2018 Medal Winners | francais

The 2018 CAP/DCMMP Brockhouse Medal

is awarded to

Andrea Damascelli

"I am honoured to be the 2018 Brockhouse Medal recipient. It is a privilege to be part of the vibrant Canadian physics community and I am truly grateful for the opportunities I have been given. This recognition is a testimony to the talented students, postdocs, staff, colleagues and collaborators I have worked with. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to them all." winner quote

The Canadian Association of Physicists (CAP) is pleased to announce that the 2018 CAP/DCMMP Brockhouse Medal is awarded to Andrea Damascelli, University of British Columbia, in recognition of for his important contributions and leadership in the investigation of quantum solids and surfaces, in particular for what concerns strongly-correlated systems, through the design and development of unique angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) instruments. announcement

Andrea Damascelli is being awarded the CAP Brockhouse medal for 2018 for his research on the electronic structure of unconventional oxide superconductors and related materials utilizing angle-resolved photoemission and resonant soft x-ray scattering. Damascelli has made important contributions to the understanding of the electronic structure of some of the most challenging and most studied materials in condensed matter physics. His studies of Sr2RuO4 have provided deep insight into the electronic structure and superconducting state of this exotic superconductor. He was able to follow the surface-to- bulk progression of electronic structure in Sr2RuO4 which is driven by near-surface instabilities. Recently he has established that strong spin orbit coupling introduces a coupling between the singlet and triplet channels in the superconducting state.
This changes our understanding of superconductivity in Sr2RuO4 and possibly many other superconductors. In particular, his work showed that the traditional classification of superconductors in terms of singlet or triplet Cooper pairs is violated in the presence of strong spin-orbit coupling.

Dr. Damascelli also developed a novel way to dope the surface of cuprate superconductors by depositing alkali metal atoms on freshly cleaved surfaces. This has led to a much better understanding of the polar character of cuprates surfaces. It also resolved the discrepancy between quantum oscillations observed in transport measurements and ARPES. This method allowed him to continuously vary the doping and follow the evolution of the Fermi surface and coherence of the quasiparticles near the surface of the sample. His work has led to a much clearer understanding of nature of the charge ordering and its relationship to superconductivity in hole-doped cuprates. nominator citation

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