Anita Bagri

My work focuses on manipulating magnetism and electronic properties via strain, electric field and visible light and understanding the results of this manipulation by using X-ray absorption spectroscopy and microscopy techniques. For example, I work with novel artificial multiferroics, where the indirect coupling between magnetoelectric orders can be manipulated by combined effects of magnetostriction, piezoelectricity, and ferroelectric polarization through external electric biasing or light-induced effects.

Artificial multiferroics can be designed by growing the ferromagnetic thin films on a ferroelectric substrate with strong interfacial magnetoelectric effects. The magnetic layer can be controlled by taking advantage of the piezoelectric and photostrictive properties of the ferroelectric layer. For instance, Ni thin film grown on BaTiO3 display a remanent magnetic state owing to the remanent photostriction in underlying ferroelectric layer. The magnetic domain walls of Ni follow the light-induced domain wall motion in the ferroelectric layer. SrRuO3 film grown on BaTiO3 shows giant, persistent changes in the magnetisation through the application of external electric biasing.

Additionally, I am interested in studying the interplay between different ferroic orders in 2D van der Waals multiferroic materials. My goal is to tune their magnetoelectric effects through external stimuli such as strain, electric voltage, and light and understand their behaviour using polarised x-ray absorption and magnetic imaging techniques.

I graduated with my master’s degree from Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna Garhwal University with the INSPIRE scholar award, funded by DST India. I have completed my PhD at UGC DAE CSR Indore, India, focusing my work on the remote-controlled tuning of interfacial magnetoelectric coupling in BaTiO3-based artificial multiferroic heterostructures. To study the light-controlled magnetic study, I have developed a homemade probe set-up for a SQUID-VSM system, in which we can apply in-situ light and in-situ electric field via an external voltage supply. During my Ph.D., I have extensively worked on PLD grown oxide films and investigated the electronic and magnetic properties using soft X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS), X-ray linear dichroism (XLD), X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD), X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS), valence band spectroscopy (VBS) and resonant photoemission spectroscopy (RPES) at INDUS beamlines, RRCAT, Indore, India.