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Physical Society Colloquium
Brett Ellman Kent State University The venerable techniques of ultrasonics and uniaxial stress occupy special places in the hearts of many experimental condensed matter physicists, if only because the former is often cantankerous and the latter has a habit of spontaneously turning one sample into many! More positively, sound waves possess useful couplings and a highly directional nature, making them powerful, potentially spectroscopic, probes of the excitations in many systems. Uniaxial stress, on the other hand, has the wonderful property of changing system symmetry in a perfectly controllable, reversible fashion. In this talk, I will describe our use of both techniques to address specific issues in the physics of exotic magnets, superconductors, and other materials. In the case of ultrasound, I will also describe our efforts to "push the envelope" and extend phonon transport measurements into new regimes of size, frequency, and utility.
Tuesday, June 15th 1999, 15:30 |