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.
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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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Paul Scherrer Institute
Postdoctoral Researcher
June 2023 -
present
Royal Holloway, University of London
Postdoctoral Researcher
October 2021 -
May 2023
Durham
University
PhD student
October 2017 -
September 2021
University of Warwick
Undergraduate Physics
October 2013 -
July 2017