Interdisciplinary Interactions : Session-I

1. Interdisciplinary Interactions : Session-I Nanotechnology Research at Texas A&M March 5th 2008 Sponsor: Texas Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) - NANSA - Nanotechnology and Nanoscience Student Association

2. PHYSICS JairoSinova sinova@physics.tamu.edu 979-845-4179 ENPH 525 • Research: • In the last few decades, there has been an enormous development in techniques to tackle disorder in non-interacting systems and to deal with interacting systems in the absence of disorder. • Beyond the Hartree-Fock theory, there has not been further substantial progress in developing simple tools that deal with both in an equal footing. • The question is how to deal with disorder and interactions at the same time • The development of such techniques would help the understanding of many real physical systems whose 'disorder' or interaction strength can actually be tuned by external parameters. • Some of the fields in which these topic is of major importance are the Hall effects, diluted magnetic semiconductors, magnetoresistance, Bose-Einstein condensates, and glassy systems. http://faculty.physics.tamu.edu/sinova/

3. We study spin Hall effect induced edge spin accumulation in a two-dimensional hole gas with strong spin orbit interactions. Our results indicate that it is an intrinsic property, in the sense that it is independent of the strength of disorder scattering. Ferromagnetic semiconductorspromise a technological revolution but there are several obstacles: (1) Ferromagnetic semiconductors are not ferromagnets at room temperature, (2) their transport properties and optical properties do not depend on their magnetic state, and (3) aside form being ferromagnetic at room temperature we wish them to also behave as semiconductors. Magnetoresistancestudies: spintronics and nanoelectronics. The TAMR effect observed in nanocontacts does not require different coercive fields on either side of the nanoconstriction. This makes it more desirable for the integration of nanoelectronics and spintronics when compared to Tunneling Magnetoresistance (TMR) in nanocontacts. In many aspects, atomic Bose-Einstein condensates can be consider to be the "spherical cow" approximation of an interacting many body system. Not only is their effective Hamiltonian relatively simple in the usual dilute limit but the actual many body system, even the interactions among the particles, can be tuned directly.

4. PHYSICS Winfried Teizer teizer@physics.tamu.edu 979-845-7730 ENPH 410 • Research: • Dr. Winfried Teizer leads the NanoLab in the Physics Department of Texas A&M University. • He is working on various projects in the general areas of molecular nanomagnets, spintronics, nanophysics and highly correlated systems. • The goal is to further the understanding of physical properties at the size or temperature scale where quantum mechanics governs the dominant processes. • A particular emphasis is currently on those properties that are driven by spin processes. http://faculty.physics.tamu.edu/teizer/

5. The Spin Hall Effect The objective of this project is to detect the recently postulated1 Spin Hall Effect (SHE), a physical effect of fundamental importance, which allows the study of pure spin currents and the characterization of spin properties in materials. NanoSQUIDs - Development and Applications The first objective of this project is to miniaturize Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices (SQUIDs) to the nanometer regime ("NanoSQUIDs"). SQUIDs are employed as ultra-sensitive magnetic flux detectors in research and industrial applications. NanoSQUIDs are expected to be useful for applications in magnetic characterization, in particular where small spatial resolution or arrays of localized detectors are required. The second objective is to use NanoSQUIDs for the characterization of molecular nanomagnets. A Metal-Insulator transition in 2-dimensional GdxSi1-x? 1. To help answer the fundamental question: Is there a metallic state and thus a Metal-Insulator transition in 2 dimensions? And if so, 2. To measure the density of states in an in-situ tunable material in 2 dimensions and determine the critical exponent. The density of states of GdxSi1-x at theMetal-Insulator Transition