PhD studentships in Physics - Electromagnetic Materials

Following from our success in the recent RAE2008 where we were ranked 8th in the UK for world leading and internationally excellent research, we are now in a position to offer three of the following four PhD studentships for start in October 2009.

1. TeraHertz (THz) spectroscopy will be used to investigate spin waves (magnons) in 2 and 3 dimensional magnonic crystals, and to explore whether magnonic crystals can be used to confine, guide and manipulate radiation in THz frequency devices.
2. Optical pump-probe spectroscopy will be used to uncover the ultrafast processes underlying the reversible phase transition between amorphous and crystalline states that is used in optical disks (CD, DVD) and random access memory chips.
3. Plasmonic structures may be used to control light at the nanoscale. This project will explore whether gain can be introduced so as to overcome the bottleneck issue of loss in metallic plasmonics structures.
4. A new class of tunable electromagnetic metamaterial surfaces for filtering, absorbing, beam steering and channeling of microwave radiation will be designed using advanced computer modelling, constructed and characterised.

The closing date is Friday 17 April 2009 - full details are available here.