I am a research professor in the Physics department at West Virginia University. The continual improvement of microscopic resolution and technology over time has allowed great advances in the study of both organic and inorganic materials. Today, optical techniques can distinguish cancers in vivo and allow valuable insight into designing faster, more energy efficient computers. Complex oxides (which exhibit a variety of properties including superconductivity, ferromagnetism, and colossal magnetoresistance) have recently been widely studied due to their fascinating coupling and potential in the latter challenge. What is the interplay between spin, charge, and orbital ordering in transition-metal oxides? How do strain and thickness affect this interplay? How can we control magnetic behavior electronically? In addition to making use of existing synchrotron facilities to answer these questions, high-resolution second harmonic generation (SHG) imaging allows nondestructive study of the electric control of magnetism at surfaces and buried interfaces with sub-100 nm resolution. Though the focus of my current research is on electric and magnetic properties of these complex oxides, great potential also exists to further explore biological systems, particularly with an SHG setup that will allow high-resolution imaging of structures by utilizing endogenous non-fluorescence effects.

 

 

Visit the links above to find out more about my research interests.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PHYSICS

Research Interests:

 

• Second harmonic generation studies in oxides, thin films and organics

• Electric control of magnetic structure

• Imaging of ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic domains

• Exchange bias, coupling between antiferromagnets and ferromagnets

• Multifunctional materials with potential coupling with order parameters

• Piezoelectric force microscopy for the study of ferroelectric domains

• X-ray absorption spectroscopy and x-ray magnetic dichroism

• Modeling of expected dichroic contrast for different magnetic behaviors

• Internal photoemission to study spin relaxation in GaAs