APS March meeting

Meet members of the group at the APS March meeting in Minneapolis. Work of the group and its members features in the following contributions:

  • Luke Rhodes in A16.00011: “Structural routes to stabilize superconducting La3Ni2O7 at ambient pressure”, Mon 10am, room M100G.
  • G10.00014: “Spin-orbit coupling induced Van Hove singularity in proximity to a Lifshitz transition in Sr4Ru3O10“, Tue, 2.06pm, room M100A (talk by Phil Murgatroyd from Phil King’s group).
  • Harry Lane in:
    • G21.00003: “Orbital-driven spin-singlet dimerization in La2Ru4O10“, Tue, 12:18pm, room 101A.
    • N23.00006: “Sunny, a user-friendly Julia package for simulating generalized spin dynamics”, Wed, 12:54pm, room 101C.
    • Z62.00003: “Linear spin wave theory of large magnetic unit cells using the Kernel Polynomial Method”, Fri, 11:54am, room 208CD.

Congratulations!

Congratulations to Olivia to her viva and a great PhD thesis on “Scanning Tunnelling Microscopy of Magnetic van der Waals Materials”, and many thanks to Philip Moriarty and Renald Schaub for examining the thesis!

Killing Corona …

How good are different surfaces at deactivating SARS-CoV-2 viruses. Copper beats them almost all – except cuprous oxide (Cu2O)! Why is that? Read more in our new paper in Applied and Environmental Microbiology ahead of print. Great interdisciplinary collaboration across CDQM and with Cathy Adamson from the School of Biology and her team.

Graduation

Congratulations to Izidor to his graduation and his PhD thesis “Imaging emergent surface magnetism in ruthenates”!

Graduation

Looking forward to Izidors graduation this week. If you want to find out more about his work, come to his graduant talk Wednesday, 29 November at 2pm in Lecture Theatre C on Amazing atoms, exciting electrons and mysterious magnets (in person only). Hint: it might feature compasses …

Inaugural Lecture

This image shows how ChatGPT ‘thinks’ our research looks like, in response to a prompt to produce an image representing our research as described here. If you want to find out what it looks like in reality come to Peter’s inaugural lecture on Wednesday, 22 November, 5.15pm, School 3, St Salvator’s Quad.

You can find more funky images with visualisations of our research created with ChatGPT here.

Compass-like control of electronic structure

How can one control electronic structure just with magnetic fields? In our new paper, we track how the electronic structure in Sr3Ru2O7 changes as a function of applied field direction, providing direct imaging of a field-controlled nematicity and how to control electronic structure with surprisingly modest magnetic fields. Also another good example of how the surface can differ subtly from what the bulk does …

Read more in Masahiro and Isidor’s paper:
Masahiro Naritsuka, Izidor Benedičič, Luke C. Rhodes, Carolina A. Marques, Christopher Trainer, Zhiwei Li, Alexander C. Komarek, and Peter Wahl, Compass-like manipulation of electronic nematicity in Sr3Ru2O7, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 120, e2308972120 (2023), arxiv/2305.11210.

Odd triplets

Read in our new study, led by Steve Lee’s group combining μSR with STM by Chi Ming and Christopher and theory, what evidence there is for triplet pairs due to spin-orbit coupling and proximity effect in heterostructures of Platinum and Niobium.

Original publication:
M. Flokstra, R. Stewart, C.-M. Yim, C. Trainer, P. Wahl, D. Miller, N. Satchell, G. Burnell, H. Luetkens, T. Prokscha, A. Suter, E. Morenzoni, S. Lee, Spin-orbit driven superconducting proximity effects in Pt/Nb thin films, Nat. Commun. 14, 5081 (2023).

Congratulations!

Congratulations to Seohyun, Rebecca and Lewis to their graduation this week and great results in their final year projects! Looking forward to welcome and work with Rebecca and Seohyun as PhD students in the School from September, Rebecca in the group and Seohyun with Bernd Braunecker and Luke Rhodes.

Magnetic-field controlled nematicity

Read in our new preprint by Masahiro and Izidor about how we can control nematicity in the surface layer of Sr3Ru2O7 by vector magnetic fields. Dependent on the direction of the applied field, we find checkerboard charge modulations, nematicity and stripe modulations which can all be explained from a minimal tight-binding model that accounts for magnetism and spin-orbit coupling. Key open question: can the same minimal model explain the behaviour in the polarized phase in the bulk?

Full reference:
M. Naritsuka, I. Benedičič, L.C. Rhodes, C.A. Marques, C. Trainer, Z. Li, A.C. Komarek, and P. Wahl, Compass-like manipulation of electronic nematicity in Sr3Ru2O7, arxiv/2305.11210.