setting in which internal electronic degrees of freedom can be manipulated through symmetry, geometry, and lattice design. Among these, the valley degree of freedom has attracted particular interest as a potential carrier of electronic functionality beyond charge. In this talk, I will discuss theoretical routes to control valley-dependent phenomena in low-dimensional Dirac systems. I will show how strain, lattice-scale modulations, and spatial confinement can be used to reshape the low-energy electronic structure and generate valley-selective responses in transport and scattering. More broadly, these results illustrate how tailored electronic environments can be exploited to engineer and probe quantum degrees of freedom in Dirac materials.