The Mourigal Lab at Georgia Tech studies quantum materials and collective phenomena in condensed matter systems. Our research combines neutron scattering, spectroscopy, materials synthesis, theory, and numerical modeling to understand how quantum mechanics gives rise to emergent behavior in strongly interacting matter. We investigate topics including quantum magnetism, frustrated and low-dimensional systems, exotic phases of matter, and novel excitations, while also developing new experimental capabilities for quantum science and quantum materials research. A central mission of the group is to train the next generation of scientists through a collaborative, rigorous, and supportive research environment.
News
August 2026
The laboratory is looking for one or two very motivated graduate students to join the group in the new academic year (with Spring 2027 start date). More information about doctoral training in the Lab can be found in the updated: Mourigal Lab Handbook
July 2026
Congratulations to Chaebin, Sathvik and our collaborators at UTK on the publication of our work on the spin dynamics of the triangular-lattice antiferromagnet K2Ni(SeO3)2 in Physical Review Letters . Using inelastic neutron scattering and complementary theoretical approaches, we show that substantial quantum fluctuations survive even in a spin-1 triangular antiferromagnet!
June 2026
Our laboratory contributed to a community-wide effort to define the scientific and instrument priorities for the Spallation Neutron Source Second Target Station at ORNL. The resulting report identifies key scientific opportunities across quantum materials, chemistry, biology, soft matter, and materials science, and recommends a prioritized set of instruments.
January 2026
Congratulations to Chaebin, Sumedh, and GT+Maglab collaborators for publishing their work in Nature Communications. Using optical magneto spectroscopy on a triangular-lattice antiferromagnet, the team demonstrates that the fine structure of excitation spectra inside a magnetization plateau provides a remarkably sensitive fingerprint of disorder.
December 2025
Congratulations to Chaebin for publishing an excellent and intriguing study on the emulation of quantum spin correlations by classical dynamics! Check out his results in Physical Review B.
December 2024
Congratulations to Shreenithi Katta, who just graduated from GT and from the lab with a BSc. in physics and highest honors! Shreenithi is staying in the lab as a researcher for one semester before heading to graduate school.
July 2024
Congratulations to Dr. Olivia Vilella, fourth PhD student to graduate from the Mourigal Lab! Olivia is headed to Maryland for a quantum industry job at a well-known defense contractor.
June 2024
Two undergraduate-led papers are out this month! Check out Adit's paper in NIMA and Aulden's paper in JPCM! Both projects are in strong parternships with national labs.
June 2024
We are excited to welcome Dr. Rasmus Christiansen from the University of Manchester and the Institut Laue Langevin as new postdoctoral fellow in the group!
May 2024
Congratulations to Aulden Jones who is graduating from Georgia Tech with highest honors! Aulden conducted research in the lab for 3.5 years and wrote the bachelor's thesis: "Low-temperature electron spin resonnance to study strongly correlated magnetic materials".
April 2024
Warm congratulations to Sam, Adit and Aulden for their graduate school acceptances! They are headed to physics graduate programs at UCLA, Caltech and Harvard, respectively. Futhermore, Adit and Aulden are recepients of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship this year!
March 2024
We are excited to welcome Dr. Chaebin Kim from Seoul National University as new postdoctoral fellow in the group! We also welcome Elise Barron as an undergraduate researcher!
December 2023
Congratulations to Adit Desai who is graduating from Georgia Tech with highest honors! Adit conducted research in the lab for 3 years and wrote the bachelor's thesis: "Monte-Carlo simulations of prismatic analyzers for neutron scattering spectrometers"!
December 2023
Busy month! Harry and Sam, lead by colleague Kipton Barros at Los Alamos, devised an approach to dramatically accelerate linear spin-wave theory calculations for large magnetic unit cells using the Kernel Polynomial Method. Check it out arXiv!
December 2023
Aulden's undergraduate research on cryogenic microwave-cavity spin coupling is on the arXiv! This is a collaboration with Mike Lilly at Sandia National Laboratory.
December 2023
Adit's undergradaute research on prismatic analysis for neutron triple-axis spectrometers is on the arXiv! This is a collaboration with scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
October 2023
Finite temperature measurments? No problem. Check out our latest work on the finite temperature dynamics of FeI2. Work led by David Dahbom and Xiaojian Bai. Check out the arXiv preprint!
September 2023
Lila's and Harry's work on high-pressure magnetometry and inelastic neutron scattering on the classical spin-liquid MgCr2O4 is out! See this awesome arXiv preprint.
July 2023
Our paper on magnon decay in FeI2 is finally published in Nature Communications. This joint experiment-theory work led by Xiaojian Bai and Shang-Shun Zhang discovers and explains a new type of spontaneous magnon instability!
June 2023
Our collaborative work with the La Pierre (GT Chemistry) and Jiang (GT Physics) groups on the magnetic properties of octahedrally coordinated Pr4+ ions in oxides is published in Nature Communications! X-ray, neutron, and high-magnetic field national facilities were instrumental in bringing this work to fruition.
May 2023
Congratulations to undergraduate researcher Lila Nassar who is graduating with a B.Sc. in Physics. Lila is heading to graduate school at Princeton as a NSF Graduate Research Fellow. Congratulations Lila!
May 2022
Congratulations to undergraduate researcher Mikias Balkew who is graduating with a double B.Sc. in ECE and Physics and highest honors including the Eta Kappa Nu medal! Miki is heading to graduate school at Johns Hopkins as a Vivian Thomas Scholar .
April 2022
Martin is awarded the 2022 Science Prize by the Neutron Scattering Society of America . Thanks to all lab members and collaborators that made this possible. Martin will be giving a prize talk at the ACNS in Boulder in June.
November 2021
We have openings at Georgia Tech for two postdoctoral researchers in the field of quantum materials: one experimentalist to work on neutron scattering in the group and one theorist to work in the group of Itamar Kimchi. See the openings page for more details.
July 2021
New arXiv preprint from our collaboration with University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge’s Spallation Neutron Source on the spin-orbital magnet FeI2. We observed the mixing and decay between three type of magnetic quasiparticles, controlled by a magnetic field!
June 2021
Congratulations to Dr. Marcus Daum, third PhD student to graduate from the Mourigal Lab! Marcus is headed to Northrop Grumman with an initial posting in Baltimore. The lab did not miss the opportunity to celebrate in person with Korean BBQ!
March 2021
Zhiling's paper on effective point-charge modeling of rare-earth tripod kagome magnets is published in Physical Review Research! This comes on the heels of two manuscripts published in Physical Review B: TmMgGaO4 is here and Na2PrO3 here. Congratulations to all involved!
January 2021
To celebrate the new year, our work on hybrid dipolar-quadrupolar fluctuations in FeI2 is published in Nature Physics! Congratulations to lead author Xiaojian Bai and all co-authors!
November 2020
Zhiling's and Marcus' work searching for a Kosterlitz-Thouless phase in the Ising antiferromagnet TmMgGaO4 is on the arXiv! For this, we brought in expertise in magnetic pair distribution function analysis from Ben Frandsen's group at BYU.
October 2020
Marcus's and Arun's work on the honeycomb antiferromagnet Na2PrO3, a Kitaev candidate-material, is on the the arXiv! This is a product of a nice collaboration with the La Pierre chemistry group at Georgia Tech.
September 2020
Zhiling, Xiaojian, Joe and Emily publish the group's work on spin-fragmentation in Ho3Mg2Sb3O14 in Physical Review X! Congratulations to all involved and thanks to the three neutron sources that made these measurments possible.
April 2020
Zhiling's work on modeling crystal-field excitations in rare-earth magnets using adjustable effective point charges is on the arXiv!
April 2020
Xiaojian's latest work on hybridized quadrupolar excitations in the spin-anisotropic frustrated magnet FeI2, with postdoc Zhiling Dun and theory/neutron friends at the University of Tennesse and ORNL, is on the arXiv!
March 2020
Congratulations to Dr. Luwei Ge, second PhD student to graduate from the Mourigal Lab! After calculating 1/S-corrections to magnon energies of triangular-lattice antiferromagnets with six digit precision, Luwei is headed to Google in California.
October 2019
Congratulations to Dr. Xiaojian Bai, first PhD student to graduate from the Mourigal Lab! Xiaojian is headed to ORNL's High Flux Isotope Reactor for his postdoctoral work.
July 2019
Students from Georgia Tech's Physics REU program visited Oak Ridge National Laboratory for an in-depth look at large-scale facilities dedicated to materials research and advanced computing. For this fourth edition, physics graduate student Marcus Daum and faculty support coordinator Shaun Ashley enthusiastically led the visit. We are grateful to the NSF and ORNL for making this visit possible!
May 2019
No less than four undergraduate students performing research in our lab are graduating this semester! Congratulations to Emily, Hannah, Zak and Liam! The first three are heading to graduate school at Berkeley, ETH Zürich and Cornell, respectively, while Liam will continue research with us before heading to graduate school next year.
March 2019
Xiaojian's and Joe's work on MgCr2O4 is published in Physical Review Letters! Congratulations to all involved.
January 2019
In the academic year 2019-2020, the Mourigal Lab will recruit up to 2 graduate students interested in all aspects of quantum materials research from neutron scattering and theory to materials synthesis and characterization. If you are admitted to Georgia Tech's graduate program in Physics and are interested in our group, please get in touch!
October 2018
Xiaojian, Joe, and friends' work on the pyrochlore Heisenberg antiferromagnet MgCr2O4 is posted on the arXiv. This work merges single-crystal growth, neutron scattering and theory to reveal the nature of magnetic excitations in a classical spin-liquid by mapping the spin dynamics in an entire volume of reciprocal 4D space.
July 2018
Graduate student Luwei Ge joined forces with Yoshi Kamiya from RIKEN in Japan and Jie Ma from Jiao Tong University in Shanghai to probe and understand the spin excitations of the triangular lattice antiferromagnet Ba3CoSb2O9 in very high magnetic field. Their work is published in Nature Communications!
July 2018
The lab's collaborative work on YbMgGaO4 with Xinshu Zhang and Fahad Mahmood of Peter Armitage's group at Johns Hopkins is published in Physical Review X.
June 2018
Zhiling, Xiaojian and Joe's work on the quantum kagome-spin-ice candidate Ho3Mg2Sb3O14, in collaboration with the group of Haidong Zhou at Tennessee, is posted on the arXiv.
May 2018
The Department of Energy's Office of Science is now supporting our laboratory through a regular award from the neutron scattering program!
April 2018
The lab is now supported by the National Science Foundation's Division of Materials Research through a CAREER award!
February 2018
Martin wrote a News and Views article for Nature about the discovery of a new Kitaev-Heisenberg honeycomb magnet H3LiIr2O6. Check it out here.
January 2018
Martin is teaching PHYS 4262 this semester, a first solid-state physics course for undergraduates. Information about the course, lecture notes and homework can be found on Canvas, Georgia Tech's new teaching platform environement.
December 2017
Our collaborative work on coupled spin-1/2 chains with the group of Art Ramirez at UC Santa Cruz is published in Nature Physics. The picture on the right represents nice crystals grown at Florida State using a sol-gel technique by graduate student Lianyang Dong.
September 2017
Our combined inelastic neutron scattering and time-domain terahertz spectroscopy work on the high-field excitations of YbMgGaO4 is posted on the arXiv. This work in collaboration with the group of Peter Armitage at Johns Hopkins utilizes both photons and neutrons to advance understanding of a mysterious spin-liquid material.
August 2017
Martin is teaching an advanced undergraduate course this semester, PHYS 3122: Electro and Magnetostatics. Information about the course, lecture notes and homework can be found here.
August 2017
Luwei's work on CoRh2O4 and CuRh2O4 is published in Phys. Rev. B as an Editors' Suggestion, see here! Furthermore, our collaborative work with the Davidovic and Cressler groups on very low-temperature transport in SiGe transistors is published in Phys. Rev. Applied, see here.
June 2017
Luwei's work on the diamond-lattice Heisenberg antiferromagnets CoRh2O4 and CuRh2O4 is posted on the ArXiV. This work, in collaboration with the groups of Mas Subramanian at Oregon State and Art Ramirez at UC Santa Cruz, epitomizes our research strategy by blending materials synthesis and characterization, neutron scattering and theory to understand quantum effects in magnetic matter.
April 2017
Undergraduate student Sai Paladugu discussed his unconditional love for the thermodynamics of spin chains during Georgia Tech's undergraduate research symposium. Sai spent the last year in our laboratory and he is headed to the Physics Department at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign for graduate school. Congratulations Sai!
March 2017
Martin gave an invited talk at the American Physical Society's March Meeting in New Orleans, presenting the group's results on the triangular-lattice rare-earth magnet YbMgGaO4. A copy of the slides shown during the talk can be found here.
January 2017
Lecture notes for Martin's class Introductory Electricity and Magnetism (PHYS 2212) can be found here. Course policies are here.
December 2016
Our collaboration with Cambridge University on the kagome Ising magnet Dy3Mg2Sb3O14 is published online in Nature Communications! To learn more about exotic magnetic matter behaving simultaneously like a liquid and like a solid check out the following Research Horizon article from Georgia Tech Communications team.
December 2016
Our work on YbMgGaO4 is published online in Nature Physics. Congratulations Joe and Marcus!
September 2016
Joe and Martin attended the 8th international conference on Highly Frustrated Magnetism (HFM 2016) in Taipei, Taiwan. Joe gave a talk on the discovery of emergent-charge order in the rare-earth oxide Dy3Mg2Sb3O14. Martin presented three posters covering various projects going on in the group. The poster on YbMgGaO4 was awarded a poster prize!
July 2016
Our preprint on the triangular-lattice quantum spin liquid YbMgGaO4 is posted on ArXiV. Our single crystal sample was grown by Zhiling Dun and Haidong Zhou at the University of Tennesse and our neutron experiment performed on the CNCS spectrometer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
May 2016
Our preprint on magnetic charge order in the kagome Ising magnet Dy3Mg2Sb3O14 is posted on ArXiV. This is a collaboration with the groups of Sian Dutton and Claudio Castelnovo at the Cavendish Lab in Cambridge. Neutron data was collected on the DCS spectrometer at NIST and the GEM diffractometer in the UK.
April 2016
Our PPMS (Physical Properties Measurement System) welcomed its first external users. The Davidovic (Physics) and Cressler (Electrical Engineering) groups brought their own electronics to measure electron transport at very-low temperatures and high magnetic fields in their fancy transistors.
February 2016
We now have an operational backscattering x-ray camera in the lab. Single-crystals can be oriented in a matter of seconds, as shown here for a beautiful crystal of copper sulphate. See our lab tour for more information.
Januray 2016
Martin is teaching Introductory Electricity and Magnetism (PHYS 2212) this semester. Course policies can be found here and lectures notes here.
November 2015
Joseph Paddison, postdoctoral fellow in the group, publishes his graduate work in Science along with collaborators from Europe. Their neutron scattering experiments and computer simulations revealed a hidden magnetic order in the canonical frustrated magnet Gd3Ga5O12.
October 2015
A Quantum Design cryogen-free measurement platform (PPMS) is now operational in the lab! This instrument allows to measure thermo-magnetic properties of materials such as heat capacity down to a temperature of 0.05 Kelvin and magnetic fields up to 14 Teslas. Please visit our Lab Tour page for more information about the lab and its equipment.
August 2015
Results on the pyrochlore iridate Pr2+xIr2−xO7−δ are published in Physical Review B . High-resolution neutron scattering and muon spin rotation experiments indicate Pr2+xIr2−xO7−δ hosts a subtle form of spin-ice order. This magnetic state is static at the nanosecond time-scale but fluctuates at the sub-microsecond time-scale. This supports experimental and theoretical suggestions that Pr2Ir2O7 lies close to a quantum critical point.
July 2015
Recent neutron scattering experiments reveal exotic spin-orbital magnetism in BaFe2Se3, a low dimensional magnet related to the iron-based superconductors. This work, performed with collaborators at Johns Hopkins University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory is published in Physical Review Letters.
June 2015
Dr Joseph Paddison joins the group as postdoctoral fellow. Joseph obtained is D.Phil. in Chemistry from the University of Oxford, working jointly with Andrew Goodwin and Ross Stewart at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory's neutron source. Joseph performed ground-breaking work on diffuse scattering in frustrated magnetic materials for which he developed the computer program SpinVert.
April 2015
Luwei Ge, graduate student in the group, performed his first neutron scattering experiment last week. The experiment took place on the MACS spectrometer at the NIST Center for Neutron Research in Maryland. Looking for exotic spin excitations in a frustrated magnet, the successful experiment involved temperatures below 100 mK and a magnetic field of 11 T, delivered expertly by our NIST collaborator Dr Jose Rodriguez, pictured here with Luwei.
January 2015
Welcome to graduate students Xiaojian Bai, Luwei Ge and Geoffrey Laughon who are joining the group for the Spring Semester of 2015.
December 2014
New results on the square lattice Heisenberg antiferromagnet with B. Dalla Piazza, H. Rønnow and collaborators published in Nature Physics! See also the News and Views by F. Becca and S. Sorella.
October 2014
We have an opening for a postdoctoral position in the group. Please see the following job ad for more details. Current students at Georgia Tech are encouraged to contact us if they are interested in joining the group.
September 2014
Website launched! Our research group will start
operating at Georgia Tech's School of Physics from
January 2015.
January 2015
Welcome to graduate students Xiaojian Bai, Luwei Ge and Geoffrey Laughon who are joining the group for the Spring Semester of 2015.
December 2014
New results on the square lattice Heisenberg antiferromagnet with B. Dalla Piazza, H. Rønnow and collaborators published in Nature Physics! See also the News and Views by F. Becca and S. Sorella.
October 2014
We have an opening for a postdoctoral position in the group. Please see the following job ad for more details. Current students at Georgia Tech are encouraged to contact us if they are interested in joining the group.
September 2014
Website launched! Our research group will start
operating at Georgia Tech's School of Physics from
January 2015.
