The ability to measure magnetic fields with high sensitivity and spatial resolution provides fundamental knowledge about the many fascinating ways in which matter organizes itself, as well as what is needed to optimize a given material’s properties. Thanks to physicist Benjamin Lev and his team at Stanford University, this capability may now be possible.
Lev and a team of researchers developed a new way to investigate materials by creating a microscope that uses an ultra-cold cloud of atoms to measure magnetic fields. Named the SQCRAMScope (Scanning Quantum Cryogenic Atom Microscope), the device uses a tiny cloud of extremely cold, magnetically trapped gaseous atoms known as a Bose-Einstein condensate to probe magnetic fields on the surface of a sample. Their work was recently published in Physics Review Applied.
According to Lev, "There's a lot of enthusiasm. A lot of people from the condensed matter community are excited about sending us samples to measure, and the atomic physics community is also excited to see some of their techniques being applied outside their community."
Unexpected discoveries are made when we push the frontiers of science
History shows that, whenever a new frontier in instrument measurement capabilities is reached, not only are answers to long-standing puzzles often found, but unanticipated, and often startling discoveries are made. Thus, there is a continuous quest for new probes and measurement techniques with higher sensitivity, spatial resolution and measurement speed, or some unique combination of these capabilities. Read more about SQCRAMscope in this Viewpoint in Physics which further explains how Lev and the team at Stanford combined several capabilities into a single device, and its effect on quantum materials.
Through funding from the foundation, Lev set out to create this new instrument and use it to investigate two classes of quantum materials: unconventional superconductors and topological insulators. The instrument can probe samples that are at room-to-cryogenic temperatures and do so faster than any other existing sensitive probes of magnetic fields. Read more in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Experimental techniques that probe electrical and magnetic properties of solid materials have played an important role in condensed matter physics, materials science and technology. These techniques enable scientists to understand details of how electrons flow through material, how they interact with each other and their environment and how electron spins (the magnetic moment that each electron carries) affect this interaction.
Support for this work is part of the foundation’s special projects in science, where we can drive significant scientific advances beyond our major core investments.
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