LUMS Faculty’s Work Published in Nature Materials

Wednesday, October 4, 2017

Dr. Ata Ulhaq, Assistant Professor, Department of Physics, Syed Babar Ali School of Science and Engineering, Lahore University of Management Sciences, together with Dr. Evgeny Checkhovich from the University of Sheffield have performed important experiments demonstrating the energy distribution of nanoscale spin systems. Their work addresses some fundamental aspects of these spin systems and the results have been published in the prestigious Nature Materials, a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Nature Publishing Group with a wide readership including scientists, in both academia and industry involved in either developing materials or working with materials-related concepts.

Spin is a quintessential quantum mechanical property of sub-atomic particles. Nuclei in atoms can have non-zero spin. Solids are made of a large number of atoms and if their nuclei carry spin, such solids form a large nuclear spin ensemble. The physics of such large nuclear spin systems has been widely studied and well understood. However, what is not well understood is what happens if such a nuclear system become as small as a few nanometers across. Dr. Ata Ulhaq and Dr. Evgeny Checkhovich work focuses particularly on this.