Sep 26 2024

Condensed Matter Seminar- “Altermagnetism in the intercalated transition metal dichalcogenide CoNb4Se8” with Prof. Nirmal J. Ghimire

Colloquium

September 26, 2024

10:00 AM - 11:00 AM

Location

SES 3182

Nirmal J. Ghimire 

Department of Physics and Astronomy, and Stavropoulos Center for Complex Quantum Matter 

University of Notre Dame 

Beyond the well-known classes of ferromagnets (FM) and Néel antiferromagnets (AFM), a new category of magnetic materials, known as “altermagnets” (AM), has emerged. Altermagnets are fundamentally different from these canonical types, exhibiting alternating (staggered) magnetization density both in real space (like collinear AFM) and in momentum space (like FM). This distinctive combination of AFM and FM properties opens exciting possibilities in spintronics, offering the potential to enhance the efficiency of current ferromagnet-based systems. 

In this talk, I will present our recent work in this rapidly developing field. Specifically, I will give an overview of altermagnetism and discuss our recent realization of altermagnetism in CoNb₄Se₈, an intercalated van der Waals compound. Additionally, I will touch on the importance of the van der Waals nature of this material, which may pave the way for realizing other predicted properties of altermagnetism. 

Biography:  

Nirmal Ghimire earned his Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) in 2013, conducting research both at UTK and the nearby Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He then served as a postdoctoral research associate at Los Alamos National Laboratory from 2013 to 2015, followed by a role as a Director’s Postdoctoral Fellow at Argonne National Laboratory from 2015 to 2018. In 2018, he became an assistant professor at George Mason University, a position he held until 2023. In the summer of 2023, he joined the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Notre Dame as an associate professor. His research centers on discovering and understanding emergent phenomena in quantum materials through the design and synthesis of new materials, and by studying their magnetic and transport properties.  

Contact

Physics Office

Date posted

Sep 20, 2024

Date updated

Sep 20, 2024