HFML welcomes new Radboud Excellence Initiative Felllow

Experimental physicist Sven Badoux, a former Marie Curie Fellow at University of Bristol and EMFL Prize winner, has been awarded a two-year fully funded Radboud Excellence Initiative Fellowship to unravel the link between superconductivity and different electronic phases in cuprate materials in order to gain a better understanding of how the current high temperature superconductors work.

“High temperature superconductivity is one of the biggest unsolved mystery of condensed matter physics. The most promising materials are copper oxides called ‘cuprates’, which superconduct at the highest temperature at ambient pressure. The problem in cuprate superconductors is that many phases can co-exist or could be entangled with each other and so it is difficult to identify which phase is causing the superconductivity. This makes particularly difficult to identify the origin of superconductivity. Some of these phases such as the so-called charge density wave, the mysterious ‘pseudogap’ phase or nematicity are still not well understood.”

“To disentangle, explore and understand these different phases of matter I will develop and use cutting-edge technique like hydrostatic and uniaxial pressure, very high magnetic fields and low temperature on very small samples. These techniques together, will be used to tune the different phase in new ways going beyond what has been previously achieved, in order to uncover the secrets of these fascinating materials.”

Radboud Excellence Initiative Fellowship

The Radboud Excellence Initiative Fellowship  was created with the dual purpose of bringing the most exceptional talents from every academic field to Radboud University while strengthening international bonds between universities worldwide. Fellows conduct their research projects in cutting-edge research teams in cooperation with or under supervision of their nominator, who in Sven’s case, is prof. Nigel Hussey.