I completed a DPhil in condensed matter physics at Oxford University in 2011. (‘DPhil’ is what Oxford calls a PhD.) I used a technique called muon-spin relaxation, which fires particles called muons into various different kinds of material, to understand more about their properties. I looked specifically at magnetism and superconductivity, focussing on novel magnetic materials such as molecular magnets.
You can find an accessible summary of my DPhil in three parts: read about muons, magnetism and µSR to get an overview of what I got up to, and how it worked. I have since changed fields to computational biology, though I often still talk about physics, and will happily show you my maglev train!
Links
MµCalc
MµCalc is the software I wrote during my DPhil, a Python-based dipole field simulator designed for computation of sample properties based on muon stopping sites, including the use of a novel Bayesian algorithm which I developed. It is still in active use by my old group in Oxford and in several other groups around the world. It is fully open-source, so if you would like to use it or build upon it, check it out on GitHub!
Other tools
- SymGen, a simple Web application created to generate multiplication tables for groups of symmetry elements.
- FµFcalc, for interchanging bond lengths and oscillation frequencies in symmetric linear FµF.
Posters and presentations
- A systematic study of a family of molecular magnets using muon-spin relaxation, my poster from ICMM2010, Beijing, China.
- The two-dimensional Heisenberg antiferromagnet CuF2(H2O)2(pyz) studied with muon spin rotation, my poster from the µSR08 conference in Tsukuba, Japan.
- Exploring a family of molecular magnets with muons, my third-year talk on my research.