From the basis of ab initio electronic structure calculations which include the effects of thermally excited magnetic fluctuations, we predict Mn-stabilized cubic zirconia to be ferromagnetic above 500 K. We find this material, which is well known both as an imitation diamond and as a catalyst, to be half-metallic with the majority and minority spin Mn impurity states lying in zirconia's wide g...

The electromagnetic parameters of a composite material can depend on the environment in which the material is cured. Nondestructive monitoring of composite materials during curing offers a means of assessing whether or not the final product will function as specified. Microwave measurements of complex permittivity and permeability have been made on a polyurea/polyurethane hybrid containing ferr...

Phylogenetically diverse organisms, including some insects, are able to detect and respond to magnetic fields comparable to the Earth's magnetic field. Because of their tremendous importance to public health, mosquitoes were tested for the presence of remanent ferromagnetic material indicative of a biological compass and also tested for behavioral responses to magnetic fields. Using a supercond...

We report on a systematic study of optical properties of (Ga,Mn)As epilayers spanning the wide range of accessible Mn(Ga) dopings. The material synthesis was optimized for each nominal Mn doping in order to obtain films which are as close as possible to uniform uncompensated (Ga,Mn)As mixed crystals. We observe a broad maximum in the mid-infrared absorption spectra whose position exhibits a pre...

Multiferroic composite materials, consisting of coupled ferromagnetic and piezoelectric phases, are of great importance in the drive towards creating faster, smaller and more energy efficient devices for information and communications technologies. Such devices require thin ferromagnetic films with large magnetostriction and narrow microwave resonance linewidths. Both properties are often degra...

The stochastic Galerkin and stochastic collocation method are two state-of-the-art methods for solving partial differential equations (PDE) containing random coefficients. While the latter method, which is based on sampling, can straightforwardly be applied to nonlinear stochastic PDEs, this is nontrivial for the stochastic Galerkin method and approximations are required. In this paper, both me...

We observe a dependence of the damping of a confined mode of precessing ferromagnetic magnetization on the size of the mode. The micron-scale mode is created within an extended, unpatterned yttrium iron garnet film by means of the intense local dipolar field of a micromagnetic tip. We find that the damping of the confined mode scales like the surface-to-volume ratio of the mode, indicating an i...

Phase coexistence phenomena have been intensively studied in strongly correlated materials where several ordered states simultaneously occur or compete. Material properties critically depend on external parameters and boundary conditions, where tiny changes result in qualitatively different ground states. However, up to date, phase coexistence phenomena have exclusively been reported for comple...

Given the paucity of single phase multiferroic materials (with large ferromagnetic moment), composite systems seem an attractive solution to realize magnetoelectric coupling between ferromagnetic and ferroelectric order parameters. Despite having antiferromagnetic order, BiFeO3 (BFO) has nevertheless been a key material due to excellent ferroelectric properties at room temperature. We studied a...

Interfacial spin-orbit torques (SOTs) enable the manipulation of the magnetization through in-plane charge currents, which has drawn increasing attention for spintronic applications. The search for material systems providing efficient SOTs, has been focused on polycrystalline ferromagnetic metal/non-magnetic metal bilayers. In these systems, currents flowing in the non-magnetic layer generate-d...