This award supports Professor Guy Schupp, Dr. William Yelon and two graduate students of the University of Missouri to collaborate in research on glassy materials and ferroelectric phase transitions with Professor Walter Steiner and others of the Physics Department of the Technical University of Vienna. They are engaged in detailed investigations of the spin dynamics of cluster glasses above their freezing temperatures and the dynamics of the phase transition of lithium heptagermanate. These dynamical processes have been studied using high magnetic field, low temperature facilities in Vienna. Recently, the neutron and gamma ray scattering instruments at the Missouri University Research Reactor (MURR) have been significantly upgraded. This enables them to carry out expanded structural studies and examinations of dynamical and magnetic properties near phase transitions. The combination of complementary techniques made possible by the unique facilities at MURR and those in Vienna may provide new and fundamental insights into magnetic ordering and the dynamics of phase transitions in glassy and ferroelectric materials.
