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Organised by Dr Will Branford, Professor Steven Bramwell, Professor Tom Kibble FRS CBE and Dr Tom Fennell
Recent advances show that magnetic monopoles emerge in spin ice. This opens up new fields of study such as “magnetricity”, testing magnetic topological (including cosmological) system theories and the realisation of equivalent topological defects in “artificial spin ice” nanostructures, with prospective application in evolvable neural network hardware. Related topics on Berry phase physics and domain wall motion will be discussed.
Programme available to download here (PDF)
Biographies and audio recordings are available below.
Dr Will Branford, Imperial College London, UKMagnetotransport measurements of artificial spin ice
Dr Will Branford is a lecturer in experimental solid-state physics and an EPSRC Career Advancement Fellow at Imperial College London. He obtained his PhD from the Royal Institution of Great Britain and UCL in 2001 and was awarded a Ramsay Memorial Fellowship at UCL in 2004. His research focuses on the interplay between the structure and topology of materials and their magnetic and transport properties. In particular he has a longstanding interest in spin dependent effects in the electrical transport of materials, including magnetoresistance and the anomalous and topological Hall effects. He is currently investigating magnetic charge transport and monopole defect formation in frustrated magnetic nanostructures known as artificial spin ices.
Professor Steven Bramwell"Magnetricity" in spin ice
Professor Tom Kibble FRS CBE, Imperial College London, UKOrganiser
Tom Kibble studied at the University of Edinburgh, obtaining his PhD in 1958. Following a year at Caltech he came to Imperial College London in 1959, joining the group led by Professor Abdus Salam, appointed as a Lecturer in 1960, and promoted to Professor in 1970. He was Head of the Imperial College Physics Department from 1983 to 1991, and since 1998 has been a Senior Research Fellow and Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Physics. He spent a year in 1967-68 at the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, and in 2007 was Lorentz Professor at the University of Leiden, Netherlands. His primary interests are in quantum field theory and cosmology, especially formation and properties of topological defects such as cosmic strings and analogues in condensed matter. Professor Kibble is a Fellow of the Royal Society, of the Institute of Physics, and of Imperial College London, a member of the American Physical Society, the European Physical Society and the Academia Europaea, and a CBE. He has been awarded the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society, the Rutherford and Guthrie Medals of the Institute of Physics and the JJ Sakurai Prize of the American Physical Society.
Dr Tom Fennell, Paul Scherrer Institut, SwitzerlandOrganiser
Dr Tom Fennell studied Chemistry at the University of Southampton between 1996 and 1999 before completing his PhD at the Royal Institution/University College under the supervision of Professor Steve Bramwell. During this time he began to work on spin ice using neutron scattering techniques. Subsequently he has been a post-doc at the University of Waterloo, Canada with Professor Michel Gingras, also working on spin ice; at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility; and the London Centre for Nanotechnology, again working with Steve Bramwell on kagome ice and spin ice, as well as Des McMorrow and Andrew Wills on other frustrated magnets. In 2008 he became co-responsible for the D7 polarized diffuse neutron scattering spectrometer at the ILL, leading to the observation of pinch point scattering in spin ice, confirming the prediction that it can be described as a Coulomb phase. Since the start of 2011 he has been first responsible for D7 and continues to pursue research into correlations in frustrated systems.
Professor Shivaji Sondhi, Princeton University, USASpin ice, monopoles, fractionalization and topological order
Shivaji Sondhi is a Professor of Physics at Princeton University. He studied at Delhi University, SUNY at Stony Brook and received his PhD from UCLA. His research lies in Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics where he has been especially interested in strongly correlated electron systems, quantum magnetism and quantum critical phenomena. His current research is focused on the quantum Hall effect, magnetic monopoles in spin ice, the statistical mechanics of quantum complexity and the Kibble-Zurek mechanism. He has held Sloan and Packard Fellowships, received the McMillan Prize in Condensed Matter Physics and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.
Professor Roderich Moessner, Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, GermanyDynamics and thermodynamics in spin ice, natural and artificial
Roderich Moessner is director of the condensed matter theory division of the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden, Germany. He also holds a professorship at the Technical University in Dresden. He has previously held faculty posts at Oxford University and the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris.
Professor Naoto Nagaosa, University of Tokyo and RIKEN-ASI, Japan (Speaker)Naoto Nagaosa graduated from the Department of Applied Physics, The University of Tokyo and obtained his PhD in Physics in 1986 also from the University of Tokyo. In 1983 he was a Research associate, Theory division, Institute for Solid State Physics, University of Tokyo, 1988-1990 he was a Post Doctoral Fellow, Physics Department, MIT, in 1991 he became Associate Professor, Department Applied Physics, University of Tokyo, and since 1998 he has been Professor, Department Applied Physics, University of Tokyo. His research interests include: condensed matter theory; strongly correlated electronic systems (gauge theory of high Tc superconductors, CMR manganites, quantum spin system, spin textures); spintronics (spin-orbit interaction, anomalous Hall effect, spin Hall effect); quantum transport (localization, Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid).
In 1995 he was awarded the Yukawa prize, in 1995 the Japan IMB prize, in 2003 the Nissan Science prize and in 2005 Nishina memorial prize. He is on the editorial board of Science and is a committee member of Asian Pacific Center for Theoretical Physics.
Professor Oleg Tchernyshyov, Johns Hopkins University, USAMagnetic charges in spin ice on kagome
Oleg Tchernyshyov is a theoretical physicist with interest in magnetic solids. His recent research topics include topological defects in nanoscale ferromagnets, the dynamics of artificial spin ice, and the properties of antiferromagnets where magnetic order has been disrupted by frustration and quantum fluctuations. Dr. Tchernyshyov graduated from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and received a PhD in physics from Columbia University. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study and at Princeton University. In 2002, he joined the faculty of the Johns Hopkins University, where he is now an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and a principal investigator at the Institute for Quantum Matter.
Dr Arttu Rajantie, Imperial College London, UKMagnetic monopoles in field theory and cosmology
Arttu Rajantie is a Reader in Theoretical Physics at Imperial College London. He received his PhD in Theoretical Physics from University of Helsinki in 1997. Before moving to Imperial, he worked at the Universities of Sussex (1998-2000) and Cambridge (2000-2005) where he was a Research Fellow of Churchill College. His research deals with non-linear phenomena in quantum field theory and cosmology. He has used numerical lattice field theory simulations to study properties of magnetic monopoles and other topological solitons in quantum field theories and investigated their formation in phase transitions in the early universe.
Professor Peter Schiffer, Penn State University, USAArtificial spin ice: experimental studies of correlations and disorder
Peter Schiffer received his BS from Yale University in 1988 and his PhD from Stanford University in 1993. He is a Professor of Physics and also the Associate Vice President for Research and Director of Strategic Initiatives at Pennsylvania State University. Previously, he held a faculty appointment at the University of Notre Dame from 1995-2000, and worked at AT&T Bell Laboratories from 1993-1995. His research focuses on geometrically frustrated magnets, magnetic semiconductors and oxides, magnetic nanostructures, and granular materials. He has published more than 160 papers, and he is the recipient of a Career Award from the National Science Foundation, a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from the Army Research Office, an Alfred P Sloan Research Fellowship, and the Faculty Scholar Medal in the Physical Sciences and the Joel and Ruth Spira Award for Teaching Excellence from Penn State. He is also a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He has served as the Chair of the American Physical Society Topical Group on Magnetism and its Applications and Program Chair of the 2007 Conference on Magnetism and Magnetic Materials, and he is currently the Chair of the Division of Materials Physics in the American Physical Society.
Professor Peter Holdsworth, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, FranceTransport properties of magnetic monopoles in spin ice
Professor Holdsworth studied at the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London and at the University of Oxford, completing his DPhil, “Correlation effects in atomic diffusion” in 1985. This was followed by five years of postdoctoral work, first at the University of British Columbia, Canada and then at the Institut Laue-Langevin, in Grenoble, France. He got his first permanent position in 1990; Maitre de Conférences in the Laboratoire de Physique, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon. After passing his Habilitation in 1993 he became Professeur in 1994. In 2010 he became a senior member of the “Institut Universitaire de France”. For the last ten years he has been head of physics teaching at the ENS, Lyon. In 2007 he spent 7 months as visiting Professor at the University of Oxford. He has worked throughout his career on the frontier between statistical mechanics and condensed matter physics, studying critical phenomena in two dimensions, disordered systems, global fluctuations in correlated systems and frustrated magnetism. Recently he has been a monopole hunter in spin ice. He tries to relate his theoretical and numerical projects to experiment and to real systems, but doesn’t always succeed.
Dr John Cumings, University of Maryland, USADisorder and monopole motion in artificial kagome ice
Dr Cumings is an expert in transmission electron microscopy of nanoscale systems. In his current position as Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland, he studies artificial spin ice, magnetic nanostructures, thermal transport in carbon nanomaterials, and lithium storage in silicon nanostructures. He earned a BA in physics from Boston University in 1997, and a PhD in Physics from the University of California at Berkeley in 2002. He held a postdoctoral research position at Stanford for two years before becoming an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland in 2005. Among other awards, he received an NSF CAREER Award, IBM Research Fellowship (2001-2002) and The MSGS Award for Outstanding Advising in Materials Science and Engineering (2007). He has more than 35 technical publications and holds two patents.
Dr Laura Heyderman, Paul Scherrer Institute, SwitzerlandFrustration and emergent magnetic monopoles in artificial kagome spin ice
Laura Heyderman began her career in magnetism in 1988, working as a PhD student on magnetic multilayers at the CNRS, Paris. As a postdoc working with Lorentz microscopy at Glasgow University, she became acquainted with a range of magnetic materials. She then spent four years in industry and since 1999 has been based at the Laboratory for Micro- and Nanotechnology, Paul Scherrer Institute, currently leading the Magnetic Nanostructures Group.
Dr Heyderman has over 100 scientific publications . Her collaboration with Professor Frithjof Nolting, PSI, and Professor Hans-Benjamin Braun, University College Dublin recently resulted in a publication in Nature Physics on emergent monopoles in artificial spin ice and has led in 2011 to several invited talks, an article in ‘Spektrum der Wissenschaft’ (German equivalent of Scientific American) and to the Paul Scherrer Institute 2011 Thesis Medal for her PhD student. She is a guest editor for a Focus Issue on Artificial Frustrated Systems in New Journal of Physics and is organizing a symposium on Artificial Spin Ice, selected for the Conference on Magnetism and Magnetic Materials (MMM) 2011. In addition to being a member of the Administrative Committee of the IEEE Magnetics Society, she has been a program committee member of several conferences on magnetism and is on the Board of Editors, Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials.
Professor Hartmut Zabel, Ruhr-University Bochum, GermanyMagnetic dipole configurations on honeycomb lattices: effect of finite size, boundaries, and defects
Hartmut Zabel received his PhD from the University of Munich in 1978. He then spent a postdoctoral year at the University of Houston, and joined the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1979, where he was promoted to Professor of Physics in 1986. Since 1989 he holds the Chair of Experimental Physics at the Ruhr-University of Bochum and continues to be an Adjunct Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois. 1996 he was elected to Fellow of the American Physical Society. In 2001 he received the honorary doctoral degree from the KTH Stockholm. His main research interests are in thin film physics, including hydrogen in metals, exchange coupling, spin density wave magnetism, proximity-effects between superconducting and ferromagnetic layers, oxides and oxidation of metals. The main methods employed are various forms of the magneto-optical Kerr Effect (MOKE), polarized neutron reflectivity (PNR), and x-ray resonant magnetic scattering (XRMS). He has published more than 400 research papers in the above mentioned fields and has provided overviews on special topics in a number of review articles. He is Co-Editor of four books and together with Professor H Morkoc he is the Chief-Editor of the Journal “Superlattices and Microstructures”.
Professor Björgvin Hjörvarsson, Uppsala University, Sweden Melting artificial spin ice
Professor Björgvin Hjörvarsson is heading the materials physics division at Uppsala University. He obtained his PhD in nuclear solid state physics 1990, the title of the thesis is “Hydrogen in metals, studied by nuclear techniques”. During his postdoctoral visits in France he combined nuclear techniques and surface science and low dimensional magnetism. Returning to Sweden he continued to develop concepts and techniques related to the exploration of low dimensional effects on hydrogen in materials and magnetism.
The main focus of his current research efforts is related to 1, 2 and 3 dimensional confinement effects, and emergent order as a consequence of combination of length scales.
Professor Russell Cowburn FRS, University of Cambridge, UKDomain walls in interconnected magnetic nanostrips
Russell Cowburn obtained his PhD in condensed matter physics from the Cavendish Laboratory of the University of Cambridge in 1996 and was appointed lecturer at Durham University in 2000. In 2005 was took up the Chair in Nanotechnology at Imperial College London from where he returned to the Cavendish Laboratory as Director of Research in 2010. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2010, has founded two start-up companies and has filed around 70 patents. His research interests include spintronics, nanoscale magnetism and laser optics – subjects on which he has published around 100 papers. In recent years his research has been recognised by the awarding of a number of prizes, including the IOP Paterson Medal and Prize, the Hermes International Technology Award and the Degussa Science to Business Award.
Professor Naoto Nagaosa, University of Tokyo and RIKEN-ASI, Japan Gauge fields in real and momentum spaces in magnets
Naoto Nagaosa graduated from the Department of Applied Physics, The University of Tokyo and obtained his PhD in Physics in 1986 also from the University of Tokyo. In 1983 he was a Research associate, Theory division, Institute for Solid State Physics, University of Tokyo, 1988-1990 he was a Post Doctoral Fellow, Physics Department, MIT, in 1991 he became Associate Professor, Department Applied Physics, University of Tokyo, and since 1998 he has been Professor, Department Applied Physics, University of Tokyo. His research interests include: condensed matter theory; strongly correlated electronic systems (gauge theory of high Tc superconductors, CMR manganites, quantum spin system, spin textures); spintronics (spin-orbit interaction, anomalous Hall effect, spin Hall effect); quantum transport (localization, Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid).
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