People

Prof. Zhendong Zhang was born in Wuhan and obtained a B.S. in physics from Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Later he went to US and did his PhD with Prof. Cheng Chin at University of Chicago, where he finished a PhD thesis titled “Coherent dynamics and reactions in atomic and molecular Bose-Einstein condensates” which won the Outstanding Dissertation Award from International Organization of Chinese Physicists and Astronomers (OCPA). He then joined Stanford University as a Bloch Postdoctoral Fellow, where he worked with Prof. Benjamin Lev and finished the construction of an experiment of magnetic quantum gas strongly coupled to a high-finesse multimode optical cavity. In 2025, he joined the Department of Physics at HKU.

Prof. Zhang’s research interests include developing an all-optical approach for trapping ultracold ions in a multimode optical cavity and the interaction between ions and quantum degenerate gases. These experiments are exploring the frontiers of quantum many-body physics and ultracold chemical reactions.

1. “Many-body chemical reactions in a quantum degenerate gas”, Z. Zhang, S. Nagata, K.X. Yao, C. Chin, Nature Physics, 19, 1466-1470 (2023).
2. “Domain-wall dynamics in Bose-Einstein condensates with synthetic gauge fields”, K.X. Yao, Z. Zhang, C. Chin, Nature, 602, 68-72 (2022).
3. “Transition from an atomic to a molecular Bose-Einstein condensate”, Z. Zhang, L. Chen, K.X. Yao, C. Chin, Nature, 592, 708-711(2021).
4. “Pattern formation in a driven Bose-Einstein condensate”, Z. Zhang, K.X. Yao, L. Feng, J. Hu, C. Chin, Nature Physics, 16, 652-656 (2020).
5. “Quantum simulation of Unruh radiation”, J. Hu, L. Feng, Z. Zhang, C. Chin, Nature Physics, 15, 785-789 (2019).