If you are interested in physics and art, come to see the exhibition Quantum Dialogues at the Byre Theatre – with exhibits on display 9th June until 31st July. Below ‘Superposition’ by Ru Christman with Siri Berge encapsulating the essence of real and momentum space, lattices, defects and the magic hiding behind atomic scale images obtained by quantum tunneling.
Ru (left) and Siri behind ‘Superposition’. If you are interested in this or other artworks by Ru Christman, see here.
It’s that time of year again – looking forward to our annual condensed matter retreat at the Burn in Glenesk and to an exciting programme and discussions. For more information see the dedicated webpage.
Submit an abstract by the (extended) submission deadline on 3 May for minicolloquia 02 and 06 at the CMD in Graz, with an exciting programme of invited speakers. Supported by ICAM-I2CAM, with limited funding available for travel bursaries for early career researchers.
Meet members of the group at the DPG spring meeting in Dresden. Work of the group and its members features in the following contributions:
Look for a PhD position? Apply for a PhD project in the stimulating environment of the Centre for Designer Quantum Materials, working on experimental physics, instrument development or numerical modelling.
You can find example projects here, a few projects for which we specifically are looking for candidates this year are listed here:
joint Bonn-St Andrews St Leonhard scholarship: Combining Correlation and Non-Equilibrium Effects with Band Structure in Strongly Correlated Quantum Materials, Probed by Quasiparticle Interference (co-supervised with Prof Hans Kroha, University of Bonn). Application deadline: 27 February 2026.Submit applications here.
Need some Christmas reading?🎄 How about our new preprint where we show how Andreev bound state spectroscopy can be used to determine the symmetry of the order parameter in the case of UPt3. Turns out, it’s important that there is spin-orbit coupling.
Spoiler alert: looks like singlet pairing with E1g symmetry is most consistent with our data.
Read the full preprint at:
Congratulations to Luke to an EPSRC Open Fellowship and starting his own group, the Rhodeslab, at the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of St Andrews, focussing on modelling of properties of and electronic states in quantum materials!
Does the surface layer of an itinerant ferromagnet change its magnetization direction at the same field as the bulk? Not always – at least not in Sr4Ru3O10. Domain wall pinning allows us to precisely control the magnetic configuration of surface and bulk. Using scanning tunneling microscopy at ultra-low temperatures, Carolina Marques found how the electronic states change between ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic alignment of the surface layer and bulk magnetizations. Intriguingly, through control of the magnetic configuration, we were able to detect the tiny structural change that accompanies the change in magnetic configuration. While tiny in the grand scheme of things, our measurements reveal a giant magnetoelastic coupling that is driven by exchange interactions, qualitatively as expected from the Bethe-Slater curve sketched almost a century ago. Our results highlight the coupling between electronic, magnetic and structural degrees of freedom, and how these effects are enhanced through electronic correlations.
Read more in our publication at:
Read in our new preprint about how QPI, combined with photoemission and Density functional theory, can be used to determine the low energy electronic structure of a 2D magnetic materials. Nice QPI data from Olivia measured on our STM4 which she has built and films grown by Akhil. Great collaboration with the King group.
Meet members of the group and hear about our research at the following contributions at the APS March meeting in Anaheim:
