Mark Sherwin

Biography

Prof. Mark Sherwin is an experimental condensed matter physicist who graduated from Harvard College with a BA in Physics in 1981. After graduating, he spent a year in Nepal on a Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Fellowship (not physics related). He then began graduate studies in Physics at UC Berkeley, receiving his Ph. D. in the spring of 1988. At Berkeley, he was awarded an AT&T Bell Laboratories Ph. D. Scholarship and the Ross. M. Tucker A. I. M. E. Electronic Materials Award. In the fall of 1988, he joined UC Santa Barbara’s Physics Department as an Assistant Professor, attracted by the unique potential of UCSB’s far-infrared (Terahertz) free-electron lasers for research in quantum condensed matter driven by strong periodic fields. Sherwin is currently Professor of Physics and director of the Institute for Terahertz Science and Technology, which houses the UCSB FELs. More than 30 graduate students have either received or are currently working towards their Ph. D. under his direction. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and of an Alfred P. Sloan Memorial Fellowship.

Research

The UCSB Free-Electron Lasers (FELs) are the world’s brightest sources of tunable electromagnetic radiation in the “Terahertz gap” between 0.2 and 5 THz, enabling experiments no-one else can do. Currently the Sherwin group is using the UCSB FELs to collide photo-excited quasiparticles in quantum condensed matter to reconstruct their effective Hamiltonians, and to explore quantum coherence in spin systems ranging from potential qubits to quantum spin liquid candidates using the world’s only FEL-powered electron magnetic resonance spectrometer. Undergraduates, graduate students and post-docs in the Sherwin group design and build unique apparatus with expert help from Principal Experimentalist Dr. Nikolay Agladze. Spinoffs of FEL-related research have led to current collaborations with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to develop a revolutionary new heterodyne receiver for exploring the atmospheres of comets and planets; with a small company to develop new ways of modulating high-power THz radiation; and with Prof. Songi Han (Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry) to use very high-field electron magnetic resonance to “film proteins in action.”

Selected Publications

Reconstruction of Bloch wavefunctions of holes in a semiconductor, J. B. Costello, J. D. O’Hara, Q. Wu, D. C. Valovcin, L. N. Pfeiffer, K. W. West, and M. S. Sherwin, Nature 599, 57-61 (2021)

Trigonal Bipyramidal V3+ Complex as an Optically Addressable Molecular Qubit Candidate, Majed S. Fataftah, Sam L. Bayliss, Daniel W. Laorenza, Xiaoling Wang, Brian T. Phelan, C. Blake Wilson, Peter J. Mintun, Berk D. Kovos, Michael R. Wasielewski, Songi Han, Mark S. Sherwin, David D. Awschalom, Danna E. Freedman, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 142, 48, 20400–20408 (2020)

Dressed Rabi Oscillation in a Crystalline Organic Radical, C. Blake Wilson, Devin T. Edwards, Jessica A. Clayton, Songi Han, Mark S. Sherwin, Physics Review Letters 124 047201 (2020)

Spin Current from Sub-terahertz-generated Antiferromagnetic Magnons, Junxue Li, C. Blake Wilson, Ran Cheng, Mark Lohmann, Marzieh Kavand, Wei Yuan, Mohammed Aldosary, Nikolay Agladze, Peng Wei, Mark S. Sherwin, Jing Shi, Nature 578, 70–74 (2020)

Demonstration of a Tunable Antenna-Coupled Intersubband Terahertz (TACIT) Mixer, Changyun Yoo, Mengchen Huang, Jonathan Kawamura, Kenneth West, Loren Pfeiffer, Boris Karasik, Mark Sherwin, Applied Physics Letters 116 013504 (2020)

Dynamical Birefringence: Electron-Hole Recollisions as Probes of Berry Curvature, Banks, Hunter B.; Wu, Qile; Valovcin, Darren C.; Mack, Shawn; Gossard, Arthur C.; Pfeiffer, Loren; Liu, Ren-Bao; Sherwin, Mark S., Physical Review X 7, 041042 (2017)

Gd3+-Gd3+ Distances Exceeding 3nm Determined By Very High Frequency Continuous Wave Electron Paramagnetic Resonance, Clayton, Jessica A.; Qi, Mian; Godt, Adelheid; Goldfarb, Daniella; Han, Songi; Sherwin, Mark S., Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics 19, 5127 (2017)

Experimental Observation Of Electron-Hole Recollisions, Zaks, B.; Liu, R. B.; Sherwin, M. S., Nature 483, 580 (2012)

Pulsed Electron Paramagnetic Resonance Spectroscopy Powered By A Free-Electron Laser, Takahashi, S.; Brunel, L. -C.; Edwards, D. T.; Van Tol, J.; Ramian, G.; Han, S.; Sherwin, M. S., Nature 489, 409 (2012)

Quantum Coherence In An Optical Modulator, Carter, SG; Birkedal, V; Wang, CS; Coldren, LA; Maslov, AV; Citrin, DS; Sherwin, MS, Science 310, 651 (2005)
b
Coherent Manipulation Of Semiconductor Quantum Bits With Terahertz Radiation, Cole, BE; Williams, JB; King, BT; Sherwin, MS; Stanley, CR, Nature 410, 60 (2001)