PSY’s Short Profile
Pramodh (pronounced ‘Pruh-mode’) Senarath Yapa was born in tropical Colombo, Sri Lanka before immigrating to the decidedly-less-tropical Canada as a teenager. In 2015 he obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Theoretical Physics from Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario. This was followed by a move to the West Coast, where he completed his MSc. in Condensed Matter Theory in 2017, at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. Upon the completion of his Master’s degree, he hopped over to the other side of the Rocky Mountains for his PhD, to the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Working with Professors Joseph Maciejko and Frank Marsiglio during this time, his research focused on superfluid Helium-3 and theories of unconventional superconductivity. In particular, he investigated a new phase of superfluid Helium-3 analogous to supersolids (the Pair-Density Wave phase), and how the superconducting order parameter is affected by the presence of boundaries. He joined the Dipolar Quantum Gases theory group at the University of Innsbruck in November 2023, shortly after submitting his PhD thesis.
PSY’s CV at Glance
| November 2023 – Present | Postdoctoral Fellow under the supervision of Dr. Bland in the Group of Prof. Ferlaino at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), Innsbruck, Austria. |
| 2018 – 2023 | PhD in Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics at the University of Alberta Edmonton, AB, Canada, co-supervised by Prof. Joseph Maciejko and Prof. Frank Marsiglio, investigating novel quantum phases of superfluid helium-3, and unconventional superconductors with confining boundaries. |
| 2015 – 2018 | M.Sc. in Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics at the University of Victoria, BC, Canada, supervised by Prof. Rogério de Sousa, investigating the effects of non-local electrodynamics on the properties of superconducting qubits. |
| 2010 – 2015 | B.Sc. in Honours Theoretical Physics at Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada. Honours Thesis supervised by Prof. Thomas Gregoire, investigating signatures of supersymmetric particles using simulated LHC collision data. |
PSY’s Other Publications
| 2022 | |
| [4] | Triangular Pair Density Wave in Confined Superfluid 3He, , Phys. Rev. Lett., 128, 015301, 2022. |
| 2021 | |
| [3] | Strong-coupling corrections to hard domain walls in superfluid 3He-B, , Phys. Rev. B, 104, 094520, 2021. |
| 2020 | |
| [2] | Stabilized Pair Density Wave via Nanoscale Confinement of Superfluid 3He, , Phys. Rev. Lett., 124, 015301, 2020. |
| 2019 | |
| [1] | Impact of Nonlocal Electrodynamics on the Flux Noise and Inductance of Superconducting Wires, , Phys. Rev. Appl., 11, 024041, 2019. |