Kathryn Moler

Last updated
Kathryn A. Moler
Bornc. 1966 (age 57–58)
Nationality American
Alma mater Stanford University
Scientific career
Fields Physics
Institutions Stanford University
Thesis Specific Heat of Cuprate Superconductors  (1995)
Doctoral advisor Aharon Kapitulnik

Kathryn Ann Moler (born c. 1966) is an American physicist, and current dean of research at Stanford University. [1] She received her BSc (1988) and Ph.D. (1995) from Stanford University. [2] After working as a visiting scientist at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in 1995, she held a postdoctoral position at Princeton University from 1995 to 1998. She joined the faculty of Stanford University in 1998, and became an Associate in CIFAR's Superconductivity Program (now called the Quantum Materials Program) in 2000. She became an associate professor (with tenure) at Stanford in 2002 and is currently a professor of applied physics and of Physics at Stanford. She currently works in the Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials (GLAM), [3] and is the director of the Center for Probing the Nanoscale (CPN), [4] a National Science Foundation-funded center where Stanford and IBM scientists continue to improve scanning probe methods for measuring, imaging, and controlling nanoscale phenomena. [5] She lists her scientific interests and main areas of research and experimentation as:

Contents

Career

Early in her career, with John Kirtley from IBM, their research demonstrated that one of the predictions of a popular theory for high-temperature superconductivity was inaccurate by a factor of 10. [6] In 2011 her research group placed two non-magnetic materials (complex oxides) together and discovered an unexpected result: The layer where the two materials meet has both magnetic and superconducting regions. These are two properties that are normally incompatible, since "superconducting materials, which conduct electricity with no resistance and 100 percent efficiency, normally expel any magnetic field that comes near them." [7] Exploration of this phenomenon will be aimed toward discovery of whether the properties co-exist uneasily, or this marks the discovery of an exotic new form of superconductivity that actively interacts with magnetism.

In May 2018, Moler was named vice provost and dean of research at Stanford University, effective September 1, 2018. [8]

Awards

Publications

Papers listed at Stanford

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Superconductivity</span> Electrical conductivity with exactly zero resistance

Superconductivity is a set of physical properties observed in certain materials where electrical resistance vanishes and magnetic 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.

Unconventional superconductors are materials that display superconductivity which does not conform to conventional BCS theory or its extensions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">High-temperature superconductivity</span> Superconductive behavior at temperatures much higher than absolute zero

High-temperature superconductors are defined as materials with critical temperature above 77 K, the boiling point of liquid nitrogen. They are only "high-temperature" relative to previously known superconductors, which function at even colder temperatures, close to absolute zero. The "high temperatures" are still far below ambient, and therefore require cooling. The first break through of high-temperature superconductor was discovered in 1986 by IBM researchers Georg Bednorz and K. Alex Müller. Although the critical temperature is around 35.1 K, this new type of superconductor was readily modified by Ching-Wu Chu to make the first high-temperature superconductor with critical temperature 93 K. Bednorz and Müller were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1987 "for their important break-through in the discovery of superconductivity in ceramic materials". Most high-Tc materials are type-II superconductors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John R. Kirtley</span>

John Robert Kirtley is an American condensed matter physicist and a consulting professor at the Center for Probing the Nanoscale in the department of applied physics at Stanford University. He shared the 1998 Oliver E. Buckley Prize of the American Physical Society, and is a Fellow of both the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences.

In superconductivity, a semifluxon is a half integer vortex of supercurrent carrying the magnetic flux equal to the half of the magnetic flux quantum Φ0. Semifluxons exist in the 0-π long Josephson junctions at the boundary between 0 and π regions. This 0-π boundary creates a π discontinuity of the Josephson phase. The junction reacts to this discontinuity by creating a semifluxon. Vortex's supercurrent circulates around 0-π boundary. In addition to semifluxon, there exist also an antisemifluxon. It carries the flux −Φ0/2 and its supercurrent circulates in the opposite direction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quantum vortex</span> Quantized flux circulation of some physical quantity

In physics, a quantum vortex represents a quantized flux circulation of some physical quantity. In most cases, quantum vortices are a type of topological defect exhibited in superfluids and superconductors. The existence of quantum vortices was first predicted by Lars Onsager in 1949 in connection with superfluid helium. Onsager reasoned that quantisation of vorticity is a direct consequence of the existence of a superfluid order parameter as a spatially continuous wavefunction. Onsager also pointed out that quantum vortices describe the circulation of superfluid and conjectured that their excitations are responsible for superfluid phase transitions. These ideas of Onsager were further developed by Richard Feynman in 1955 and in 1957 were applied to describe the magnetic phase diagram of type-II superconductors by Alexei Alexeyevich Abrikosov. In 1935 Fritz London published a very closely related work on magnetic flux quantization in superconductors. London's fluxoid can also be viewed as a quantum vortex.

In a standard superconductor, described by a complex field fermionic condensate wave function, vortices carry quantized magnetic fields because the condensate wave function is invariant to increments of the phase by . There a winding of the phase by creates a vortex which carries one flux quantum. See quantum vortex.

Superconductors can be classified in accordance with several criteria that depend on physical properties, current understanding, and the expense of cooling them or their material.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Iron-based superconductor</span>

Iron-based superconductors (FeSC) are iron-containing chemical compounds whose superconducting properties were discovered in 2006. In 2008, led by recently discovered iron pnictide compounds, they were in the first stages of experimentation and implementation..

In chemistry, oxypnictides are a class of materials composed of oxygen, a pnictogen and one or more other elements. Although this group of compounds has been recognized since 1995, interest in these compounds increased dramatically after the publication of the superconducting properties of LaOFeP and LaOFeAs which were discovered in 2006 and 2008. In these experiments the oxide was partly replaced by fluoride.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Superconducting wire</span> Wires exhibiting zero resistance

Superconducting wires are electrical wires made of superconductive material. When cooled below their transition temperatures, they have zero electrical resistance. Most commonly, conventional superconductors such as niobium–titanium are used, but high-temperature superconductors such as YBCO are entering the market.

In superconductivity, a Pearl vortex is a vortex of supercurrent in a thin film of type-II superconductor, first described in 1964 by Judea Pearl. A Pearl vortex is similar to Abrikosov vortex except for its magnetic field profile which, due to the dominant air-metal interface, diverges sharply as 1/ at short distances from the center, and decays slowly, like 1/ at long distances. Abrikosov's vortices, in comparison, have very short range interaction and diverge as near the center.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Distrontium ruthenate</span> Chemical compound

Distrontium ruthenate, also known as strontium ruthenate, is an oxide of strontium and ruthenium with the chemical formula Sr2RuO4. It was the first reported perovskite superconductor that did not contain copper. Strontium ruthenate is structurally very similar to the high-temperature cuprate superconductors, and in particular, is almost identical to the lanthanum doped superconductor (La, Sr)2CuO4. However, the transition temperature for the superconducting phase transition is 0.93 K (about 1.5 K for the best sample), which is much lower than the corresponding value for cuprates.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lanthanum aluminate-strontium titanate interface</span>

The interface between lanthanum aluminate (LaAlO3) and strontium titanate (SrTiO3) is a notable materials interface because it exhibits properties not found in its constituent materials. Individually, LaAlO3 and SrTiO3 are non-magnetic insulators, yet LaAlO3/SrTiO3 interfaces can exhibit electrical metallic conductivity, superconductivity, ferromagnetism, large negative in-plane magnetoresistance, and giant persistent photoconductivity. The study of how these properties emerge at the LaAlO3/SrTiO3 interface is a growing area of research in condensed matter physics.

Lanthanum aluminate is an inorganic compound with the formula LaAlO3, often abbreviated as LAO. It is an optically transparent ceramic oxide with a distorted perovskite structure.

Oxyphosphides are chemical compounds formally containing the group PO, with one phosphorus and one oxygen atom. The phosphorus and oxygen are not bound together as in phosphates or phosphine oxides, instead they are bound separately to the cations (metals), and could be considered as a mixed phosphide-oxide compound. So a compound with OmPn requires cations to balance a negative charge of 2m+3n. The cations will have charges of +2 or +3. The trications are often rare earth elements or actinides. They are in the category of oxy-pnictide compounds.

Harold Yoonsung Hwang is an American physicist, specializing in materials physics, condensed matter physics, nanoscience, and quantum engineering.

Victor V. Moshchalkov, is a Belgian-Russian physicist. He is a professor Emeritus in the Department of Physics at the KU Leuven. He is noted for contributions to Type-1.5 superconductors, S-Fi-S Pi Josephson junction and scanning Hall probe microscopy. He has made notable contributions to the fields of nanostructured superconductors, nanophotonics and heavy fermions in solids.

Dale J. Van Harlingen is an American condensed matter physicist.

References

  1. ↑ University, Stanford (2018-05-29). "Materials physicist Kathryn Moler named Stanford vice provost and dean of research | Stanford News". Stanford News. Retrieved 2018-09-11.
  2. ↑ "Kathy Moler Selected for 2010 Richtmyer Award". AAPT.org. 2013-01-22. Retrieved 2013-01-29.
  3. ↑ "Welcome to the Geballe Laboratory". Stanford.edu. 1999-09-01. Retrieved 2013-01-29.
  4. ↑ "Stanford Center for Probing the Nanoscale". Stanford.edu. Archived from the original on 2013-03-26. Retrieved 2013-01-29.
  5. ↑ "Vincent Caprio's blog » 2010 » January". Vincentcaprio.org. Retrieved 2013-01-29.
  6. ↑ "Poster Project, Biographies, Moler". Math.sunysb.edu. Retrieved 2013-01-29.
  7. ↑ "DOE Pulse". Ornl.gov. 2011-09-19. Retrieved 2013-01-29.
  8. ↑ University, Stanford (2018-05-29). "Materials physicist Kathryn Moler named Stanford vice provost and dean of research | Stanford News". Stanford News. Retrieved 2018-09-11.
  9. ↑ "News from the National Academy of Sciences". 2021-04-26. Retrieved 2021-07-04. Newly elected members and their affiliations at the time of election are: … Moler, Kathryn A.; vice provost, dean of research, and Marvin Chodorow Professor, department of applied physics, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif., entry in member directory: "Member Directory". National Academy of Sciences. Retrieved 2021-07-04.
  10. ↑ Kalisky, Beena; Bert, Julie A.; Bell, Christopher; Xie, Yanwu; Sato, Hiroki K.; Hosoda, Masayuki; Hikita, Yasuyuki; Hwang, Harold Y.; Moler, Kathryn A. (2012). "Scanning Probe Manipulation of Magnetism at the LaAlO3/SrTiO3 Heterointerface". Nano Letters. 12 (8): 4055–9. Bibcode:2012NanoL..12.4055K. doi:10.1021/nl301451e. PMID   22769056.
  11. ↑ Kalisky, Beena; Bert, Julie A.; Klopfer, Brannon B.; Bell, Christopher; Sato, Hiroki K.; Hosoda, Masayuki; Hikita, Yasuyuki; Hwang, Harold Y.; Moler, Kathryn A. (26 June 2012). "Critical thickness for ferromagnetism in LaAlO3/SrTiO3 heterostructures". Nature Communications. 3 (1): 922. arXiv: 1201.1063 . Bibcode:2012NatCo...3E.922K. doi:10.1038/ncomms1931. PMID   22735450. S2CID   205313268.
  12. ↑ Kirtley, J. R.; Kalisky, B.; Bert, J. A.; Bell, C.; Kim, M.; Hikita, Y.; Hwang, H. Y.; Ngai, J. H.; Segal, Y.; Walker, F. J.; Ahn, C. H.; Moler, K. A. (2012). "Scanning SQUID susceptometry of a paramagnetic superconductor". Physical Review B. 85 (22): 224518. arXiv: 1204.3355 . Bibcode:2012PhRvB..85v4518K. doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.85.224518. S2CID   37774143.
  13. ↑ Lippman, Thomas M.; Moler, Kathryn A. (2011). "Calculation of the effect of random superfluid density on the temperature dependence of the penetration depth". Physical Review B. 85 (10): 104529. arXiv: 1108.4933 . Bibcode:2012PhRvB..85j4529L. doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.85.104529. S2CID   46734287.
  14. ↑ Bert, Julie A.; Kalisky, Beena; Bell, Christopher; Kim, Minu; Hikita, Yasuyuki; Hwang, Harold Y.; Moler, Kathryn A. (October 2011). "Direct imaging of the coexistence of ferromagnetism and superconductivity at the LaAlO3/SrTiO3 interface". Nature Physics. 7 (10): 767–771. arXiv: 1108.3150 . Bibcode:2011NatPh...7..767B. doi:10.1038/nphys2079. S2CID   10809252.
  15. ↑ "Behavior of vortices near twin boundaries in underdoped Ba(Fe1-xCox)2As2". osti.gov.[ permanent dead link ]
  16. ↑ Local Measurement of the Superfluid Density in the Pnictide Superconductor Ba(Fe1-xCox)2As2across the Superconducting Dome
  17. ↑ "Stanford University Department of Applied Physics » Kathryn A. Moler". Stanford.edu. Archived from the original on 2012-11-05. Retrieved 2013-01-29.
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