This article is about a living person and appears to have no references. All biographies of living people must have at least one source that supports at least one statement made about the person in the article. If no reliable references are found and added within a seven-day grace period, this article may be deleted . This is an important policy to help prevent the retention of incorrect material. Please note that adding reliable sources is all that is required to prevent the scheduled deletion of this article. For help on inserting references, see referencing for beginners or ask at the help desk. Once the article has at least one reliable source, you may remove this tag. ContentsFind sources: "Andrew D. Huxley" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR Reviewer tools: policy project (talk • bio • log) Move: draft space The article may be deleted if this message remains in place for seven days, i.e., after 22:01, 24 May 2023 (UTC). |
Andrew D. Huxley (born 1966) is a chair of the physics department of the University of Edinburgh.[ citation needed ]
Of no relation to Sir Andrew F. Huxley (the English physiologist and biophysicist), Huxley is known in the field of condensed matter physics. While at the CEA laboratory in Grenoble, Huxley was involved in the revolutionary discovery of superconductivity in the ferromagnet UGe2 under applied pressure, in collaboration with a team at the University of Cambridge. This was followed up by a series of breakthroughs in another ferromagnetic material, URhGe [3-5], which was found to turn superconducting under the application of an external magnetic field. This emergence of an unconventional superconducting state by the application of an external tuning parameter such as magnetic field or pressure is hypothesised to be closely related to a 'Quantum critical point' (QCP) - a special phase transition that occurs at temperatures approaching zero kelvins. Quantum fluctuations are enhanced at the QCP, destabilising the conventional phase that dominates under ambient conditions, making conditions propitious for the emergence of a novel unconventional phase such as superconductivity, or possibly even more exotic states.[ citation needed ]
Huxley graduated with a BA from Churchill College, Cambridge, an MS from the University of Pennsylvania, and a PhD from the University of Cambridge. He was subsequently a postdoctoral fellow and then a scientist at CEA, Grenoble before joining the University of Edinburgh as a Professor of Physics in 2006. Huxley is an alumna of the Quantum Matter Group (formerly the Low Temperature Physics) of the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge that have gone on to become leading physicists.[ citation needed ]
Condensed matter physics is the field of physics that deals with the macroscopic and microscopic physical properties of matter, especially the solid and liquid phases which arise from electromagnetic forces between atoms. More generally, the subject deals with "condensed" phases of matter: systems of many constituents with strong interactions between them. More exotic condensed phases include the superconducting phase exhibited by certain materials at low temperature, the ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic phases of spins on crystal lattices of atoms, and the Bose–Einstein condensate found in ultracold atomic systems. Condensed matter physicists seek to understand the behavior of these phases by experiments to measure various material properties, and by applying the physical laws of quantum mechanics, electromagnetism, statistical mechanics, and other theories to develop mathematical models.
Superconductivity is a set of physical properties observed in certain materials where electrical resistance vanishes and magnetic flux fields are expelled from the material. Any material exhibiting these properties is a superconductor. Unlike an ordinary metallic conductor, whose resistance decreases gradually as its temperature is lowered, even down to near absolute zero, a superconductor has a characteristic critical temperature below which the resistance drops abruptly to zero. An electric current through a loop of superconducting wire can persist indefinitely with no power source.
In physics, a quantum phase transition (QPT) is a phase transition between different quantum phases. Contrary to classical phase transitions, quantum phase transitions can only be accessed by varying a physical parameter—such as magnetic field or pressure—at absolute zero temperature. The transition describes an abrupt change in the ground state of a many-body system due to its quantum fluctuations. Such a quantum phase transition can be a second-order phase transition. Quantum phase transitions can also be represented by the topological fermion condensation quantum phase transition, see e.g. strongly correlated quantum spin liquid. In case of three dimensional Fermi liquid, this transition transforms the Fermi surface into a Fermi volume. Such a transition can be a first-order phase transition, for it transforms two dimensional structure into three dimensional. As a result, the topological charge of Fermi liquid changes abruptly, since it takes only one of a discrete set of values.
Superconductivity is the phenomenon of certain materials exhibiting zero electrical resistance and the expulsion of magnetic fields below a characteristic temperature. The history of superconductivity began with Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes's discovery of superconductivity in mercury in 1911. Since then, many other superconducting materials have been discovered and the theory of superconductivity has been developed. These subjects remain active areas of study in the field of condensed matter physics.
Uranium rhodium germanium (URhGe) is the first discovered metal that becomes superconducting in the presence of an extremely strong electromagnetic field. Very unlike other superconducting materials, whose superconducting properties can be lost due to strong magnetic fields, uranium rhodium germanium actually regains superconducting abilities at about 8 teslas.
In superconductivity, a Josephson vortex is a quantum vortex of supercurrents in a Josephson junction. The supercurrents circulate around the vortex center which is situated inside the Josephson barrier, unlike Abrikosov vortices in type-II superconductors, which are located in the superconducting condensate.
Ferromagnetic superconductors are materials that display intrinsic coexistence of ferromagnetism and superconductivity. They include UGe2, URhGe, and UCoGe. Evidence of ferromagnetic superconductivity was also reported for ZrZn2 in 2001, but later reports question these findings. These materials exhibit superconductivity in proximity to a magnetic quantum critical point.
The term magnetic structure of a material pertains to the ordered arrangement of magnetic spins, typically within an ordered crystallographic lattice. Its study is a branch of solid-state physics.
A superinsulator is a material that at low but finite temperatures does not conduct electricity, i.e. has an infinite resistance so that no electric current passes through it.
National Institute for Materials Science is an Independent Administrative Institution and one of the largest scientific research centers in Japan.
Juan Carlos Campuzano is a Paraguayan American physicist. He is a Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He was a Distinguished Fellow at Argonne National Laboratory, and a he is also a 2001 American Physical Society Fellow and a recipient of the 2011 Oliver Buckley Prize in Condensed Matter Physics. He is an expert in high-temperature superconductivity.
Thomas Felix Rosenbaum is an American physicist and the current president of the California Institute of Technology. Earlier he served as Provost and on the faculty of the University of Chicago, and was the Vice President for Research at Argonne National Laboratory.
Robert J. Schoelkopf III is an American physicist, most noted for his work on quantum computing as one of the inventors of superconducting qubits. Schoelkopf's main research areas are quantum transport, single-electron devices, and charge dynamics in nanostructures. His research utilizes quantum-effect and single-electron devices, both for fundamental physical studies and for applications. Techniques often include high-speed, high-sensitivity measurements performed on nanostructures at low temperatures. Schoelkopf serves as director of the Yale Center for Microelectronic Materials and Structures and as associate director of the Yale Institute for Nanoscience and Quantum Engineering. Since 2014, Schoelkopf is also the Director of the Yale Quantum Institute.
Michel Devoret is a French physicist and F. W. Beinecke Professor of Applied Physics at Yale University. He also holds a position as the Director of the Applied Physics Nanofabrication Lab at Yale. He is known for his pioneering work on macroscopic quantum tunneling, and the single-electron pump as well as in groundbreaking contributions to initiating the fields of circuit quantum electrodynamics and quantronics.
Jason Robinson is a Professor of Materials Physics in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge. Currently, his main research interests are in the areas of superconducting spintronics and interface coupling of materials with radically different properties. Particular topics include the superconductor proximity effect, Josephson junctions with magnetic barriers, spintronics, and oxide interfaces.
Suchitra Sebastian is a condensed matter physicist at Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge. She is known for her discoveries of exotic quantum phenomena that emerge in complex materials. In particular, she is known for the discovery of unconventional insulating materials which display simultaneous conduction-like behaviour. In 2022 she was awarded the New Horizons in Physics Prize by the Breakthrough Foundation. She was named as one of thirty Exceptional Young Scientists by the World Economic Forum in 2013, one of The Next Big Names in Physics by the Financial Times in 2013, and spoke at the World Economic Forum at Davos in 2016.
Twistronics is the study of how the angle between layers of two-dimensional materials can change their electrical properties. Materials such as bilayer graphene have been shown to have vastly different electronic behavior, ranging from non-conductive to superconductive, that depends sensitively on the angle between the layers. The term was first introduced by the research group of Efthimios Kaxiras at Harvard University in their theoretical treatment of graphene superlattices.
Pablo Jarillo-Herrero is a Spanish physicist and current Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Max Born was a widely influential German physicist and mathematician who was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physics for his pivotal role in the development of quantum mechanics. Born won the prize primarily for his contributions to the statistical interpretation of the wave function, though he is known for his work in several areas of quantum mechanics as well as solid-state physics, optics, and special relativity. Born's entry in the Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society included thirty books and 330 papers.
Simon John Bending, is a British physicist. He is a professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Bath, where he was the Head of department from 2013 to 2016. He is co-director of the Bath-Exeter Centre for Graphene Science and deputy director of the Bath-Bristol EPRSC Centre for Doctoral Training in Condensed Matter Physics. He developed scanning Hall probe microscopy and has made notable contributions to the field of superconductors.