News

Congratulations are in order to Puthipong, who passed his (online) PhD viva on 23 November. Complementing his theoretical inclinations with concert pianist concentration and dexterity, Puthipong has become - next to Patricia - our resident high pressure virtuoso. His dissertation presents studies of the quasiperiodic high pressure phase of antimony…

After it had to be cancelled last year due to lockdown restrictions, our annual start-of-year Curry Night could fortunately be resumed this year. Summing up the 2020 and 2021 seasons, we are happy to welcome our new PhD students Gilles Rodway-Gant, Nicholas Popiel, Ken Heng Teoh, Zheyu Wu, and Jessica Chapman in the Sebastian group, Xiaotian Zhang …

QM members will be saddened to learn that Dr. John Adkins, long-time group member and highly respected colleague, passed away on 17 July. John was an outstanding experimentalist who was a member of the Low Temperature Physics Group from the beginning of his PhD programme in 1956. His contributions included studies of superconductivity, electronic c…

Can order be caused by quantum zero point fluctuations? A new Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paperby Montu's group (Matt Coak, Seb Haines, Cheng Liu) with Stephen Rowley and Gil Lonzarich presents the most comprehensive experimental and theoretical study of order-by-disorder in a solid crystal system to date. Check here for more in…

Warmest congratulations from all QM to Mike Sutherland and partner Monica for the birth of son Isaac a few days ago. This beats everything else we can possibly come up with in a news section! All the very best to the three of you. The first 25 years are the hardest. (24/5/20)

Congratualations to Mike's student Keiron who finished his postgraduate research on quantum oscillations in square-net materials and in the new Fe-based superconductor YFe2Ge2in the autumn of 2019, just in time to start a postdoctoral position with Radu Coldea's group in Oxford, wrote up his PhD thesis in record time and passed his (online) viva wi…

We are very sad to announce that our distinguished colleague and long-time group member Prof. James (Jim) Scott passed away on Monday 6 April. Jim made pioneering contributions to fundamental and applied ferroelectrics research. His developments include ferroelectric memory devices, such as the ferroelectric RAM (FRAM). We shall all miss him greatl…

Lattice structure of FePS3, showing the van der Waals bonded monolayers carrying magnetic moments. Can less be more? The answer is 'yes', when we compress things and get a result that is beyond our expectations. A new Physical Review Letter on high pressure experiments in FePS3 by Montu's group, with collaborators at Earth Sciences, the Diamond Lig…

Superconductivity exerts a particular fascination, when it is caused by an electronic mechanism. Among the transition metal compounds, such unconventional superconductivity is extremely rare and has largely been confined to the copper oxide high temperature superconductors, Sr2RuO4, and to a diverse family of iron-pnictide and chalcogenides. In an …

A new Science Advances paper by Malte's group, with collaborators in TCM and at Materials Science, establishes strong-coupling superconductivity in the quasiperiodic structure adopted by high pressure Bi-III as a consequence of exotic vibrational excitations of a quasiperiodic lattice,Electrical resistivity in aperiodic high-pressure bismuth-III [S…

It is with great sorrow that we announce the sad news that our distinguished colleague and valued friend Dr. John Loram passed away suddenly and unexpectedly in hospital in Leeds on Sunday November 5th. John was widely known for his pioneering achievements in ultra-high precision thermodynamic measurements, which have contributed key insights in hi…

The 28/9/17 issue of Nature magazine contains a comprehensive profile of Gil Lonzarich, long-time member of the Low Temperature Physics group and founding father of its successor, the Quantum Matter group. (1/10/17)

Congratulations to a team of QM students led by senior PhD student Mate Hartstein! They demonstrated and explained superconductivity so engagingly at this week's Physics at Work school outreach activity that they were awarded the shield for the most popular presentation. (21/9/2017)Sofia Taylor-Coronel with a supremely attentive crowd of what look …

The nature of magnetism in metals is one of the long-standing research topics in the Quantum Matter group. What happens, when a ferromagnetic metal is tuned - by applying pressure or by varying the composition - so that the magnetic ordering temperature is gradually reduced to zero? If the transition is continuous, or second order, then the point i…

Two QM investigator groups, which even included a lucky undergraduate summer student, had the opportunity to carry out measurements at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (NHMFL) in Tallahassee/Florida this summer during August and September. One key result was the extension of high pressure Fermi surface studies in the pressure-metallised …