See also Departmental Newsletters

2012

3 February: National Science and Engineering Week (March 9th – 18th) gives people the chance to participate in science and engineering events both on campus and around Leicestershire with a series of practical activities and lectures throughout the 9 days.

28 January: Seventeenth Sir Nevill Mott lecture, which this time is devoted to climate change, will take place 14th March 2012 5.15pm in T0.03.

2011

21 December: Daniel Elford, Luke Chalmers, Gerry Swallowe and Feo Kusmartsev have been awarded a Knowledge Transfer Account (KTA) grant for the project entitled 'Novel Noise Barrier Technology', which provides funding for 2 RA positions for 6 months each.

20 December: A paper by Sergey Savel'ev and Sasha Alexandrov was featured in an online scientific portal memristor.org. A long standing story about the mechanism of memristor (memory-resistors) has been recently examined by molecular dynamic simulation by Sergey Saveliev, Sasha Alexandrov and their HP collaborators. These results published in Nanotechnology [Nanotechnology 22, 254011 (2011)] show that the filament-like chains of oxygen vacancies are responsible for switching memristors in low resistive state.

1 December: Congratulations to Physics student Andreas Constantinides, who got to final of the national competition for 'RateMyPlacement – Best Placement Student 2012' award. Andreas was nominated by IBM, where he completed a year in industry.

12 October: Congratulations to Physics student Yang Liu, who won the first prize at the poster competition of the 3rd International Conference on Econophysics with the poster "Mean field theory of binary networks and its application to a formation of a stable opinion in a complex world: opportunists versus contrarians".

5 October: A three-year PhD studentship is now available to work in surface engineering at the Accelerator Science and Technology Centre (ASTeC) at their laboratory in Cheshire while registered as a postgraduate research student at Loughborough University. This opportunity would suit a graduate in physics or related science and engineering subject. Closing Date for Applications: 31 October 2011. Further information can be found here. (Closed).

8 August: A new book of Alexandre Zagoskin was published by Cambridge University Press. The book titled "Quantum Engineering: Theory and Design of Quantum Coherent Structures" provides a self-contained presentation of the theoretical methods and experimental results in quantum engineering, and is suitable for graduate students in physics.

3 August: Department of Physics and School of Science organise 3rd International Conference on Econophysics and Summer School on Teaching and Enterprise, which will takes place in Loughborough September 24-29, 2011. More information could be found here.

22 July: June issue of the Physics Department Newsletter is now out. If you have any contributions for the next issue, please send them to Vici Webster.

18 July: Congratulation to Russell Glavey (now PhD student at the Department of Physics) who recently published the results of his final year research project on geometric stochastic resonance in Physical Review E [Phys. Rev. E 84, 011109 (2011)]. His research has been done in collaboration with world-leading research centres, The Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN, Japan) and Università di Camerino (Italy).

1 July: A recent paper by Sasha Alexandrov and Viktor Kabanov showing that a repulsive interaction of electrons does not provide high temperature superconductivity has been featured in newsletter "PersT" issued 30 June 2011 by the Institute of Solid State Physics of the Russian Academy of Science.

20 April: A postdoctoral position funded by the John Templeton Foundation is available for two years from 1 September 2011, for research into the theory and design of quantum metamaterials and their applications, in particular as a tool to probe the foundations of quantum mechanics. For informal discussions, please contact Dr. Alexandre Zagoskin. Closing Date: Tuesday 31 May 2011 (Closed).

19 April: Congratulations to Sergey Slizovskiy who has received a Postdoctoral EPSRC Fellowship. The project is devoted to the theory of high-temperature superconductivity, which is still under development. In the frames of his project Dr. Slizovskiy suggests to apply modern holographic methods originated initially in the string theory.

18 April: Congratulations to Tom Hewett who won a prize at the poster competition for research students" with poster "Extraordinary Magnetoresistance: Sensing The Future.

14 April: Feo Kusmartsev, Alex Zagoskin and a group of researchers headed by Prof. Yiannis Vardaxoglou from the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering have received an EPSRC grant on study of synthetic materials using metallic and non-metallic nanoparticles at microwave frequencies.

13 April: Physics PhD student Michael Pierpoint working in the Physics Department Observatory took high resolution image of the lunar surface (picture on the left). This image was produced with the 16" telescope and CCD camera. A total of 500 exposures were taken. Michael believes it should be possible to build up a mosaic of the moon using such method.

12 April: Congratulations to Sergey Savel'ev, who was awarded the grade of Fellow of the Institute of Physics which, according to the Institute of Physics webpage, "indicates a very high level of achievement in physics and an outstanding contribution to the profession".

11 April: March issue of the Physics Department Newsletter is now out. If you have any contributions for the next issue, please send them to Vici Webster.

4 April: Sasha Alexandrov and Viktor Kabanov have published the Physical Review Letter [PRL 106, 136403 (2011)], where they consider a long-standing question if it is possible to have the high-temperature superconductivity from the repulsive interaction. Within their approximation they found that the effect of a finite screening length gives rise to the absence of high-temperature superconductivity from the Coulomb repulsion in any dimension with or without lattice effects.

8 Feb: The Loughborough Academy – the Department’s outreach program for the school students in grades 7-10 coordinated by Irina Zagoskina - received a grant from the University Outreach and Recruitment. This year the Academy plans sessions at four Loughborough schools as well as an expansion to the Derby area.

7 Feb: Congratulations to Dr. Alex Zagoskin, Dr. Mark Everitt, and Dr. Dr Sergey Savel'ev who won a grant from the John Templeton Foundation (JTF) in support of their project entitled “Quantum reality as the sum of all constraints”. The grant allows them to hire a postdoctoral researcher and to cover travel and conference expenses for the team.

5 Jan: An international team of researchers from Slovenia, China, Italy and UK led by Prof. Dragan Mihailovic (Josef Stefan Institute, Slovenia) identified the primary interaction in a few high-temperature superconductors as the electron-phonon interaction using an ultrafast pump-probe optical spectroscopy and the novel theory of hot electron relaxation by Viktor Kabanov and Sasha Alexandrov. Their data published in Physical Review Letters 105, 257001 (2010) demonstrate the realistic feasibility of the polaronic superconductivity proposed by Sasha Alexandrov in 1983 prior the discovery of high-temperature superconductors.

2010

9 Dec: December's issue of the Physics Department Newsletter is now out. If you have any contributions for the next issue, please send them to Vici Webster.

30 Nov: Sasha Alexandrov and Dr. Alex Bratkovsky (HP Labs US, Loughborough visiting professor) have quantified the key pairing interaction in layered high-temperature superconductors, which is the electron-phonon (Froehlich) interaction, resolving one of the most controversial issues of contemporary Condensed Matter Physics. Their paper is published in Physical Review Letters 105, 226408 (2010).

8 Nov: Congratulations to Dr. Mike Forrester who received the Erwin Schrödinger Society Poster Award for his poster "The Nanoblade: A Magneto-Mechanical Initiation of Apoptosis in Cancer Cells" presented at the 2nd International Congress "Nanotechnology in Biology and Medicine 2010".

7 Oct: September's issue of the Physics Department Newsletter is now out. If you have any contributions for the next issue, please send them to Vici Webster.

16 Sept: Physical Science in Loughborough is ranked 10th in the UK in the Sunday Times University Guide 2011.

10 Sept: Sasha Alexandrov gave invited lectures at the 23rd General Conference of the Condensed Matter Division of the European Physical Society (Warsaw, Poland, August-September 2010) and at the American Physical Society (APS) March Meeting (Portland, US, 2010) on the key pairing interaction in cuprate and related high-temperature superconductors. The details can be found here (doc-file).

8 Sept: Congratulations to undergraduate physics student Gyuzyal Kassymzhan and PhD student Andy Prudom who received highly commended prizes in the Summer Research Project Studentship Competition 2010.

7 Sept: A team of Loughborough's physicists including Gerry Swallowe, Daniel Elford, Luke Chalmers and Feo Kusmartsev received an Innovation Fellowship Award from EMDA (East Midland Development Agency). Their current work has been supported by funding of a research associate to work on implementation in practice of new sound blocking technology developed in the Department.

3 Sept: Dr Viktor Kabanov, Visiting Research Professor, and his colleagues from Slovenia, France and US have published the paper on "Coherent dynamics of macroscopic electronic order through a symmetry breaking transition" in Nature Physics v.6, 681 (2010). They have described and experimentally observed the mechanism of topological defect creation in some condensed matter systems, which is conceptually and historically related to vortex formation in superconductivity, to the Kibble-Zurek mechanism for the formation of cosmic strings and to the Higgs boson.

24 August: Congratulations to Joseph Betouras on award of a grant from the EPSRC supporting his research on strongly correlated quantum systems.

20 August: The work "New Discovery in Nano-electronic System 'Spontaneous Moving Semi-fluxon" by Physics PhD student Hanaa Farhan won the Golden Award on Saudi International Conference SIC04 held in Manchester 30 and 31 July 2010.

29 June: The June issue of the Physics Department Newsletter is now out. If you have any contributions for the next issue, please send them to Vici Webster.

23 June: Congratulations to Dr. Klaus Neumann on award of a grant from the Science and Technology Facilities Council focussed on Neutron Experiments on FePt.

21 June: Scientists from Nottingham, and Dresden in collaboration with Alexander Balanov showed that laser controlled diffusion of manganese (Mni) donor ions out of the ferromagnetic semiconductor (GaMn)As towards the underlying layers of a quantum well heterostructure can be used to produce an array of nanoscales LEDs (Light-Emitting Diodes). The approach represents an alternative to deep etching for the creation of nanoscale current channels and nano-LEDs. The work is published in "Advanced Materials".

28 May: A member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Professor Maxim Kagan (Kapitza Institute for Physical Problems) has started his Leverhulme professorship in the department focusing his collaboration with Prof. Sasha Alexandrov and other staff on high-temperature superconductivity, Bose-liquids, CMR and phase separations.

27 May: "New Scientist" highlighted a work of a group of physicists from Nottingham and Alexander Balanov from Loughborough, who proposed a way to generate THz electromagnetic radiation using a high-frequency sound wave propagating through a semiconductor superlattice. The research is reported in the preprint arXiv:0803.2193 and is published in Physical Review B.

18 May: Loughborough physicists won a Royal Society/RFBR cost share grant for a joint project with group of Prof. Rakhmanov (Institute for Theoretical and Applied Electrodynamics, Russian Academy of Sciences). The project is focussed on nanoscale inhomogeneities in superconducting and magnetic structures. The UK team includes Prof. F. Kusmartsev (PI), Dr. J. Samson, Dr. S. Savel'ev, Dr. M. Everitt, Dr. B. Chesca, Dr. D. Gulevich, Dr. M. Forrester, Prof. E.I. Rashba, and Prof. D.I. Khomskii.

17 May: Sergey Savel'ev and his collaborators from Russia, Japan, and USA proposed a quantum field ratchet based on an asymmetric Josephson junction. The proposed ratchet demonstrates that the rectified voltage can change sign when quantum fluctuations start to dominate thermal noise. The work is published in [Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 190602 (2010)].

11 May: Both "Physics World" (IOP) and Russian popular science web resource "Membrana" featured a work of Alex Zagoskin done in collaboration with his colleagues from Japan, Usbekistan, and Russia. For the first time they observed a phenomenon known as "electromagnetically induced transparency" in a single "artificial" atom consisting of a superconducting loop. The research is reported in the preprint arXiv:1004.2306 and in the article in Physical Review Letters. The latter paper was also highligted in APS Physics Synopses.

8 April: Today Phil Sutton, Gerry Swallowe and Feo Kusmartsev have observed strong sun activity using a brand new departmental sun telescope. The physicists have clearly seen a new sun spot and several sun protuberances, which were spectacularly spread over the sun surface. This gives us hope that the period of extended calm is finally over, the activity of the sun will now rise, and, in near future, the staff and the students of the department will have a great opportunity to study many interesting sun phenomena. With this respect, a few new final year student projects will be offered in the next academic year.

1 April: A recent paper by PhD student Joanne Beanland and Prof. Sasha Alexandrov explaining unconventional gap structures and the tunnelling spectra of high temperature superconductors has been featured in a newsletter "PersT" issued 31 March 2010 by the Institute of Solid State Physics of the Russian Academy of Science.

29 March: The March issue of the Physics Department Newsletter is now out. If you have any contributions for the next issue, please send them to Vici Webster.

29 March: Video of XV Sir Nevill Mott lecture by Nobel Laureate Prof. Brian Josephson is available online. A multimedia presentation of the lecture can be found here. The Sir Nevill Mott Lecture Series is an annual lecture series run by the Department of Physics to be given by distinguished invited speakers.

8 March: A recent paper by Sergey Savel'ev and his collaborators from Japan, Italy and USA, in which they predict a new type of the stochastic resonance, has been featured in RIKEN Research Highlights. RIKEN is one of Japan's largest research organizations, with more than 3,000 scientists involved in leading research in centers and institutes across Japan and around the world.

2 March: An article featuring the Loughborough Physics Department appeared in the February issue of "Vancouver & Us", the Russian community newspaper of the recent Winter Olympic capital. Translation to English can be found here

25 Feb : One of the world's leading academic publishers "World Scientific" announced a new book from the series "Condensed Matter Theories" edited by Feo Kusmartsev . The book provides the latest update information on modern condensed matter theories and methods. Besides of well establishesd topics the book covers recent development in the field such as graphene, new phenomena in super-cooled gases and an extra-ordinary magnetoresistance. The main value of the book lies in the diversity of topics being covered comprehensively, which puts the book in a primary position in the modern market.

15 Feb : The Special Issue of "Advances in Condensed Matter Physics" on "Phonons and Electron Correlations in High-Temperature and Other Novel Superconductors" has been published under edition of Sasha Alexandrov (Lead Guest Editor), and his colleagues Carlo Di Castro (Italy), Igor Mazin (US), and Dragan Mihailovic (Slovenia).

"Advances in Condensed Matter Physics" is an open access journal distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original works are properly cited.

9 Feb : The departamental website now contains video materials. See section "About us -->Video".

2 Feb : The official video clip dedicated to the International Conference on Terahertz Radiation and Metamaterials "TeraMat09" is available for download from the departmental web site (~13 min, ~298Mb) (courtesy of Dr. Natalia Janson ).

2 Feb : Congratulations to Dr. Andrey Pototskyy on receiving support from the Pan-European Research Infrastructure "HPC-Europa2" for using its high-performance computing facilities. In collaboration with Dr. S. Saveliev and Prof. F. Marchesoni, Dr. A. Pototskyy currently works on innovative design of noise-driven graphine devices, which requires extensive computer calculations.

27 Jan: An extra afternoon visit for prospective students will be organized on 10 March 2010. A schedule of other events can be found here

21 Jan: Congratulations to Dr. S. Saveliev and Prof. F. Kusmartsev on receiving support (£10000) from Faculty of Science to organise International Conference on Econophysics and Summer School on the teaching Enterprise for a broad audience.

15 Jan: Dr. S. Saveliev and collaborators predict a new type of the stochastic resonance which does not require usual spatial potential [Phys. Rev. Lett 104, 020601 (2010)]. Now Mr R. Glavey (MSc student), Dr. S. Saveliev and Dr. M. Gaifullin work on an experimental realization of this general phenomenon in superconducting vortex devices. More details can be found here.

13 Jan: Joanne Beanland has published her first Physical Review Letter in collaboration with Prof. Sasha Alexandrov (his 24th PRL) explaining unconventional gap structures and the tunnelling spectra of high temperature superconductors which have been a most controversial and hot issue in the field http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.104.026401)

7 Jan: The experimentalists from Japan in collaboration with Dr. Alexandre Zagoskin investigated the scattering of electromagnetic waves by a single artificial atom. In order to do this, a superconducting flux qubit - a tiny loop of superconductor in which electric current can flow in the opposite directions simultaneously - was placed in an open transmission line at a temperature close to the absolute zero. As expected from theory - but never seen before - this "atom" interacted with the electromagnetic wave in the transmission line exactly as a usual, Nature-made atom would interact with light in the open space [see figure]. An important - also expected - difference is, the atom-field interaction was much stronger. This opens a way to build out of such "atoms" larger structures - quantum metamaterials recently proposed in Rakhmanov, Zagoskin, Saveliev and Nori [Phys. Rev. B 77, 144507 (2008)]. The results are published in Science 327, 840 (2010)

6 Jan: The work of Dr. Joseph Betouras and his co-author showed that the phase transition of a three-dimensional dimer model from a columnar state to the so-called Coulomb state has a multicritical point. The researchers also identified a critical line. The paper is published in Physical Review Letters 104, 045701 (2010).

4 Jan: A book of Dr. Alexander Balanov and his collaborators from Loughborough, Saratov and Lyngby [A.G. Balanov, N.B. Janson, D.E. Postnov, and O.Sosnovtseva, "Synchronization: from simple to complex", Springer 2009] was reviewed in UK Nonlinear News (Issue 57).

2009

1 Dec: The December issue of the Physics Department Newsletter is now out. If you have any contributions for the next issue, please send them to Vici Webster.

23 Nov:Loughborough physicists organize an international conference devoted to terahertz radiation and metamaterials (TeraMat09), which will take place in The Centro de Ciencias de Benasque Pedro Pascua (Spain) Dec 15 - Dec 22 2009 and collect about 50 scientists from around the world. The conference is supported by ESF Programme: Arrays of Quantum Dots and Josephson Junctions.

23 Nov:A work of Dr. Sergey Savel'ev and his collaborators form Bath was featured on the cover page of NANOTECHNOLOGY Vol 20, N48. The paper can be found here.

20 Nov: Researches from Loughborough in collaboration with scientists from Nottingham, Berlin and Oulu suggested two novel methods for generation of THz radiation, which suppose the use of a semiconductor superlattice in an electric and a tilted magnetic fields. The results were published in Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 117401 (2009) and Phys. Rev. B 80, 205318 (2009)

17 Nov: Dr Natalia Alexeeva (University of Oulu, Finland) is visiting Loughborough and Nottingham for 3 months starting mid November as holder of an exchange grant of European Science Foundation. The aim of her visit is collaboartion with UK scientists in research areas related to Sub-THz radiation and superlattices.

17 Nov: Congratulations to Professor Sasha Alexandrov on award of a grant from the The Leverhulme Trust for collaboration with Professor Maxim Yu. Kagan (Kapitza Institute for Physical Problems) focused on high-temperature superconductivity, Bose-liquids, CMR and phase separation.

11 Nov: Congratulations to Professor Sasha Alexandrov on award of a grant from the Royal Society for collaboration with Professor Dragan Mihailovic (Slovenia) on ultrafast pump-probe spectroscopy of complex matter.

5 Nov: New book of Prof. Sasha Alexandrov "Advances in Polaron Physics" (with J. T. Devreese) was published by Springer. This book reviews some recent developments in the field of polarons, starting with the basics and covering a number of active directions of research. The direct link to the book homepage: http://www.springer.com/materials/book/978-3-642-01895-4

3 Nov: The 16" Meade reflecting telescope has now been installed together with its pier mount in the departments observatory.The on board GPS positioning system will allow the telescope to track objects, using the computer star map software. The rotating observatory dome will follow the track of the telescope in order for long time lapse imaging not to be interrupted. The computer and software are in the process of being commissioned to suit the type of observations required for the students who will be using it as part of their Physics and Cosmology course. With the present set up observations of the solar system, including asteroids can be made. In order to image distant galaxies and other low light objects some further imaging and aligning equipment has been purchased and will be installed in the near future.

13 July: The long awaited Physics Department observatory project is finally coming to fruition. The accompanying pictures show the construction of the observatory by departmental technical staff and a willing band of enthusiastic postgraduates.

24 June: Both Physics World and Nanotechweb (IOP) have featured a recent paper by a group of researchers from Bath and Dr. Sergey Savel'ev (Loughborough). The authors reported the fabrication of new type of nano-devices, namely shuttle junctions, consisting of a gold nanoparticle embedded within the gap between two gold electrodes and attached to them through a monolayer of molecular "springs". Such devices should allow single electrons to be transferred at very high rates of 1-100 GHz. More details could be found here.

17 June: Editorial board of Reports on Progress in Physics thanked Professor Sasha Alexandrov for supporting their journal, and announced that Sasha's article, "Fro"hlich polaron and bipolaron: recent developments", in Reports on Progress in Physics, Vol 72, 066501 (2009), has been downloaded 250 times in 19 days from the date of publication. To put this into context, across all IOP journals 10% of articles were accessed over 250 times this quarter.
 
The direct link to the article is:
http://stacks.iop.org/0034-4885/72/066501

17 June: Prof. Phillips obituary in The Times (17 June 2009)

2 June: It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Professor Nicholas Phillips. Nick was one of the founder members of the Physics Department at Loughborough, having been appointed as a lecturer in 1965. After a very successful research career in many areas of optics, but especially in the field of display holograms, Nick was promoted to Professor of Applied Optics in 1991. He left Loughborough in 1993 to join De Montfort University, Leicester, where he was appointed as Professor of Imaging Science. He was awarded the title of Loughborough University Emeritus Professor in 1994. Nick always had a great enthusiasm for new ideas and continued to be active in research for the remainder of his life. Everyone he knew will remember him with great affection.

Nick's funeral will be held at Loughborough Crematorium at 4.15 pm next Monday 8th June. People may send flowers if they wish, or donations to:

Parkinsons Disease Society
c/o Swanns Funeral Services
4 Bridge Street
Loughborough
LE11 1NQ
Telephone 01509 263032

26 May: Congratulations to Hanaa Hassan (PhD student supervised by Feo Kusmartsev) on receiving distinguished achievement award for a contribuition to the 3rd Saudi International Conference (SIC 2009) .

10 Apr: Congratulations to Dr Sergey Savel'ev on receiving a Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel award for collaboration with Prof Peter Hänggi (Augsburg) on nano-devices powered and controlled by noise.

10 Apr: Congratulations to Professor Sasha Alexandrov on an EPSRC grant for collaboration with Brookhaven National Laboratory on novel superconductors to determine the strength of the electron-phonon interaction.

2 Apr: The third issue of the Physics Department Newsletter is now out. If you have any contributions for the next issue, please send them to Vicky Webster.

11 Feb: Congratulations to Professor Daniel Khomskii on his election as Fellow of the American Physical Society for "important contributions to the theory of strongly correlated electron systems, especially the study of orbital ordering".

2008

19 Dec: Congratulations to Dr Gerry Swallowe, together with colleagues Mo Song (Materials) and Ian Ashcroft and Vadim Silberschmidt (Wolfson School) and collaborators in Cambridge, for the award by EPRSC of a grant of £750,000 for "Enhancing Damage Tolerance through Materials Science".

8 Dec: The second issue of the Physics Department Newsletter is now out. If you have any contributions for the next issue, please send them to Vicky Webster.

21 Nov: Congratulations to Professor Sasha Alexandrov on his election as Fellow of the American Physical Society for "important and broad-ranging contributions to the theory of correlated electron systems".

6 Oct: The inaugural issue of the Physics Department Newsletter has now been published. If you have any contributions for the next issue, please send them to Vicky Webster.

6 Oct: There will be a reunion and dinner for all Physics alumni on Saturday, 13 June 2009. We will be sending out invitations in the near future. Please send your contact details to Vici Webster if you are interested.

11 Sept: 98% of the Department's finalists responding to the 2008 National Student Survey were satisfied with the quality of the course. This is the highest satisfaction rate of any Physics department in the UK. For further information see the press release and the National Student Survey data.

15 Apr: Prof Sasha Alexandrov joins editorial board of Advances in Condensed Matter Physics.

31 Mar: Dr Viktor Kabanov to visit from 20 to 30 April to work on Quantum Magnetic Oscillations in Nanowires with Prof Sasha Alexandrov and Dr Iorwerth Thomas.

17 Mar: Congratulations to Dr Viktor Kabanov on the award of the 2007 Zois prize of the Slovenian Government in Science and Technology for his work on mesoscopic phase separation in high-temperature superconductors and on novel quantum oscillations in nanowires. Prize announcement (in Slovenian).

10 Mar: Congratulations to Dr Sergey Savel'ev, Reader in Josephson Physics, on the award of the Japanese MEXT President's Award for Young Scientists, given to young researchers having outstanding abilities in science. Pictures of the presentation

29 Feb: A symposium in honour of Rutherford Professor Emmanuel Rashba's 80th birthday will take place at Harvard.

2007

21 Dec: The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science is to support a programme of exchange visits for researchers in Loughborough and Sendai.

30 Aug: Loughborough University has founded the Rutherford Professorship, to be awarded to outstanding scientists in commemoration of the scientific achievements of Lord Rutherford. The award is an international prize for distinguished work in experimental or theoretical condensed matter physics. The first recipient, Emmanuel Rashba, will be appointed Rutherford Professor in Spintronics at a ceremony to take place on 20 September (see report). The Rashba effect and Rashba resonance now form the foundation of spintronics, a novel technology that exploits magnetic as well as electrical properties of electrons and is responsible for the rapid growth of hard disk capacity.

The official ceremony, including a lecture on spintronics by Professor Rashba, will take place at 5 pm on Thursday 20 September 2007 in room W0.03, followed by a reception in room W2.19 in the Department of Physics. These events are open to all.

22 Aug: EPSRC has awarded a grant of £360K to Professor Feo V Kusmartsev, Dr Sergei Saveliev and V Antonov to work on Semiconducting and Superconducting Nano-Devices to control Terahertz Radiation.

26 Jun: What is 2plus2? Loughborough University, in partnership with the Open University, is offering a new route to a Physics degree. Students will study two years part time with the Open University and two years at Loughborough. More details.

14 Jun: Equipment supported by a £1.2M HEFCE Capital Funding grant for Manufacture and Characterisation at the Nanoscale to Physics, IPTME and the Wolfson School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering was demonstrated at an event today. This includes a physical vapour deposition system for thin film growth and equipment for transport measurements on superconducting devices at very low temperatures and high magnetic fields, both housed within Physics, and an electron/ion beam microscope and surface profilometry equipment.

18 May: Dr Marat Gaifullin from the National Institute for Material Science, Japan, will visit the department from 15 June to 10 September, 2007 to work on the project Fluxonic devices for terahertz radiation, detectors and sensors with Prof F Kusmartsev and D Gulevich, funded by the Royal Society.

30 Mar: Congratulations to Dr Dmitry Gulevich on the award of a three-year EPSRC Advanced Postdoctoral Research Fellowship on Fluxon based superconducting electronics.

21 Mar: Professor Viktor Kabanov (Slovenia) is visiting the Department from 2 to 12 April to work on Quantum Magnetic Oscillations in Nanowires with Prof Sasha Alexandrov and Dr Iorwerth Thomas in the Quantum Structures and Phase Transitions group.

2006

1 Dec: New lecturer, Dmitry Gulevich, and Professor F V Kusmartsev have received a grant of £100K from the Enterprise Fund, to work on the development of the new superconducting technology "Fluxonic devices". The duration of the grant is from 1 Nov 2006 to 31 Jan 2009.

23 Aug: NEWSFLASH — 2006 NATIONAL STUDENT SURVEY — Physical sciences at Loughborough is rated top in all categories for the subject in the UK. See here for details.

11 Aug: The Royal Society has awarded a grant for Dr Bahram Yavidov to visit Prof Sasha Alexandrov for the period 5 Sept to 28 Nov to collaborate on polaronic transport through molecular nanowires.

25 May: Congratulations to Dr Sergey Saveliev on the award of a five-year EPSRC Advanced Research Fellowship.

5 May: Loughborough Students Physics web site now live, including photos of recent events such as student-staff paintballing.

6 Apr: Welcome to Dr Sergey Saveliev, Lecturer in Physics.

3 Mar: In the annual interdepartmental football tournament, 2 March 2006, Physics won 1:0 against the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences. The goal scorer was PhD student, Alex Seaton. Congratulations to all! See photo.

1 Mar: Welcome to Prof Daniel Khomskii, Professor of Novel Materials and Leverhulme Professor in the Department. Welcome also to Dr Iorwerth Thomas, postdoctoral RA on Quantum Magnetic Oscillations in Nanowires in the Quantum Structures and Phase Transitions group.

21 Feb: Prof Sasha Alexandrov has been awarded a grant from the European Science Foundation, with additional support from EPSRC, to organise a workshop in Cambridge on "Mott’s Physics in Nanowires and Quantum Dots" this summer.

2 Feb: Welcome to Dr Boris Chesca, Lecturer in Physics

2005

15 Nov:Congratulations to postgraduate student Dmitry Gulevich for winning third prize in the Cavendish Medal competition for outstanding research by young physicists. He presented a poster on his work "The Hurricanes of the Josephson Rings" at the SET for Britain Reception in the House of Commons. Photo and News release

22 Sept: Number 1 in the country: official National Student Survey of finalists gives Physical Science at Loughborough (comprising courses offered by Physics and Chemistry) the highest score of any subject at any university in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. See here for details.

21 Sept: Alexei Vagov is visiting the Condensed Matter Theory and Quantum Information group for three months.

18 Jun: The Institute of Physics has introduced a bursary scheme to encourage more students to study physics at university. Our department has been allocated a number of these bursaries, which are worth £1000 a year for the duration of the programme. UK and Irish nationals who firmly accept an offer of a place on one of our programmes which has been accredited by the Institute of Physics will be considered for one of these IoP bursaries. Our current programmes recently received renewed accreditation by the Institute of Physics for the period 2004-9; confirmation for BSc Physics and Management, MPhys Engineering Physics and MPhys Physics and Mathematics is expected. Loughborough University is offering further bursaries (means-tested) and merit scholarships for students entering in 2006 and later.

26 May: Photos of the departmental staff-student barbecue, held on a warm sunny evening.

18 May: Final-year Physics student Steve Jackson is finalist in LTSN Physical sciences essay competition for his essay on the learning experience at Loughborough.

10 May: Professor Dr Rolando Cardenas Ortiz from St. Clara, Cuba has arrived to work with Professor Feo Kusmartsev on the project Origin of Life in the Universe. The visit is funded by a grant from the Royal Society.

3 May: Welcome to Dr James Hague, postdoctoral RA on the project Polaron Dynamics and Isotope Effects in Complex Oxides.

13 Apr: Professor Sergei Bulgadaev from the Landau Institute, Moscow, is visiting the Department for three months to work on the problem of tunnelling of Josephson vortices. The visit is supported by ESF network programme: Arrays of Quantum Dots and Josephson Junctions. Professor Kliment Kugel from the Institute of High Temperatures, Moscow. and Professor Sergei Matveenko from the Landau Institute, Moscow, are visiting the Department for three months as Royal Society Visiting Fellows for research collaboration with Professor Kusmartsev and the Condensed Matter Theory and Quantum Information group.

18 Mar: Prof Sasha Alexandrov (PI) and Dr John Samson (CI) have been awarded a grant of £172,470 by EPSRC for the study of Polaron Dynamics and Isotope Effects in Complex Oxides in collaboration with Hewlett-Packard Laboratories (Corvallis and Palo Alto).

16 Mar: Prof Emmanuel Rashba gave the eleventh annual Sir Nevill Mott lecture on Impact of Nevill Mott’s Research on the Development of Solid State Physics: A Personal Perspective. He described how much of his own work was inspired by Sir Nevill Mott's ideas. See photos.

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