****NON-TECHNICAL ABSTRACT**** The integrated research and education project supported by this CAREER award seeks to develop the necessary experimental and educational tools for the study and understanding of the quantum dynamics of nanometer sized molecular magnets under a broad range of experimental conditions. The control of quantum properties of nanoscale materials has led to the appearance of new emerging technologies, such as quantum information and computation processes. This CAREER project will advance knowledge of the quantum dynamics of solid-state molecular magnets. These systems have great potential for ultra-high density integration on devices and for quantum information processing. A strong effort will be focused on developing a substantial educational and outreach program synergistically with the research component of this project. For this, a new course to present recent fundamental advances in nanoscience with a large impact on emerging technologies will be developed and offered to undergraduate and graduate students at UCF. The research proposed in this CAREER project will involve several graduate and undergraduate students, who will benefit from the sophistication and interdisciplinary nature of the studies. In addition, a website designed to attract the attention of high school students and the general public to the advances in nanoscience related to the research carried out under this CAREER award will be created, with a special interest in addressing those research topics that will affect the day-to-day life of future generations.
The research component of this Early Faculty CAREER project is to study the quantum dynamics of the spin of molecular nanomagnets in their solid-state form through the analysis of time-resolved magnetization and EPR spectroscopy in the presence of pulsed microwave radiation. Novel high-efficiency microstrip resonators integrated with micro-Hall-effect magnetometers in a chip will be developed for this purpose. The objectives of these studies are to improve the understanding of longitudinal and transverse relaxation processes of high-spin quantum superposition states of molecular magnets and to manipulate the spin of the molecules inducing Rabi oscillations of the magnetization to determine the decoherence time of these systems under a broad range of experimental conditions. A strong effort will be focused in developing a substantial educational and outreach program synergistically with the research component of this CAREER project. For this, a new course to present current research advances in quantum nanomagnetism to undergraduate and graduate students of the Physics Department at UCF will be developed. In addition, undergraduate students, primarily from the Florida's Hispanic population, will be involved in the studies as summer research assistants. Moreover, a website will be developed and designed to attract the attention of high school students and the general public to the advances in nanoscience related to the research carried out under this CAREER award.
Intellectual Merit: This project has advanced the understanding of the role of internal molecular degrees of freedom on the quantum tunneling of magnetization in single-molecule magnets. We have been able to determine how the single-ion anisotropies of the constituent ions determine the tunneling symmetry, leading to fascinating quantum interference patterns. These studies have focused on low-nuclearity molecules (with less than 4 constituent ions), for which the multi-spin Hamiltonian could be solved and the resutls compared with the giant-spin approximation. 31 articles have been published reporting research performed under the support of this project, including articles several high-impact scientific journals such as Nature Physics or Physical Review Letters. Broader Impact: A large number of students (from high-school to graduate level), including six women and four Hispanic, have benefited from their participation in several aspects of this project, with four students graduated with a Ph-D thesis based on this research and one undergraduate student graduated with Honors in the Major thesis (runner-up for best UCF undergraduate thesis in 2010). In addition, a number of high school students have been involved in this project, thanks in part to the creation of the blog www.highschoolscience.ucf.edu, as one of the main educational outcomes of the CAREER project.
