News

Prof. James Scott 1942-2020

7 April 2020

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...

Spinning graphene - a case of magnetic layers

7 January 2019

Lattice structure of FePS 3 , 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 FePS 3 by Montu's group, with collaborators at...

How to make a new iron-based superconductor

4 January 2019

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, Sr 2 RuO 4 , and to a diverse family of iron-...

Phasons and superconductivity in a quasiperiodic material

20 April 2018

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...

Dr. John Loram 1938-2017

20 November 2017

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...

Feature about QM Professor Gil Lonzarich in Nature magazine

2 October 2017

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)

QM students win Physics at Work award

22 September 2017

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...

Nature Physics paper published on quantum tricritical points in a band magnet

20 September 2017

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...

More Maglab expeditions

19 September 2017

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...

Nature Physics paper published on the 4-spin plaquette singlet state in a in a 2-D quantum material

17 September 2017

Phase diagram of SrCu 2 (BO 3 ) 2 as a function of pressure and temperature. With QM investigator Dr. Montu Saxena, a team of scientists led by colleagues at EPFL and the Paul Scherrer Institut have realized experimentally a new quantum many body state in a material representing a famous theoretical model called the "...