{"id":918,"date":"2022-10-07T21:25:29","date_gmt":"2022-10-07T21:25:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpdev.hmc.edu\/physics\/?page_id=918"},"modified":"2024-07-01T08:17:29","modified_gmt":"2024-07-01T15:17:29","slug":"breznay","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/physics\/faculty-staff\/breznay\/","title":{"rendered":"Nicholas P. Breznay"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Associate Professor of Physics<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Early in our careers we learn that electrons are antisocial \u2013 they never want to be in the same place at the same time, and their mutual interactions can often be ignored, especially when considering just a few (or a few hundred). But as you crowd more and more into the same space, electrons begin to talk to one another; in solid materials, they sometimes decide to spontaneously organize, condense, and rearrange themselves\u2014collectively assembling into patterns and phases that we never would have predicted from a \u201cone-electron\u201d picture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our lab studies the properties and applications of these quantum materials, where the tremendous number (1023<\/sup>) of electrons, and their collective interactions, leads to new and fascinating behavior. These electronic states of matter can have familiar classical analogs\u2014noninteracting gas, strongly interacting \u201cFermi\u201d liquid, or crystalline solid\u2014but they can also be fundamentally quantum-mechanical states that have no classical analog. We investigate these exotic states of matter\u2014superconductors, spin-liquid magnets, charge-ordered oxides, and amorphous Anderson insulators\u2014using hands-on low-temperature experiments with thin film and bulk crystal samples. Since thermal energy can disrupt fragile quantum states, we cool the samples to temperatures below 1 kelvin, and examine how their electrons respond to intense electromagnetic fields.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Recent Publications<\/h2>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t \t\t
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Magnon-spinon dichotomy in the Kitaev hyperhoneycomb \u2212Li2\u2062IrO3<\/a><\/h3>\n

Alejandro Ruiz, Nicholas P. Breznay*, Mengqun Li, Ioannis Rousochatzakis, Anthony Allen, Isaac Zinda, Vikram Nagarajan, Gilbert Lopez, Zahirul Islam, Mary […]<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/article>\n

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Competition between magnetic order and charge localization in Na2\u2062IrO3 thin crystal devices<\/a><\/h3>\n

Josue Rodriguez, Gilbert Lopez, Francisco Ramirez, Nicholas P. Breznay*, Robert Kealhofer, Vikram Nagarajan, Drew Latzke, Samantha Wilson, Naomy Marrufo, Peter […]<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/article>\n

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High-temperature magnetic anomaly in the Kitaev hyperhoneycomb compound \u2212Li2\u2062IrO3<\/a><\/h3>\n

Alejandro Ruiz, Vikram Nagarajan, Mayia Vranas, Gilbert Lopez, Gregory T. McCandless, Itamar Kimchi, Julia Y. Chan, Nicholas P. Breznay*, Alex […]<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/article>\n \t\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Research<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Learn more about my research lab<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Associate Professor of Physics Early in our careers we learn that electrons are antisocial \u2013 they never want to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":861,"parent":860,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-918","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=918"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6271,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/918\/revisions\/6271"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/860"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}