Sergei UrazhdinSamuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Physics

• Named outstanding referee by the American Physical Society (2014)
• College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Researcher award (2008-2009)
• Cottrell Scholar award (2008)
• NSF CAREER award (2007)

• Ph.D., Michigan State University, 2002

View publications on Google Scholar.

Research Area

Experimental condensed matter physics;Experiment: spintronics, electronic and magnetic properties of surfaces and nanostructures, nonlinear dynamics in nanomagnetic systems, and strongly correlated materials.

Research Interests

Our group investigates new physical phenomena the emerge in nanoscale systems, at surfaces and interfaces of materials with different physical properties. The overarching goal is to develop fundamental understanding of the effects of confinement, interfaces, the resulting emerging interactions, and strongly nonequilibrium physical states that become possible to achieve only at nanoscale. For instance, we are investigating magnetism-related phenomena induced in nanoscale magnetic systems by spin-polarized electrical currents, at extremely high densities that would simply evaporate larger systems.

Our goal is to understand the nature of dynamical and static states in magnetic systems brought far out of equilibrium by the current. We are also investigating the unusual physical characteristics acquired by the electromagnetic waves propagating in magnetic media. Such waves are called spin-waves. By engineering nanostructured magnetic media, one can produce nanoscale all-optical integrated cicruits for information processing and storage. We are also developing a new scanning probe microscopy technique to study electronic correlations at the surfaces of topological insulators and strongly correlated materials.