Author: eiacocca
Varun published in PRB

Congratulations to Varun who just published his first paper in Phys. Rev. B 111, 184412 (2025). In this work, we investigated the effect of the nanomagnet’s shape on the ferromagnetic resonance of artificial spin ices.
These results demonstrate the relevance of edge modes as nanomagnets transition from a rectangular (P=0) to an elliptical (P-=1) cross section.
Special thanks to P. Schiffer who introduced us to this topic. Their paper on the effect of shape on the magnetization states is a companion article at Phys. Rev. B 111, 184420 (2024)
Kyle awarded DOE SCGSR

Congratulations to Kyle who was awarded the prestigious DOE SCGSR award. He will join Dr. Luis Chacon at Los Alamos National Lab to perform research on inertial confinement fusion.
Best of luck to Kyle on this new endeavor and career trajectory.
Iacocca receives LAS Outstanding Research award

Prof. Iacocca received the College of Letters, Arts, and Science Outstanding Research Award. The committee was “especially impressed with [the] high number of publications during a short time at UCCS, as well as […] over one million dollars in research grants, and more than two dozen talks given at conferences and seminars.”
This award is an honor that reflects the hard work carried out by everyone in the group and it also signifies a research standard to follow and continue to raise.
Ghanem’s PhD defense

Congratulations to Ghanem for his successful PhD defense! Even though this was late of Friday, it was great to see a packed room and a committee asking plenty of questions!
Cassandra presents at Colorado AI Summit

Cassandra presented a lightning talk and a poster at the first Colorado AI Summit. This event was organized by the Computer Science Department to bring together academia, industry, and government on AI-related topics. Cassandra’s work on prediction of material defect thresholds is a novel avenue to use CNNs with a direct physical interpretation.
Ally’s PhD defense

Congratulations to Ally who successfully defended her PhD! Ally is the first PhD in the group and has set an excellent standard for those to come. Very well done!
Manipulating bandgap in magnonic crystals

Congratulations to Pietro Micaletti for publishing his second work on the manipulation of band structure in magnonic crystals due to modifications in magnetic parameters. This work published in J. App. Phys. further discusses the analogy between a metal and insulator transition in magnonic crystals.
Spin-superfluid-mediated soliton dynamics

Congratulations to Medhanie who published a paper on the interaction between solitons mediated by spin superfluids in Phys. Rev. B. In this study, we nucleated metastable solitons by spin injection. The region between these solitons is a “well” in which a spin superfluid is established. Depending on the relative sign of the initial soliton, the interaction leads to the ejection and renucleation of solitons under the injection region outside or inside of the well.
This work is another step towards the understanding of spin superfluids and their interaction with nonlinear structures.
Frequency combs in macroscopic ASIs

Our work on frequency combs in macroscopic ASIs was published in Phys. Rev. Applied and received Editors’ Suggestion designation. This was a very fun project in collaboration with Prof. Bozhko’s group.
Congratulations to Renju and Lawrence for this publication!
More details on this work can be found in our press release.
Magnon propagation through tailored magnetization distributions

Congratulations for Pietro Micaletti who published his work on magnons through sinusoidal magnetization distributions in the Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials. This work demonstrates how the magnetization distribution can act in itself as a magnonic crystal, leading to large bandgaps and localizing modes.
This work is part of the ongoing collaboration with Prof. Feredico Montoncello in Ferrara and some of these simulations were performed at UCCS during Pietro’s visit.