About The Speaker

David Hilton received B.S. (1997) and M.S. (1999) degrees in Optics from the University of Rochester. He received a M.S. (2001) and Ph.D. (2002) in Applied Physics from Cornell University. From 2002 to 2006, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where his research focus shifted to terahertz spectroscopy of correlated electronic systems. From 2006 to 2007, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Rice University, where his interests included the development of novel spectroscopic measurement techniques for high-resolution spectroscopy in high magnetic fields. He joined the faculty as Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2013. He joined the faculty of physics at Baylor in Fall of 2019. His research interests include the development of novel spectroscopic measurement techniques for high-resolution spectroscopy in high magnetic fields. With these, he focuses on the study of the thermodynamics insulator-to-metal phase transitions in transition metal oxides, the thermodynamics of non-equilibrium phase transitions in iron-based superconductors, and ultrafast investigations of high mobility two-dimensional materials and transition metal dichalcogenides.

Event Details

Terahertz time-domain spectroscopy is it powerful optical technique that can measure low energy excitations and condensed matter materials on the sub-picosecond time scale. In this talk, I will discuss two recent experiments using terahertz time-domain spectroscopy to demonstrate. In the first part of my talk, I will discuss recent experiments to develop near and middle infrared electronic materials for next generation communications platforms. In current wireless technology, silicon and silicon -germanium are commonly-used semiconductors as emitters in wireless communications.  As bandwidth requirements continue to increase from gigahertz into the lower terahertz band, novel electronic materials will be required as next generation materials.  Our experiments examine one such material, bismuth doped gallium arsenide, and its suitability for future electronics applications. In the second part of my talk, I will discuss our recent experiments using strain to suppress superconductivity simple class of iron-based superconductors.  FeSe is the prototype “11” iron-based superconductor with the transition temperature in the bulk of 8 to 10 Kelvin.  We demonstrate in strained FeSe samples via growth on a lattice mismatched super rate, the suppression of the superconducting dome with a T_C < 2 K.  In the final part of my talk, I will discuss our future planes experiments with this material system to study the ground state in Fe_1-xCu_xSe near its quantum critical point (xc =1.5%), which should permit us to dynamically characterize this Quantum phase transition.