CMSP News and Views Seminar @ICTP Thursday 6 February at 11am - M. STENGEL

[CM Section]

CMSP News and Views Seminar

Thursday 6 February at 11:00 a.m.
Luigi Stasi Seminar Room, first floor, Leonardo building

Speaker: Massimiliano STENGEL
ICREA, CSIS-ICMAB, Bellaterra, Spain

Title: First Principles Theory of Flexoelectricity and Related
Materials Properties

Abstract:
Flexoelectricity, describing the polarization response to a gradient of 
the strain,
is a universal property of all insulators that has attracted 
considerable attention
in the past few years. [1] In spite of its fundamental and practical 
interest, it has
long resisted theoretical attempts at quantifying it with predictive 
accuracy in
realistic materials. In this talk, I will introduce the methodological 
advances that
have recently lifted this limitation in the context of first-principles 
electronic-structure
theory. [2] I will discuss applications to perovskite-structure SrTiO3, 
either in the
cubic [3] or ferroelastic tetragonal phase. [4] I will also emphasize 
the generality
of these newly established theoretical tools, with interesting 
connections to the
physics of orbital magnetism, natural optical activity and 
magnetoelectric couplings.

[1] M. Stengel and D. Vanderbilt, in "Flexoelectricity in Solids From Theory to
Applications", edited by A. K. Tagantsev and P. V. Yudin (World Scientific Publishing Co.,
Singapore, 2016).
[2] Miquel Royo and Massimiliano Stengel, Phys. Rev. X 9, 021050 (2019)
[3] M. Stengel, Phys. Rev. B 90, 201112(R) (2014)
[4] Andrea Schiaffino and Massimiliano Stengel, Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 137601 (2018)


Coffee/Tea/Biscuits will be served prior to the Seminar at 10:30 a.m.,
Leonardo Building Bar.