Physics Professor to Speak at Royal Society

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Jak Chakhalian

Jak Chakhalian, professor of physics and the holder of the Charles and Clydene Scharlau Professorship, has received an invitation to present two lectures in the United Kingdom at the Royal Society as part of the 100^th anniversary of the discovery of superconductivity.

He will give a lecture at Oxford University Sept. 6 and then at Buckinghamshire Sept. 13. The lectures will be part of an historical event dedicated to the anniversary of the discovery of superconductivity and they are free and open to the public.

Chakhalian will be speaking about his latest groundbreaking research into using a novel way to “look” at atomic orbitals. Recently, he and his colleagues discovered that these orbitals change substantially at the interface between a ferromagnet and a high-temperature superconductor. This finding opens up a novel way of designing nanoscale superconducting materials. It also fundamentally changes scientific convention, which had suggested that only electron spin and atomic charge – not atomic orbitals – can be modified on the nanoscale. It has profound implications for interfaces between many other complex oxide nanomaterials.

This research was cited by Science magazine as one of the top 10 research breakthroughs of 2007.

See more about Chakhalian's latest research work on nanoscale superconductors.