Lin Lin

Lin's research centers on solving quantum many-body problems by employing both classical and contemporary methods. These techniques prove valuable across various domains, including quantum chemistry, quantum physics, materials science, and quantum information theory. He finds quantum many-body problems, and in particular, electronic structure theory particularly exciting because

1. Scientifically, it is amazing that many (electronic, mechanical, optical) properties calculated from such first principle theories (i.e. the only input is atomic species and atomic positions. There is in principle no dependence on empirical or fitting parameters) can be directly compared to experimental results. Electronic structure theory has also been identified as one of the potential "killer apps" for quantum computation.
2. Mathematically, the theories are relatively well defined. They also provide mathematical and computational challenges not commonly seen in other branches of applied mathematics. The complexity of electronic structure theories can range from high (like density functional theory) to very high (like configuration interaction), and hence numerical methods with reduced complexity are urgently needed in order to simulate ever larger relastic systems.
3. This field had been active in physics and chemistry before computers even existed, and yet the field is still at its early stage from the perspective of applied mathematics. In his view, "language barrier" is sometimes one of the biggest obstacles preventing mathematicians from understanding the problem. There is great potential for employing mathematical tools to deeply impact this field.

While continuing the development of density functional theory based methods, Lin is particularly interested in numerical algorithms for strongly correlated quantum systems, using 1) quantum computers 2) quantum embedding theory 3) neural networks.