My current research area involves Angle-Resolved PhotoElectron Spectroscopy (ARPES) studies of unconventional superconductors and low-dimensional systems such as transition metal chalcogenides.
Materials with strong electronic correlations are in the focus of solid state research because they exhibit interesting novel physical properties such as metal-insulator transitions, colossal magneto-resistance, quantum criticality and high-temperature superconductivity etc. Phenomenon of superconductivity in such systems also has been already used in a many technological applications is still not well understood from both theoretical and experimental perspectives. Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) allows studying fingerprints of interactions between electronic quasiparticles in such correlated electron systems. Applied to high-temperature superconductors, this technique provides decisive information about the mechanism of pairing.
The discovery of iron-based superconductors in 2008 sparked activity all over the globe in order to search for the pairing mechanism in the first family high-temperature superconductor different from the cuprates. The very fact of another family of high-temperature superconductivity appearance gives hope for other, yet undiscovered, classes of materials with possibly higher transition temperature. An understanding what are the important processes in iron based superconductors is crucial for the field of superconductivity in general. Here at Diamond the high energy and angular resolutions of modern photoelectron detectors combined with ability to tune photon energy and polarization of the synchrotron light make ARPES a key method to study momentum anisotropy and temperature dependence of the superconducting gap as well as electron correlations or self-energy effects. This information could reveal the underlying mechanism of the electron pairing in such unconventional superconductors.
On the beamline I provide support for users working in condense matter research, with main interest in studies of the electronic structure of novel quantum materials.