 Look Who’s at the Lab: Jan Musfeldt
June 2012
In Look Who’s at the Lab, we profile some of the hundreds of scientists who visit our lab every year.
Janice Musfeldt.
Photo credit: Larry Gordon
Title: Professor of physical & materials chemistry, University of Tennessee at Knoxville
MagLab user since: 1995
Number of visits to the lab: Frequent user since 1995
Dates of most recent experiment:
April 2012
Distance traveled to the MagLab: About 500 miles
Research Interests:
Optical properties of novel electronic and magnetic materials
Web site: http://web.utk.edu/~musfeldt/
Email: musfeldt@utk.edu
Title: “Spectroscopic investigations of complex electronic and magnetic materials.”
During this trip, Musfeldt and her team of graduate students used magnetic field to drive a quantum critical transition and measured how the lattice responds to the change in magnetic state.
Other participants in this run:
Graduate students Tatiana Brinzari, Brian Holinsworth, and Ken O’Neal; MagLab senior investigator Zhiqiang Li; collaborator Richard Tung
Facility: Resistive Magnet Wing, lab-cell 8
Equipment: 35 tesla Bruker IFS-66V
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Best thing about working at the lab:
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A:
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“The opportunity to interact with top scientists and access unique facilities.” |
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What do you miss most about home when you’re here?
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“My family. My husband keeps himself busy, but my mom really misses me.”
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What’s the most unscientific thing about you?
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A:
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“I love to travel because it gives me a chance to hike, dive, see interesting people, animals and architecture, and learn about ancient history and cultures.”
Her favorite travel destination: Africa.
“On our last trip to Zambia and Botswana, we saw eight lions on a giraffe kill, cheetah stalking gazelle and being thwarted by four zebras, and an ostrich with eight little babies running around. A walking safari one afternoon even brought us within 12 meters of a white-lipped rhino!
“We dive less than we used to, but our favorite sites are probably Ras Mohammad reef off the Sinai and Mandela reef off Zanzibar. The colored fish and coral are amazing!”
Ras Mohammad is a national park and protected marine reserve in Egypt and has more than 220 species of coral and 1,000 species of fish.
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What are you reading now?
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She‘s delving into a nonfiction book that‘s been heavily praised by reviewers at The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post and elsewhere: “This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly” by economists Carman Reinhart and Ken Rogoff. Published in late 2009, it has been included on several “Best Financial Reads” lists, including USA Today’s “Year‘s Best Business Books to Make Sense of Financial Crisis.”
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Complete this sentence: We could make great stries in science if we could just figure out ______________.
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“how to strengthen cross-disciplinary collaboration.”
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What advice would you give someone just starting out in your field?
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“Try to do something really new rather than pursuing simple extensions of your graduate or postdoctoral research interests.”
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What is your favorite quote?
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“I usually make up my own quotes!”
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What keeps you awake at night?
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“Nearly everything!”
When it comes to her late-night ruminations regarding experiments, she added, “I wonder if we have thought of everything, whether our plan is a good one, what we will find and if we well get power on schedule — at 4:30 p.m. — or not.”
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What is it that fascinates you about magnetic materials and keeps you coming back?
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“The diversity. I love the variety of high-field science at the Magnet Lab. My program on the spectroscopic properties of novel materials adds to this diversity by probing the interplay between charge, structure, and magnetism away from the DC limit. I’m always ready for a surprise, and magnetic materials deliver!”
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Parting thoughts on science today:
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“There still much to discover, so we have to get busy!”
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- Magnetochromism in hematite: chameleonic rust, P. Chen, N. Lee, S. McGill, S. W. Cheong, and J. L. Musfeldt, Phys. Rev. B., 85, 174413 (2012)
- Spin spiral quenching in Nd3+-substituted BiFeO3, P. Chen, O. Gunaydin-Sen, W. J. Ren, Z. Qin, T. V. Brinzari, S. McGill, S. W. Cheong, and J. L. Musfeldt, Phys. Rev. B (submitted).
- Manipulating the singlet-triplet equilibrium in organic biradical materials, O. Gunaydinn-Sen, J. Fosso-Tande, P. Chen, J. L. White, T. L. Allen, J. Cherian, and T. Tokumoto, P. M. Lahti, S. McGill, R. J. Harrison, and J. L. Musfeldt, J. Chem. Phys. 135, 241101 (2011).
- Magneto-infrared effects in magnetically frustrated Co3V2O8, L. I. Vergara, J. Cao, L. C. Tung, N. Rogado, F. Yen, Y. Q. Wang, R. J. Cava, B. Lorenz, Y. J. Wang, and J. L. Musfeldt, Phys. Rev. B. 81, 012403 (2010).
- Charge-spin coupling in a quantum Heisenberg spin ladder, J. L. White, S. A. Crooker, J. Singleton, R. D. McDonald, C. Lee, O. Gunaydin-Sen, L. C. Tung, Y. J. Wang, H. M. Christen, M. M. Turnbull, C. P. Landee, M. H. Whangbo, and J. L. Musfeldt, Phys. Rev. B. 81, 052407 (2010).
- Spin-lattice interactions through the quantum critical transition in Cu(pyz)(NO3)2, O. Gunaydin-Sen, C. Lee, L. C. Tung, P. Chen, M. M. Turnbull, C. P. Landee, Y. J. Wang, M.H. Whangbo, and J. L. Musfeldt, Phys. Rev. B. 81, 104307 (2010).
- Optical properties and magnetochromism in multiferroic BiFeO3, X. S. Xu, T. V. Brinzari, S. Lee, Y. H. Chu, L. W. Martin, A. Kumar, S. McGill, R. C. Rai, R. Ramesh, V. Gopalan, S. Cheong, and J. L. Musfeldt, Phys. Rev. B. 79, 134425 (2009).
- Magnetoelastic interactions in a two-dimensional quantum antiferromagnet, J. L. Musfeldt, L. I. Vergara, T. V. Brinzari, L. C. Tung, Y. J. Wang, J. A. Schlueter, J. L. Manson, C. Sun, and M. H. Whangbo, Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 157401 (2009).
- Absence of spin liquid behavior in Nd3Ga5SiO14 using magneto-optical spectroscopy, X. S. Xu, T. V. Brinzari, S. McGill, H. D. Zhou, C. R. Wiebe, and J. L. Musfeldt, Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 267402 (2009).
- Spin-lattice interactions mediated by magnetic field, J. Cao, L. I. Vergara, J. L. Musfeldt, A. P. Litcinchuk, Y. J. Wang, S. Park, S. W. Cheong, Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 177205 (2008).
- Charge order, dynamics, and magneto-structural transition in LuFe2O4, X. S. Xu, M. Angst, T. V. Brinzari, R. P. Herman, J. L. Musfeldt, A. D. Christianson, D. Mandrus, B. C. Sales, S. McGill, J. W. Kim, and Z. Islam, Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 227602 (2008).
Date posted: June 1, 2012
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