MIT physicist Lee to discuss superconductivity at Rice

MIT physicist Lee to discuss superconductivity at Rice

The Department of Physics and Astronomy will present Patrick Lee, one of the nation’s leading experts on high-temperature superconductivity, at the annual Houston Memorial Lecture at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 2, in the Sadie R. Smith Physics Amphitheater in Herzstein Hall.

Lee, the William and Emma Rogers Professor of Physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, pioneered the field of mesoscopic physics, the study of small devices at low temperatures, and he introduced the notion that each mesoscopic metal has a unique electronic “fingerprint.”

In a lecture titled “Unconventional Superconductivity and Magnetism,” Lee will discuss the difference between conventional superconductors, whose properties are unrelated to magnetism, and several new types of high-temperature superconductors that exist in close proximity to magnetic states. The lecture will include a discussion of the search for unconventional magnetic states called “spin liquids.”

Started in 1971, the annual Houston Memorial Lecture is a tribute to former Rice president William Houston, a renowned physicist who led Rice from 1946 to 1960.