Speaker: Gregory S. Boebinger
Professor of Physics, Florida State University
Director Emeritus, National High Magnetic Field Laboratory

Hosts: Paul Canfield and Sergey Budko

Title: Strange Quasiparticles and the World’s Strongest Magnetic Fields 

Abstract: At the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, we build the most powerful magnets in the world, magnets that sometimes explode due to metal fatigue.  Why would anyone want to do such a thing?   Well, it turns out that intense magnetic fields are useful for studying electronic excitations – quasiparticles – in a variety of materials. Most quasiparticles are boring localized excitations with a specific energy and momentum, excitations that carry one electric charge and one standard magnetic moment (the electron spin). However, electron charges and spins can conspire in weird and collective ways to create strange quasiparticles that display unusual properties. This talk will wander through the Modern Zoo of Strange Quasiparticles in Condensed Matter Physics, presenting illustrations of, for example, specific two-dimensional insulators in which Nature creates magnetic Bose-Einstein Condensates. And other two-dimensional insulators in which Nature enables the electron charge to become separated from the electron spin. And related three-dimensional insulators in which Nature creates magnetization monopoles. Finally, we will illustrate how the electron’s charge can be fractionalized - such that quasiparticle excitations have precisely 1/3 of an electron charge - in a two-dimensional metal subjected to intense magnetic fields. 

Bio: Greg Boebinger received a Bachelors Degrees in Physics, Electrical Engineering and Philosophy in 1981 from Purdue University. He studied one year at Cambridge University as a Churchill Fellow, after which he entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he earned his Ph.D. in 1986. Dr. Boebinger spent a year as a NATO Postdoctoral Fellow in Paris at the Ecole Normale Superieure.  In 1987, Dr. Boebinger joined the research staff at Bell Laboratories and established a pulsed magnetic field facility for physics research. For this research, he was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1996.
In 1998, Dr. Boebinger became head of the pulsed magnet laboratory at Los Alamos National Laboratory, one of the three campuses of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (MagLab). In 2004, Dr. Boebinger moved to Florida State University to become director of the MagLab, The MagLab is the world leading magnet laboratory, developing and operating high magnetic field facilities that more than 1500 scientists use annually for research in physics, biology, bioengineering, chemistry, geochemistry, biochemistry, materials science, and engineering. More information can be found on the MagLab’s website: nationalmaglab.org.  Prof. Boebinger was named Director Emeritus of the MagLab in May of 2024.
Prof. Boebinger’s research has focused on the high-temperature superconductors, using the intense magnetic fields to suppress superconductivity and study the behavior of the samples in the absence of their high-temperature superconductivity, with the expectation that this behavior underpins the superconducting state. Since 1984, Prof. Boebinger has presented more than 350 invited talks and colloquia around the world. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and National Academy of Sciences.