Paul Crowell

Paul Crowell has been on the faculty of the University of Minnesota since 1997 and is currently a Professor of Physics.

McKnight Land Grant Professor, University of Minnesota 1999-2001, Sloan Foundation Fellow, 1999-2001, McKnight Presidential Fellow, University of Minnesota, 2004-2007, Fellow of the American Physical Society, 2008.

General Chair, Joint MMM/Intermag Conference; Chair-Elect of the APS Topical Group on Magnetism and its Applications (2011-2012); Organizer, Focus Session on Spin-Dependent Phenomena in Semiconductors, APS March Meeting, 2010; Program Committee, Conference on Magnetism and Magnetic Materials, 2005-2008, 2010; Program Committee Seventh International School of Spintronics and Quantum Information Technology, Japan (2011); Program Co-Chair, Conference on Magnetism and Magnetic Materials, Austin (2008);

My research focuses on spin dynamics and transport in ferromagnets and ferromagnet-semiconductor heterostructures. The first project, funded by NSF, examines the role of non-equilibrium effects in spin transport in hybrid ferromagnet/semiconductor structures. The materials development for this work is carried out in collaboration with Chris Palmstrom's group at UCSB, who is a collaborator in the University of Minnesota MRSEC. In recent years, we have succeeded in fabricating simple devices that can be used to test theories of spin transport across interfaces as well as of spin dynamics in the presence of spin-orbit and hyperfine interactions. Similar questions, particularly about the role of interfaces, appear in studies of spin transport in all-metallic heterostructures, a research project that is being carried out in collaboration with Professor Chris Leighton through the MRSEC. A third topic of interest is magnetization dynamics, both in domain structures such as vortices as well as in spintronic devices. In collaboration with Leighton, we are looking at the impact of physical microstructure on vortex dynamics. In a newer collaboration with Professor Jianping Wang (ECE), we are investigating the dynamics in MgO-based spin transfer torque devices.