Group Members

Principal Investigator:

Oleg Shpyrko, Assistant Professor Ph.D. Physics, Harvard University, 2004

== Postdoctoral fellow(s): ==

Dr. Jyoti Mohanty, Postdoctoral Fellow Ph.D. Physics, Paul Drude Institute, Humboldt University, Germany 2005

Research Topic: Jyoti is working on x-ray magnetic dichroism studies of magnetic thin films as well as magnetic and orbital domains in manganese oxides

== Graduate Students: ==

Ash Tripathi, Graduate Student B.S. Electrical Engineering, U. Illinois Urbana-Champaign 2005 M.S. Physics, UC San Diego 2007

Research Topic:Ash is working on development and application of novel coherent x-ray scattering techniques to studies of magnetic and electronic phases characterised by complex disorder and slow dynamics.

Yeling Dai, Graduate Student B.S. Physics, The University of Science and Technology of China, 2006

Research Topic: Yeling is working on studying structure and dynamics of nanoconfined materials, such as liquids, soft matter and nanoparticles.

== Undergraduate Students:

==

* Sarah Garcia

Physics undergraduate student, UC San Diego

Research Topic: Sarah is working on multi-speckle dynamic light scattering setup for studies of dynamics in soft matter and granular materials.

Michael Folkerts Physics undergraduate student, UC San Diego

Research Topic: Michael is working on lens-less imaging techniques, such as ptychographical iterative engine.

== Group Alumni: ==

Loic Jacot Descombes, visiting student, Nov 2008-April 2009 Masters Student at ETH Zurich, Switzerland B.S. Physics, Ecole Polytechnique federale de Lausanne, Switzerland 2007 Current Whereabouts: ETH Zurich, Switzerland.

Collaborators:

   * Dmitri Basov (UCSD)
   * Eric Fullerton (UCSD)
   * Ivan Schuller (UCSD)
   * Sunny Sinha (UCSD)
   * Brian Maple (UCSD)
   * Peter Pershan (Harvard)
   * Eric Isaacs (U Chicago, Argonne)
   * Kyle Alvine (NIST)
   * Moshe Deutsch (Bar Ilan U., Israel)
   * Tom Rosenbaum (U Chicago)
   * Patrick Huber (Saarland U., Germany)
   * Ben Ocko (Brookhaven) 

   * Masa Fukuto (Brookhaven)
   * Oleg Gang (Brookhaven)
   * Elaine DiMasi (Brookhaven)
   * Gabe Aeppli (UC London)
   * Thomas Russell (UMass)
   * Steve Kevan (U. Oregon)
   * John Mitchell (Argonne)
   * Alec Sandy, Michael Sprung, Suresh Narayanan (Sector 8, APS, Argonne)
   * Jeff Elam and Michael Pellin (MSD&ES, Argonne)
   * Xiao Min Lin (CNM, Argonne) 

   * Martin Holt and Jorg Maser (X-ray Nanoprobe, CNM, Argonne)
   * Binhua Lin, Mati Meron (CARS, U. Chicago)
   * Ivan Kuzmenko, Thomas Gog (Sector 9, APS, Argonne)
   * Zahir Islam, Jonathan Lang (Sector 4, APS, Argonne)
   * Ross Harder, Ian McNulty, Zhonghou Cai (Imaging and Microscopy Group, APS, Argonne)
   * Paul Zschack (Sector 33/34, APS, Argonne)
   * Alexei Grigoriev, Paul Evans (U. Wisconsin, Madison) 

Our group currently has several openings at postdoctoral, graduate and undergraduate student level.

Contact Oleg Shpyrko for more information at

Examples of Research Directions:

   * Nanoscale Dynamics using X-ray Photon Correlation Spectroscopy
   * Coherent X-ray Microscopy
   * Nanoconfined liquids
   * Atomic Structure of Liquid-Solid and Liquid-Vapor Interfaces
   * Mesoscale phase separation in electronic and magnetic materials 

Detailed description:

PhD research project opportunities available in a newly formed experimental condensed matter physics group at UCSD (PI: Oleg Shpyrko)

  1. Study of phase coexistence, domain formation and dynamics in electronic and magnetic materials characterized by strongly competing spin, charge, orbital and lattice degrees of freedom. Research will answer questions such as: How does presence of quenched disorder affect fluctuations of spin or charge order parameters? Can artificial pinning centers be utilized to produce novel nanoscale devices? Can we tune quantum mechanical vs. classical mechanisms of relaxation, and take advantage of anomalously slow glassy dynamics, memory and aging effects for data storage and computing devices?

  2. Properties of materials in nanoscale confinement. How small is too small? When confined at nanometer lengthscales, the materials can suddenly change their behavior. Fluids stop flowing and do not freeze down to very low temperatures, or sometimes show opposite behavior of ordering in crystalline-like fashion at temperatures well above melting point. Critical phenomena and liquid-glass transition are also expected to be affected by reduced dimensionality and the confinement geometry. 

In addition to in-house experimental facilities at UCSD, these projects will benefit from newly available coherent x-ray sources such as Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Lab near Chicago, Advanced Light Source at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and Linac Coherent Light Source at Stanford.

Techniques used by our group will involve study of nanoscale dynamics in the bulk using X-ray and Laser Photon Correlation Spectroscopy, novel x-ray and laser microscopy based on lens-less imaging using phase retrieval algorythms, as well as phase-contrast imaging, diffraction and reflectivity microscopy using recently available sub-micron focused x-ray beams. For more details contact Oleg Shpyrko at

List of relevant references:

O. G. Shpyrko et al., "Direct measurement of antiferromagnetic domain fluctuations" Nature 447, 68 (2007)

R. Jaramillo et al., "Microscopic and Macroscopic Signatures of Antiferromagnetic Domains" Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 117206 (2007) O. G. Shpyrko et al., "Surface Crystallization in a Liquid AuSi Alloy" Science 313, 77 (2006)

K. J. Alvine, O. G. Shpyrko et al., "Capillary filling of anodized alumina nanopore arrays" Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 175503 (2006)

E. D. Isaacs, "Microscopy: X-ray nanovision", Nature 442, 35 (2006)