Pitt/CMU Colloquium: Erica Carlson (Purdue)

November 2, 2020 - 4:00pm

Critical pattern formation at the Mottmetal-insulator transition

I discuss the critical pattern formation of metallic and insulating nanoscale domains observed in NdNiO3 and VO2, via scanning near-field optical microscopy. The electronic phase transitions of these materials hold promise for novel ways to encode and process information, of interest for developing memristors and neuromorphic devices. Using theoretical tools from fractal mathematics and disordered statistical mechanics, we use the rich spatial information of this scanning probe in order to diagnose criticality from the spatial structure alone, without the need of a sweep of temperature or external field. The observed pattern formation points toward a combination of quenched disorder and interactions as the driving mechanism of the power law spatial organization of the domains.

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Erica W. Carlson, Ph.D., is Professor of Physics at Purdue University. Prof. Carlson holds a BS in Physics from the California Institute of Technology (1994), as well as a Ph.D. in Physics from UCLA (2000). A theoretical physicist, Prof. Carlson researches electronic phase transitions in quantum materials. In 2015, she was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society "for theoretical insights into the critical role of electron nematicity, disorder, and noise in novel phases of strongly correlated electron systems and predicting unique characteristics." Prof. Carlson has been on the faculty at Purdue University since 2003, where she was recently named a "150th Anniversary Professor" in recognition of teaching excellence. 

 

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