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Thomas Hicken

Postdoctoral researcher exploring magnetic materials

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Investigating the materials of tomorrow

Passionate about understanding how the world around us works

I'm Thomas, a postdoctoral researcher currently based at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland. I spend my time researching magnetic materials to try and understand the rules that govern our universe, and to help create new materials that can improve all of our lives.

I think we make the best discoveries when we look at a problem in lots of different ways, and that is why my favourite projects are those that use many different experiments and calculations to solve a problem.

Magnets come in many different flavours

I have experience researching multiple different types of magnetic systems, with a particular experience of skyrmions, spin ice, and spin liquids. These materials have all sorts of interesting properties; some might be in our computers one day, whereas others help us understand the way the world works on a quantum level.

Applying different techniques reveals varied information

My specialism is muon-spin spectroscopy, where we implant short-lived particles called muons into a magnet to act as a miniature compass, telling us about the properties of the magnet. I often supplement this approach with neutron scattering measurements (I have the most experience in diffuse and inelastic neutron scattering), and with computational calculations. I am especially interested in cases where we can use density functional theory, which is a way of understanding quantum mechanics, to model the results of an experiment.

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Years of experience

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Published papers

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Citations


Paul Scherrer Institute

Postdoctoral Researcher 

June 2023 -
present

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Royal Holloway, University of London

Postdoctoral Researcher

October 2021 -
May 2023

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Durham
University

PhD student

October 2017 -
September 2021

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University of Warwick

Undergraduate Physics

October 2013 -
July 2017

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