Dynamics of condensed matter systems

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My research concentrates primarily on the time evolution of microstructures formed under nonequilibrium conditions and is heavily based on the use of x-ray diffraction techniques. Microstructures are central to the physical and mechanical properties of most materials. Not only failure rates, but many other important properties including tensile strength, chemical reactivity and magnetic coercivity, depend crucially on this morphology. The typical length scales of these structures is micrometers. Many of the advanced materials often denoted as "modern space age" materials get their properties from tailoring their microstructure by careful and sophisticated processing techniques. Furthermore, it is an important fundamental problem in physics to understand both how such microstructures arise and how to characterize them. Disordered and nonequilibrium systems span the range of materials including binary alloys (Ni3Al used for jet turbines) to directionally solidifying crystals (snowflakes) and to soft materials (plastic and rubber). The nature of coherence and correlations in these systems is still not fully understood. Techniques such as transmission electron microscopy and scanning probe microscopy allow scientists to study these systems, but real-time in-situ x-ray measurements, i.e. time resolved scattering, allow measurements of the microstructure under conditions similar to conventional processing and therefore are ideally suited for these studies.