Lauren Keyes Featured in CSULB Physics Colloquium

Published January 2, 2024

On December 15, 2023, the CSULB PREM and Physics and Astronomy Department hosted Lauren Keyes for a Condensed Matter Seminar at 11:00am in HSCI-105. Lauren is a 5th year Ph.D. student in the Physics Department and the Center for Emergent Materials at The Ohio State University working on theoretical condensed matter physics research with Ph.D. advisor, Prof. Mohit Randeria.

Lauren gave a very nice talk describing a full unified theory of electric transport in Skyrmion materials. These materials host non-trivial topological magnetic textures related to high-energy theoretical work done in the 1960s by physicist Tony Skyrme.  

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Lauren Keyes presentation
Lauren Keyes discussion k-space Berry curvature in her talk about a unified theory of electric transport in Skyrmion materials.

 

Abstract

Skyrmions are topological magnetic textures which have garnered great interest over the last decade due to their fundamental properties and possible technological applications. This pedagogical talk begins with a description of skyrmions and the method by which they are electrically detected, known as the topological Hall effect. Experimentally, this signal is analyzed as the sum of three parts: an "ordinary" term arising from the external magnetic field, an "anomalous" term arising from the k-space Berry curvature, and a "topological" term from the real-space Berry curvature. I present a semiclassical theory which provides understanding of the simultaneous effects of k- space and real-space Berry curvatures on electronic transport. I find that the ordinary, anomalous, and topological Hall effects take a simple, unified form.

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Berry curvature
Fig. Berry curvature and magnetization dependencies for leading order contributions to the thermoelectric conductivity, Seebeck, and Nernst effects.

Bio Sketch

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Lauren Keyes

Lauren is the President of the Society for Women in Physics (SWiP) at OSU. She is currently a fifth-year Physics Ph.D. student in the Randeria Group at OSU.