Jeremy Qualls ' research involves the exploration of electronic states arising in low dimensional conductors. The current focus is on novel transport effects and Fermi surface studies of organic conductors. In most cases, these metallic systems have highly anisotropic electronic structure, typically one or two dimensional in nature. Not only are the electronic phenomena of great importance, but also the restricted electronic dimensionality allows for new experimental techniques and theoretical models to explore this rich area of physics. An important research interest of all the condensed matter experimentalists is the study of defects in insulating crystals.
Point defects dominate many of the most important properties of insulators.
While considerable progress has been made in the understanding of small defect structures, clusters of several impurities have proved much more difficult to elucidate. Such broadening is a sensitive but complex measure of the nature of defect clusters within insulating crystals. The objective of this effort is to understand the nature of the clustering of impurities in insulators, with a current focus on rare earth impurities in alkaline earth fluorides. As part of this effort, this group has developed significantly improved techniques for the computer analysis of EPR spectra. The method fits the full EPR absorption spectrum and employs exact diagonalization of the spin Hamiltonian.