Supervision: Ludovic Jaubert (CNRS, University of Bordeaux)
email:
ludovic.jaubert@u-bordeaux.fr
M2 Internship funded for 3-4 months.
PhD funded for 3 years, starting in September/October 2019.
Keywords: spin liquids, topological phases, emergent phenomena, frustrated magnetism
Project:
Intuitively, matter is expected to order at low temperatures: water becomes ice and iron becomes ferromagnetic. But this intuition breaks down in materials known as “spin liquids”, where a frustrated competition between spins prevents the system to order. Being disordered and correlated at the same time, spin liquids are often described by emergent gauge fields with quasi-particle excitations (e.g. magnetic monopoles), opening a window for exotic properties of matter that are not “hidden” anymore by long-range order. A growing number of such materials are regularly discovered, making this field extremely active and supported by strong ties between theory and experiments.
The motivation of this PhD is to design the properties of spin liquids. Two main axes will be investigated: the evolution of spin liquids between 2 and 3 dimensions (e.g. by considering different slab geometries) and the influence of quenched disorder (impurities ...).
This project has been designed for a PhD, with a combination of well posed problems to start with, and open questions to foster the scientific intuition of the student. The project is expected to be in part numerical, but depending on the student’s preference, more or less analytical approaches are also available.
For more details about our research, please have a look at some of our recent publications:
(1) Benton, Jaubert, Singh, Oitmaa, Shannon, Physical Review Letters 121, 067201 (2018)
(2) Jaubert, Lin, Opel, Holdsworth, Gingras, Physical Review Letters 118, 207206 (2017)
(3) Mizoguchi, Jaubert, Udagawa, Physical Review Letters 119, 077207 (2017)
(4) Essafi, Benton, Jaubert, Nature Communications 7, 10297 (2016)
Profile & Application:
We are looking for a motivated and serious student, with a Master in Physics, a solid background in condensed-matter, statistical and/or theoretical physics, and an interest in simulations. The candidate is expected to be proficient in English and/or French.
Informal inquiries are welcome.
Please apply through the following website: [
bit.ly]