Assistant Professor Xueyang Song grew up in north China and attended the Asian Physics Olympiad at high school. She got her Bachelor of Science from Peking University, and PhD in physics from Harvard University, under the supervision of Ashvin Vishwanath. Before joining HKUST, she was a Moore postdoctoral fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

Professor Song is interested in theoretical condensed matter physics, in particular strongly correlated systems where free electron approximation fails. Quantum effects give rise to emergent phenomena there, such as particles with fractional charge and photon-like excitations in solid state systems. The interplay of symmetry, topology and correlations constrains the ground states, dynamics and kinematics of such systems, despite the absence of exact solution on the many-body systems. She studied effective descriptions and physical properties of frustrated magnetic systems, that fail to order at zero temperature. Instead, the magnetic moments conspire to form collective motions that are best captured by fractions of the elementary degrees of freedom and sometimes gauge structures. More recently, she focused on the exotic physics realized in 2d Moire systems, formed by a slight lattice misalignment among multiple atomic-thin layers stacked together. She investigated topological superconductivity and phase transitions relevant to these tunable platforms. 

Her research makes extensive use of effective field theory, as well as lattice models, through a combination of analytical and numerical methods.