It’s the end of the academic year in Cambridge, and we would like to congratulate two of our future PhD students, Claire Nichols and Roberts Blukis, on their outstanding exam performances. Both obtained 1st class marks in their finals and will be starting their PhD projects in October 2014. Pats on the back all round.
A quick note to welcome post doc Josh Einsle to the NPM group. Josh will be acting as our microscopy specialist. Josh’s project is jointly supervised by Prof. Paul Midgley, head of the electron microscopy group in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy and expert in tomography. Josh will be working extensively with both our groups to pioneer methods of 3D characterisation of natural magnetic materials, as well as continuing our long-term interest in magnetic imaging using electron holography.
Welcome to the team.
Preparations are well underway for our upcoming trip to the biennial Institute for Rock Magnetism meeting in Santa Fe. This meeting is one of the most productive in the rock magnetism calendar – a focussed gathering of academics, post docs and students all working on cutting edge aspects of rock magnetism. This year the meeting has been extended for one day to accommodate a workshop on FORC diagrams, aimed at bringing new users up to speed with the latest developments in FORC processing and analysis. Nanopaleomagnetism will be there giving invited talks on two central aspects of the NPM project:
“Magnetic microscopy: seeing is believing.”
and
“The philosophy of FORCs: what to do, how to do it and why.”
The first talk will highlight the importance of linking magnetic microscopy observations to the underlying physical state of a sample via micromagnetic simulations, and will include a practical demonstration of our image simulation code ATHLETICS that enables a range of magnetic microscopy images to be simulated (including electron holography, Lorentz microscopy, magnetic force microscopy, X-ray photo emission electron microscopy and scanning magnetic microscopy).
The second talk provides an introduction and overview of FORC diagrams, and will include a practical demonstration of some of the latest features of FORCinel including a new method for isolating the central ridge signal associated with non-interacting single domain particles. The talk will also provide a sneak peak of FORCulator – a flexible tool for simulating FORC diagrams.
The talks and latest software versions of FORCinel and ATHLETICS will be placed online prior to the meeting, so watch this space!
Rich