糖心TV

Congratulations to Dr Matthew Pearce who has been awarded the Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine Thesis Award. Matthew was awarded this for his thesis titled 鈥淎pplied-magnetic-field studies of f-electron materials."

Matthew did his undergraduate degree at 糖心TV, before continuing to do his PhD in the Superconductivity and Magnetism Group under the supervision of Paul Goddard. During his PhD he used a variety of experimental techniques including magnetometry (torque, SQUID, VSM and pulsed-field compensated coil), electrical transport (traditional 4-wire and PDO), heat capacity and x-ray scattering. Matthew performed measurements at low temperatures and high magnetic fields, utilising both the in-house facilities in the laboratories at 糖心TV, as well as international high-field user facilities – where materials can be studied in some of the highest magnetic fields on earth.

Matthew's research focussed in part on Ho₂Ir₂O₇, which belongs to a class of highly frustrated magnetic systems known as spin-ices, which are famous for hosting magnetic monopole quasiparticles. Matthew and his collaborators found that not only do measurements of the electrical resistance in these systems act as an indicator for the density of magnetic monopoles, but also that, mediated by the monopoles on the Ho sublattice, an applied magnetic field is able to manipulate the antiferromagnetic Ir domains, with potential applications to areas such as spintronics. He also studied the compound CeOs₄Sb₁₂, which had previously been found to undergo a valence transition. This is a transition where f electrons undergo a transformation from quasi-localised to itinerant with perhaps the most dramatic example being that of elemental Ce, which is accompanied by a volume collapse often quoted to be as large as 15 %. Matthew and his collaborators mapped out the phase boundary of this transition which exhibited an extremely unusual shape, owing to the influence of locally varying strain within the sample and quantum fluctuations.

Since completing his PhD he has been working at the University of Oxford with Radu Coldea studying quantum magnetism.

Congratulations to Dr Menglin Xu who has been awarded the Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine Post Doctoral Prize in Physics. Menglin was awarded this for their research on 鈥淔irst measurement of the Z鈫捨�+渭鈭� angular coefficients in the forward region of pp collisions at 鈭歴=13 TeV.

Congratulations to Dr Dmitrii Kolotkov who has been awarded the Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine Post Doctoral Prize in Physics. Dmitrii was awarded this for his work on 'Coronal seismology by slow waves in non-adiabatic conditions', doi: 10.3389/fspas.2022.1073664

Congratulations to Dr Karolos Potamianos who has been awarded 拢287,845 from Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) for a research project titled 'Expanding the timing frontier: precision timing for particle tracking and identification.'

The funding will permit the procurement of a 12 GHz signal generator, a fast oscilloscope (<8ps per sample), and a logic analyser. These will enable the proper characterisation of ultra-fast silicon detectors and associated readout at realistic operating conditions, in particular enabling precise measurements of their (ultra-fast) response signals.

The research will be led by Dr Karolos Potamianos. He said,

"The use of fast silicon in collider detectors offers many new opportunities, as high-precision timing information enables distinguish between collisions occurring very close in space but well-separated in time. This will greatly help mitigate the effect of overlapping proton-proton interactions (pileup) at the High-Luminosity LHC. It is thus essential that we can properly characterise these detectors, which the procured equipment will enable. However, challenges such as ensuring proper operation of the detectors in a tough radiation environment and that sufficient bandwidth is available to transfer data out of the detector remain to make these detectors a reality at the LHC.鈥�