
Despina Louca
Ph.D., 1997, Pennsylvania
Maxine S. and Jesse W. Beams Professor of Physics
Experimental Condensed Matter Physics
Research Interests
Professor Louca's group studies phase transitions in solids. The group is interested in understanding how the underlying interactions involving the spin, charge and lattice degrees of freedom lead to emergent properties such as polaron formation, Jahn-Teller type distortions, spin and charge density waves, superconductivity and quantum spin liquid states. The most recent systems of interest include topological insulators and semimetals, spintronic antiferromagnets of the I-Mn-V class, transition metal dichalcogenides, disorder superconductors, layered semiconductors etc. These systems have underlying macroscopic functionalities that can potentially lead to industrial applications. The bulk of this research is performed at national and international neutron and X-ray facilities. The group is also involved with materials synthesis and characterization of the bulk properties, performed at the University of Virginia.
Graduate Students
Selected Publications
12. "Local trigonal modes and the suppression of the charge density wave in TiSe2-xTex", A Wegner, D Louca, J Yang, Physical Review B 99 (20), 205110 (2019).
13.“Emergence of topologically protected states in MoTe2 Weyl semimetal with layer stacking order”, J. A. Schneeloch, C. Duan, J. Yang, J. Liu, X. Wang, and D. Louca, Phys. Rev. B. 99, 161105(R) (2019).
14.“Defect-driven extreme magnetoresistance in an I-Mn-V semiconductor”, J. Yang, A. Wegner, C. M. Brown, and D. Louca, Applied Physics Letters 113, 122105 (2018).