Wednesday Colloquia

Nuclear isomers – Secret agents in Condensed Matter Physics and Material Science

by Prof. S. N. Mishra (DNAP, TIFR)

Wednesday, August 21, 2019 from to (Asia/Kolkata)
at Lecture Theatre ( AG-66 )
TIFR
Description
James Bond, the proverbial secret agent is entrusted with a mission to find the truth behind mysterious events. With his powerful vision he sets out to unfold the truth. Solids in nature are a wonder house for many secrets – physical phenomenon – structural, electronic, magnetic etc. Scientist have a passion and fascination to understand these wonderful phenomena. Nuclei in solids, through hyperfine interactions act as James Bond, the secret agent, to provide us important clues, in minute detail and help us understand the material properties and solid state phenomenona at short lengths and time scales. In this talk I shall try to give an overview of my, nearly four-decade long journey in this field, enabled by the wonderful institute named "Tata Institute of Fundamental Research". I shall elaborate on the application of nuclear isomers towards understanding some fundamental problems in condensed matter physics, with an emphasis on magnetism in solids, especially in low dimensions i.e. in nano-scale materials. In doing so, I shall give illustrative examples from experiments carried out at the Pelletron accelerator at TIFR.