PhD project opportunity: Multi-scale simulation of moving ferromagnetic nanostructures

Eligibility: Please see http://www.ngcm.soton.ac.uk/studentships.html

A number of interesting systems, such as ferromagnetic fluid droplets suspended in air or ferromagnetic nano-scale objects during sample growth, exhibit properties of moving ferromagnetic systems. They provide very rich and complex behaviour. Understanding this behaviour will help to advance sample growth and device fabrication and may also be of benefit in sectors such as healthcare where increasingly treatment (either chemical or physical) is guided with the help of magnetic materials attached to drugs which respond to external magnetic fields.

Depending on the particular system under study, the internal magnetic degrees of freedom of the moving particles may have to be treated using the micromagnetic model or can be regarded as magnetic dipoles. For medical applications, the model will have to be linked to simulations of the human body, for example through computational fluid dynamic (CFD) studies of the blood flow which exert a drag force on magnetic particles. We will collaborate with researchers in medicine and CFD experts as required.

Experience with any of the following will be advantageous but can be required as part of the project:

• Computational physics or computational materials science
• Programming experience
• Use of Linux
• Micromagnetic modelling (including use of Magpar, Nmag, OOMMF)

This project can be pursued through a PhD student ship in Complex Systems Simulations.

Please contact Hans Fangohr <fangohr@soton.ac.uk> or Alexander Forrester for informal queries, expressions of interest or applications.

A set of magnetic particles arranges in a loop: north (red) and south (blue) poles want to connect. In the absence of any other constraints (such as external magnetic fields or geometric confinement), the lowest energy is achieved for a closed loop.