Research Intern Program

Statement of Intent

Your Name SALMAN ALI

Desired Host
Feng UNIT
Research Unit(s)
Please describe the kind of research you are interested in and what you hope to accomplish at OIST.
If you already have a specific project in mind, provide a description in detail. Please save as PDF
format, not Word
My Research group explore experimentally quantum properties of novel electronic and
magnetic materials using neutron scattering and thermodynamic probes. The aim is to
understand how electrons organize themselves in complex materials to lead to new
properties, an example being high-temperature superconductivity, a collective, emergent
property of all the electrons acting in unison. Understanding emergent quantum
phenomena is a major challenge of materials physics and a requirement for future
technologies that aim to manipulate in a controlled way the quantum properties of many
electrons.

One focus of our research are novel electronic phases stabilized by competing interactions
in lattices with geometric frustration where many possible states have comparable energy
and quantum fluctuations are important for selecting the ultimate ground states. I use
elastic and inelastic neutron scattering to obtain detailed information about the order and
dynamics. Moreover I use high magnetic fields to manipulate the spin fluctuations in the
ground state and to drive transitions between distinct ground states when the field
strength matches the energy of the magnetic interactions; such field-induced transitions
are of fundamental interest as they are microscopically driven by strong quantum
fluctuations in the many-electron ground state, which ultimately originate from the
Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Understanding how many-body quantum states
transform at critical points is a major theoretical challenge and we aim to obtain detailed
experimental data on how the order and collective dynamics evolves near such quantum
critical points.

A strong emphasis of my research is in the quantitative comparison of the experimental

data with modern theories of spin dynamics in quantum magnets.I have strong
collaborations with leading theory groups worldwide who develop new theoretical models
to confront our experimental result

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