Postgraduate Seminar Series
Thursday 17th April
Room 564
5pm
Geometric frustration in magnetism
by Thomas Hayes
Geometrical frustration arises in
systems
in
which
competing
interactions between atoms result in a
non-trivial, non-degenerate ground
state of the system. A simplistic
example of a frustrated magnetic
system is the triangular lattice of
Ising spins. It is not possible to
satisfy the requirement that nearest
neighbour spins be opposite to each
other in order to minimise the energy,
as one pair of neighbours will always
be parallel whichever direction the
third spin chooses.
I explain the
SrLn2O4 compounds that I study,
their structure, and the experiments
that have been performed upon them.
The postgraduate seminar series is a series of informal talks run by
postgraduates for postgraduates. All postgraduates are welcome and
refreshments are always provided!