The Department of Physics and Astronomy invites all to a colloquium featuring Dr. Ranga Dias, Department of Physics at Harvard University. Dr. Dias will present his talk, “Pressing Hydrogen to Exotic Quantum States ”, Tuesday, February 28, at 4:10 p.m. in Webster 17.
Meet for refreshments before the lecture at 3:45 – 4:10 p.m. in the foyer on floor G above the lecture hall.
Abstract: At very high pressures delocalization of electrons provides a wealth of correlated electron phenomena: e.g., insulator-metal transitions, colossal magnetoresistance, valence fluctuations, heavy fermion behavior, non-Fermi liquid behavior, superconductivity, magnetic order, quadrupolar order, etc. The occurrence of such a wide range of correlated electron phenomena arises from a delicate interplay between competing interactions that can be tuned by pressure, resulting in complex temperature T vs P phase diagrams. In this talk, I will discuss the application of pressure on the simplest element in the universe—The “HYDROGENS”—to understand quantum effects and develop materials with advanced properties.
Efforts to identify and develop new superconducting materials continue to increase rapidly. Solid metallic hydrogen, the elusive phase of atomic hydrogen, is predicted to have exotic properties, such as room temperature superconductivity, superfluidity (if it is a liquid), and metastability. It releases enormous energy if it returns to the molecular phase (400kJ/mole: 35xTNT). After more than 80 years of tremendous theoretical progress and a legion of experimental efforts, the most challenging conjecture in condensed matter science remained unproven until recently. I shall present our most recent results on the solid hydrogens under pressure [1-3]. Finally, I shall discuss future research directions in probing room temperature superconductivity.
