MLAB at UTAH

Welcome to MLAB!

We are an experimental condensed matter physics group headed by Eric Arturo Montoya in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Utah.

Our research focuses on magnetic materials and spin physics. We have expertise in sample growth and device nanofabrication. Our group studies the impact of spin-orbit interaction on magnetization and spin dynamics, spin transport, and spin torques. We are also interested in harnessing these effects for creating novel spintronic and spin-orbitronic devices.

News

May 2024

Congratulations to Jonathan and Noah who have been accepted for excellent undergraduate student summer research opportunities! Jonathan will be contributing to the CU Boulder STROBE program and Noah will be contributing to the Caltech Caltech WAVE Fellows program.

April 2024

Noah wins P&A Thomas J. Parmley Scholarship for Outstanding Undergraduate Students.

Jonathan wins P&A Outstanding Undergraduate Research in Condensed Matter, Biophysics, or Physics Education research award.

Eric gives Colloquium Self-generated spin-orbit torques at the Department of Physics, Indiana University–Perdue University Indianapolis.

March 2024

Eric presents Condensed Matter/Quantum Information Seminar The Anomalous Hall Nano-Oscillator at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at University of Southern California.

February 2024

Eric presents Colloquium Anomalous Hall torque at the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Riverside .

January 2024

Eric gives talk for the Online Spintronics Seminar.

New preprint Self-generated spin-orbit torque driven by anomalous Hall current available. This work demonstrates the discovery of a self-generated spin-orbit torque associated with the anomalous Hall effect that, together with the spin Hall torque and planar Hall torque, forms a triad of universal Hall-type torques.

August 2023

Awarded as CO-PI $900k National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation (NSF-MRI) grant for the “Acquisition of an integrated physical property measurement system for the electrical, optical, and magnetic characterization of materials” 

July 2023

Easy-plane spin Hall oscillator published in Communications Physics

April 2023

Noah wins P&A Recognition of Academic Excellence award.

March 2023

Prakash wins 2nd place poster award at the U of U Physics and Astronomy Graduate Research Symposium!

August 2022

Robust Spin Injection via Thermal Magnon Pumping in Antiferromagnet/Ferromagnet Hybrid Systems published in Physical Review Research