Researcher's Information

Professor

IMADA, Shin

Physics

Electron spectroscopy and elucidation of materials physics related to electron spin

Characteristics of a material are decided often by the charac- teristics of electrons in that material. For example, glass is transparent because electrons in glass do not absorb light. Electrons revolve around the nucleus as they rotate themselves. The latter rotation is called “spin”. The reason why iron becomes a magnet is that electrons in iron tend to have spin with the same direction. Electron spin causes many other interesting phenomena. For example, some metal becomes an insulator when its temperature is changed. The goal of our research is to elucidate the mechanisms of such phenomena related to electron spin. 
In order to unveil the electronic states in materials, we perform experiments both at the campus and facilities such as SPring-8. Main experiment is “photoemission,” which measures the energy of electrons emitted from a material under application of ultraviolet light or x-ray.
  • High-resolution photoemission apparatus, which precisely measures electrons escaping from a sample.