Trevor Arp

I’m a physicist currently working as a postdoctoral scholar with Dr. Andrea Young at UC Santa Barbara.

I’m an experimentalist at heart, I love working with cutting edge technology to develop new ways to probe physical phenomena, especially in nanoscale quantum systems.

I earned my PhD at the University of California, Riverside with Dr. Nathan Gabor in the Quantum Materials Optoelectronics Lab researching the optoelectronic properties of 2D Heterostructures. Prior to grad school I graduated with a B.S. from the University of Washington in 2013 with a major in Physics.

I’m originally from Seattle, Washington, USA.

Professional Summary

I am fascinated by the ways that improvements in technology can change how we can understand the exotic physics of the quantum world. My career has involved using advanced instrumentation to shine light the physics of nanoscale systems. In my graduate studies I utilized ultrafast optics and data-intensive imaging to explore the optoelectronics of two dimensional (2D) materials. Studying, among other things, exciton photon coupling in interlayer excitons of a MoSe2-WSe2 heterostructure, and a 2D electron hole liquid phase that emerges out of interacting excitons in photoexcited 2D MoTe2, published in Nature Photonics. In addition, I have worked to apply concepts from quantum optoelectronics to biological systems, particularly focusing on the importance of quantum structure in reducing harmful noise in photosynthesis, published in Science. In my postdoc I expanded my skill set to include scanned probe nanoSQUID magnetometry combined with compressibility and transport measurements to explore crystalline graphene multilayers, particularly the symmetry broken magnetic phases of Rhombohedral Trilayer Graphene. Along the way I have acquired a varied set of technical skills in building custom instrumentation, optics, cryogenics, and electronics as well as expertise in coding for experimental automation, data acquisition, and the application of data science to image analysis and visualization in practical settings.

Novel Instrumentation for Novel Physics

Selected Publications

Intervalley coherence and intrinsic spin orbit coupling in rhombohedral trilayer graphene
Trevor B. Arp*, Owen Sheekey*, Haoxin Zhou, C.L. Tschirhart, Caitlin L. Patterson, H. M. Yoo, Ludwig Holleis, Evgeny Redekop, Grigory Babikyan, Tian Xie, Jiewen Xiao, Yaar Vituri, Tobias Holder, Takashi Taniguchi, Kenji Watanabe, Martin E. Huber, Erez Berg, Andrea F. Young.
In Review 2023. arXiv:2310.03781

Quieting a noisy antenna reproduces photosynthetic light harvesting spectra
Trevor B. Arp*, Jed Kistner-Morris*, Vivek Aji, Richard Cogdell, Rienk van Grondelle, Nathaniel M. Gabor.
Science, 368, 1490-1495 (2020).

Multiple parameter dynamic photoresponse microscopy for data-intensive optoelectronic measurements of van der Waals heterostructures
Trevor B. Arp, Nathaniel M. Gabor.
Review of Scientific Instruments, 90, 023702 (2019).

Electron–hole liquid in a van der Waals heterostructure photocell at room temperature
Trevor B. Arp*, Dennis Pleskot*, Vivek Aji, Nathaniel M. Gabor.
Nature Photonics 13, 245–250 (2019)

*contributed equally

Postdoctoral Researcher

2020 – present​

Young Laboratory
University of California, Santa Barbara, CA.
Advisor: Andrea Young

Graduate Student Researcher

2014 – 2020​

Quantum Materials Optoelectronics Laboratory
University of California, Riverside, CA.
Advisor: Nathaniel Gabor

Stay In Touch

trevorarp@gmail.com