2019 Seminar Abstracts

Simon Goodwin, Sheffield

The Same, But Different?

Is star formation always the same?  We see young stars in a wide variety of environments from dense clusters to loose associations (covering >6 orders of magnitude in density).  Did the stars in these different environments form in different ways, or do they just have different dynamical evolution after they are born?  Dense cluster can do all sorts of violent things to discs and young planetary systems: is this common or rare?  I will discuss these questions, and then completely fail to answer any of them.

Stephen Power, Lancaster

Classifying Crystals and Periodic Spatial Graphs (nets)

Entangled crystals are intriguing material structures that have been investigated intensively by chemists since the 1990s. On the other hand there have been no formal classifications of entangled periodic structures with regard to deformations avoiding edge collisions. We formally define periodic nets with nonintersecting line segment bonds together with a notion of “adjacency depth” (most physically observed nets have adjacency depth 1) and “periodic isotopy”. There are only finitely many “periodic isotopes” with a fixed quotient graph and fixed depth, and so counting problems for various classes abound.

We obtain some such classifications for depth 1 connected nets with very small quotient graph, and for some multicomponent nets. As a tool of independent interest in its own right we introduce “graph knots” (spatial graphs) in the flat 3-torus (ie in the unit cube with opposite sides identified). In particular I’ll show the graph knot of self-entangled diamond.

Pedro Rivera-Díaz-del-Castillo, Lancaster

Design Strategies for Advanced Alloys: Titanium, Steel and High-Entropy Alloys

Computational thermodynamics and kinetics are powerful tools for designing new alloys. Composition can be linked to processing variables such as temperature-time schedules to alter the microstructure, which in turn determines the properties and the performance of advanced alloys. This seminar explores the basic physical principles governing the evolution of microstrutuctres, plasticity theory to describe their behaviour, and computational methods to design new alloys. Success cases are outlined around a diverse range of systems including stainless steels, titanium and high-entropy alloys. Shortcomings in the theory and future areas of development are reviewed.

Dermot Gethings, PADAS

The Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock

In 1972 the United States distributed moon rocks to 79 countries.

NASA, the US State Department and UN organised the International Youth Science Tour. Selected students would represent their nations for the Apollo 17 mission and be custodians of a fragment of moon rock presented to them via live broadcast from the lunar surface.

This is the story of my involvement as UK student representative and my experiences of the tour.

Iain Crosley, Hosokawa Micron Ltd

Creation and Application of Advanced Functional Materials in Industry

Hosokawa Micron is well known as a leader in the design and supply of powder processing equipment and systems. In order to develop the next generations of equipment and understand the future needs of the processing industries, Hosokawa engage closely with academic and industrial partners. These partnerships enable Hosokawa to understand the challenges that are faced in producing these new materials. These challenges include how these materials can be handled as their physical properties change rapidly as the particle size of the material decreases,
from the micron to the nanometre scale.

At the centre of this R&D work is the Hosokawa Powder Technology Research Institute and this paper will look at some of their areas of activity in terms of materials being produced and the technologies they are utilising.

Established fifty years ago, the original aim of the Institute was to further develop powder and particle technology. This initiative continues today. The market needs higher quality for powder processing in fields such as secondary battery, materials for electronic devices, toner, medicine and functional foods. Solutions for materials in the environment and energy as well as powder characterisation techniques are also important.

Other challenges include the HS&E issues in dealing with nanomaterials on a production scale as well as the process control and understanding of the complex processes used to produce functional nanomaterials and how these are to be scaled up, plus the application of the Internetof-Things (I-o-T) to these processes.

The program of research work is conducted on a global basis and discussed at International R&D Meetings where members of the R&D teams from Japan, Germany, Holland, USA and UK decide upon the research topics and strategy to meet the challenges of the future technologies.

Gary Hogbean, Feedwater Ltd

Microbial Challenges in Water Treatment: The Feedwater Ltd Perspective

Feedwater Ltd is a leading water treatment company in the United Kingdom with a thriving export market, especially to the Middle-East region. The company operates a successful microbiology laboratory accredited by the United Kingdom Accreditation Service to ISO17025:2017 – the competence of testing and calibration laboratories.

The presentation will consider the incidence of water-borne infection with particular emphasis on three situations;

• The incidence of the pathogen Legionella pneumophila and other legionella species in water samples, and its relation to infections
• The effect of bacterial regrowth in large water systems, with a focus on hotels
• The impact of waterborne healthcare associated infections (WHCAIs), especially Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Current control strategies will be evaluated, especially in regard to their limitations, and the presentation will consider the effect of materials of construction of water system on the growth of bacteria.

Possible nano-material based improvements, that may have wide application in both high-risk environments and higher risk individual systems, will be considered

Leandro Beraldo E Silva, JHI/UCLan

The Discreteness-Driven Relaxation of Collisionless Gravitating Systems

The violent relaxation of a perturbed or collapsing collisionless gravitational system, with the fast achievement of a quasi-stationary state, is traditionally assumed to be governed by the Vlasov equation, in which case the entropy must be conserved. In this scenario, the reconciliation with the 2nd law of thermodynamics is made through coarse-graining (a subjective effect). In this talk, I will discuss recent results obtained with entropy estimates in N-body simulations and for orbit ensembles in fixed external potentials. In the N-body simulations, the (slow) long-term evolution is well described as resulting from two-body relaxation, while the early evolution generates a fast (in a few crossing times) entropy production. The integration of orbit ensembles in external potentials shows that this early collisionless relaxation is due to the discreteness (finite N) of gravitating systems in any potential, being a consequence of the Nyquist-Shannon theorem, which precludes the development of phase-space structures finer than a typical scale ~ N^-1/d (for a sample of size N in d dimensions). As a result, a typical relaxation time T/tau_cr ~ 0.1 * N^1/6 emerges in integrable potentials, with weaker N-dependencies in the presence of chaotic orbits. Furthermore, this scenario avoids the need for the subjective effect of coarse-graining and indicates that the Vlasov equation does not provide an adequate kinetic description of this fast (violent) collisionless relaxation.

Gert Botha, Northumbria

Rotating Sunspots

The rotation of pores, sunspots and active regions in the Sun will be investigated using a numerical model of idealised axisymmetric flux tubes in the upper layer of the solar convection zone. The model consists of a compressible plasma with density and temperature gradients that are evolved by the nonlinear magnetohydrodynamic equations. The rotation of these flux bundles give insights into the physical processes and flow patterns below the solar photosphere.

Youra Taroyan, Aberystwyth

Amplification of Magnetic Twists During Prominence Formation

Solar prominences are dense magnetic structures that are anchored to the visible surface known as the photosphere. They extend outwards into the Sun’s upper atmosphere known as the corona. Twists in prominence field lines are believed to play an important role in supporting the dense plasma against gravity as well as in prominence eruptions and coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which may have severe impact on the Earth and its near environment. We will use a simple model to mimic the formation of a prominence thread by plasma condensation. The process of coupling between the inflows and the twists will be discussed. We show that arbitrarily small magnetic twists should be amplified in time during the mass accumulation process. The growth rate of the twists is proportional to the mass condensation rate.

Cristina Martínez Lombilla, IAC

In Quest for the Faintest Features of Galaxy Discs

Our understanding of the evolution of galaxies within their optical radius has made great advances in the last decades. These have been achieved by analysing in detail the internal secular processes, the star formation history, and the Interstellar medium. However, the study of galaxy outskirts, so-called low surface brightness science, is still in its infancy. In this talk, I will explain how we use the deepest available data from ground-based and space telescopes to study the formation and evolution of very faint galaxy structures, in particular, their thick discs and truncations, in unprecedented detail. For that purpose, we extracted thick disc and truncation properties from ultra-deep imaging of edge-on galaxies. I will show how we can derive reliable thick disc profiles as well as truncations detections well above the galaxies mid-plane. I will also show how major axis surface brightness profiles track the way the properties of truncations may vary with galaxy, wavelength of observation, and with height above the plane of the galaxies and its effect over the discs size.

Stewart Eyres, University of South Wales

Nova Sub Capita Cygni

In the early 1980s CK Vulpeculae was identified with Nova Vul 1670, a star that brightened from invisibility to 3rd magnitude nearly 350 years ago (the nova sub capita Cygni of the title). Initially of interest due to a proposed link with hibernating classical novae, the nature of the central stellar object remains unclear. In the literature various explanations have been discarded, including a classical nova outburst, a very late thermal pulse, a sub-Chandrasekhar mass supernova or a diffusion-induced nova. Most recently a stellar merger has been favoured, but various scenarios involving giant and main sequence components are difficult to reconcile with the observed characteristics. ALMA observations in 2017 resolved various structures in the gas and dust of the inner nebula, leading us to propose a new merger scenario. We argue that this best explains the observed activity in the 1670s, the current nebula structure and the peculiar isotopic abundance patterns.

Cassandra Hall, Leicester

Gravitational Instability and Substructure in Protoplanetary Discs

With increased observational capabilities from instruments such as ALMA and SPHERE, it has become abundantly clear that substructure in accretion discs around stars is the norm, rather than the exception. Gravitational instability, which occurs when the disc mass is a sufficient fraction of the host star, has been offered as an explanation to an interesting subset of this substructure, spiral arms. I give an introduction to protoplanetary discs and why they are important, what gravitational instability is, and why it may, or may not, be responsible for some of the features that we see.

Rosa Arrigo, Salford

Unveiling Materials Chemistry and Catalysis: My Research Journey using Synchrotron Light

The challenge of realizing a technological breakthrough in modern industrial chemistry and heterogeneous catalysis is often related to the design of materials with optimized structural and compositional characteristics to maximize efficiency, selectivity and stability for a given reaction. This can be done, for instance, by evaluating the performance of catalysts with precisely tuned structural and morphological features (size, shape, phase). In the last two decades, understanding the interfacial chemistry at a molecular level by means of in situ structural sensitive techniques has become very popular as a rational approach towards the design of functional materials, where the focus was on the conditions in which the catalytic activity is manifested and lost. The availability of even more sophisticated in situ suites for material characterization at large-scale user facilities, this research line has now become more accessible to the broader scientific community and has made significant contributions to the current scientific landscape.

I became fascinated by this research very early in my career and made it my primary scientific focus. In this talk, I will talk about my experience so far as a scientist and synchrotron user by presenting examples of projects, in which the detailed multi-technique characterization of catalytic materials was crucial for the understanding of the catalytic reactivity.

Lister Staveley-Smith, International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), University of Western Australia

The Square Kilometre Array and Pathfinders

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is the most ambitious project in the history of radio astronomy. When construction is complete in the next decade, it will allow transformational studies of stars, planets, galaxies and the distant Universe. As part of the scientific and technical preparation for the SKA, “pathfinder” facilities in Australia (ASKAP, MWA), South Africa (MeerKAT) and China (the giant FAST telescope) have recently been completed. Despite their limited scope compared to the SKA, these pathfinder facilities already far outperform other existing radio telescopes in the centimetre wavelength regime. In this seminar, I will review the progress in SKA planning and construction, and discuss the exciting new results coming from the SKA pathfinders, which include the identification of the source of emission of intense bursts of radiation coming from distant cosmological sources, and the imaging of large numbers of galaxies in the nearby Universe using the 21-cm hyperfine transition of neutral hydrogen.

Catherine Walsh, University of Leeds

The Chemistry of Planet-Forming Disks in the Era of ALMA

ALMA (the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) has shone light on the diversity in molecular composition and emission morphology of nearby planet-forming disks.  These new data highlight that gas and ice chemistry ongoing during the epoch of planet formation, not only determines the composition of planet-building material,  but also emphasize many different physical effects. The unprecedented sensitivity of ALMA has allowed the first detection of so-called ‘complex organic molecules’, or COMs, defined in astrochemistry as molecules with greater than five atoms.  The detection and analysis of COM emission from planet-forming disks is vital for understanding the chemical archaeological record of our Solar System contained within comets.  In this seminar, I will give an overview of current understanding of protoplanetary disk chemistry in light of recent data from ALMA.  I will discuss how chemistry affects the dust-ice-gas balance and influences the composition of forming comets (or icy planetesimals), the building blocks of planets.

Jason Sanders, Cambridge

Our Multi-Dimensional, Time-Evolving Galaxy

Our Galaxy is the only galaxy for which we can make detailed multi-dimensional observations of individual stars. We have access to the positions, velocities, abundances and ages of millions to billions of stars. This immense data presents a significant theoretical modelling challenge but also a great opportunity. From this data, we are in a position to measure the dynamical evolution of a galaxy, form a detailed picture of galaxy formation and probe dark matter on the smallest scales. This enterprise has been brought into focus by results from the Gaia satellite, which has revealed the detailed structure and non-equilibrium nature of our Galaxy.

I will describe my work on characterising and modelling the formation and dynamical evolution of the Milky Way in the era of Gaia. I will discuss new results on the time evolution of the central Galactic bar using the very first transverse velocity data on this region, the relationship to dark matter perturbations on tidal streams and the characterisation of the dwarf galaxies and associated dark matter haloes which build up our Galaxy.

Phil Lucas, Hertfordshire

YSO Variability in VVV: Episodic Accretion, Disc Occultations and Explosions

I will introduce VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea (VVV), the first infrared time domain of the Milky Way to cover a large area. I describe the science that we have been doing with it at Hertfordshire, where our main focus is on star formation. VVV, and the VVVX extended survey, have provided the first clear view of high amplitude variability in embedded YSOs. These systems dominate the infrared variable sky in the Galactic plane at high amplitudes. Their light curves display a veritable zoo of behaviours, typically cases of episodic accretion on various timescales but also influenced by extinction. I will present results from the new VVV/VVVX working database that include a new sample of YSOs with amplitudes > 4 mag in Ks, some possible cases of protostellar collisions and a variety of unclassified peculiar IR variables. I will also touch on the VVV/VIRAC astrometric product and the impact it is having on Galactic dynamics.

Nicholas Devereux, Embry-Riddle University

Giant Broad-Line Regions in Low-Luminosity Active Galactic Nuclei

The nearby lenticular galaxy NGC 3998 hosts the best example of an AGN fueled by chaotic cold accretion (CCA) whereby 104 K gas condenses out of a 106 K circumgalactic halo and falls toward the central supermassive BH. Photoionization modelling of visible spectra obtained with STIS aboard HST indicate that the central UV—X-ray source of NGC 3998 has ionized a large spherical volume (~ 7pc in radius) of low density (~10cm-3) gas of such extraordinarily low metallicity (~ 1/100 solar) as to dictate a circumgalactic origin. The gas pressure gradient in the H+ region of the best fitting photoionization model is several orders of magnitude smaller than required for hydrostatic equilibrium. Thus, an inflow at the free-fall velocity is inevitable, consistent with the distinctly triangular shape observed for the broad Balmer emission lines. In general, CCA can explain the low duty-cycle observed for AGN and, more specifically for NGC 3998, redirection of the jets powering the larger scale radio lobes. NGC 3998 is just one of several nearby, non-reverberating, low-luminosity AGN associated with an unusually large broad-line region. Other nearby examples of LLAGN will be discussed including M81, NGC 3227, NGC 3516, NGC 4051 and NGC 4203.

Daniel Bayliss, Warwick

Exoplanet Science with NGTS and TESS

The discovery and characterisation of transiting exoplanets allows us to explore in detail planets outside our solar system.  The NGTS facility was custom built to discover such exoplanets, and consists of twelve 20cm-telescopes situated at Paranal Observatory. Each telescope is coupled to a red-sensitive CCD camera and an extremely precise guiding system that maintains sub-pixel stability. The combination of these design features gives NGTS the most precise time-series photometry of any ground-based exoplanet transit survey. I will present some of the exciting results from the NGTS facility, focusing on the discoveries of rare and interesting planetary systems as well as other non-exoplanet science.  I will then discuss the power of NGTS to enhance the science output from the TESS mission, a space-based transit survey that has been operating for approximately one year.  In particular I will focus on long period transiting planets and planets transiting very bright host stars. These enhancements to TESS stem from the ability of NGTS to deliver longer duration monitoring, higher spatial resolution imaging, and higher time cadence imaging. I will conclude by outlining the results we may expect over the coming years from the combined power of NGTS and TESS.

Jose-Luis Gomez, Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía

Imaging Supermassive Black Holes with the Event Horizon Telescope

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has captured the first image of a black hole. The central compact radio source in the radio galaxy M87 has been resolved out into an asymmetric bright emission ring with a diameter of 42 uas, which is circular and encompasses a central
depression in brightness with a flux ratio >10:1. The emission ring is recovered using different calibration and imaging schemes, and remains stable over four different observations carried out in  different days. We compare our images to an extensive library of ray-traced GRMHD simulations showing that they are consistent in size and shape with the lensed photon orbit encircling a dark shadow caused by photon capture at the event horizon of a 6.5 billion solar masses black hole, as predicted by general relativity. Our EHT observations thus provide confirmation for the presence of supermassive black holes powering active galaxies, and present a new tool to explore gravity in its most extreme limit via repeated astronomical observations.

Paul Freeman, UCLan

When a Simple Quantum Magnet Heats Up

One current large field of research is quantum magnetism, searching for materials where quantum fluctuations drive the magnetic properties, can lead to phase transitions, or even prevent magnetic ordering. Quantum effects dominate at low temperatures where quantum fluctuations are far large than thermal fluctuations that drive classical transitions. There is relatively little known about the temperature dependence of quantum magnets. I will be talking about our research into the temperature evolution of a simple quantum magnet, a spin dimer system, and how by use of an applied magnetic field we have identified counter-intuitive properties suggestive of newly identified selection rules interactions between magnetic excitations.

Naomi Frimpong, University of Manchester

Probing the Evolution of High Mass Protostars: An ALMA Astrochemical Survey

A colour-luminosity selected sample of 39 massive young stellar objects with luminosities between 3×103 and 105 L have been observed with ALMA in cycle 3. The Band 6 observations cover a frequency range around 227GHz (in the LSB) and 241GHz (USB). The spectral setup covers multiple transitions of a range of organic species as well as the J=2-1 transition of C17O with a spectral resolution of about 1km/s at a spatial resolution of about 1″. This presentation will discuss the current status of the analysis of the oxygen bearing complex molecules such as CH3OCH3, CH3OCHO, CH3OH, CH3CHO, H2CCO and nitrogen bearing molecules such as CH3CN, NH2CHO, CH3NCO, HNCO and CH3NH2 modelled in this survey. The presentation will also show how the results are correlating with evolutionary trends proposed from laboratory experiments and chemical models and the insights it provides on the evolution of massive young stellar object (MYSO)s.

Daisuke Kawata, MSSL/UCL

Galactic Disk Dynamics with Gaia and JASMINE

European Space Agency’s Gaia mission has made the 2nd data release (Gaia DR2) on 25th April 2018. Gaia DR2 provides position, parallax and proper motions for more than one billion stars with unprecedented accuracy and radial velocity for about 7 million bright stars, which has revolutionised our view of the Milky Way. Gaia DR2 has revealed the velocity sub-structures of the Galactic stellar disk in the large range of radii, 5<Rgal<12 kpc. We found many diagonal ridges in the Rgal vs. Vrot map. We have detected also radial wave-like oscillations of the peak of the vertical velocity distribution. These features indicate that the Galactic disk are heavily perturbed. This challenges us to dynamically model the Galactic disk to understand the stellar and dark matter mass distribution in the Milky Way, because the traditional modelling assumes an equilibrium condition. We are developing a made-to-measure (M2M) model, which is capable of modelling a disequilibrium dynamical system. We demonstrate that our M2M model can recover the stellar and dark matter density simultaneously from mock data of a perturbed vertical disk modelled with one-dimensional N-body simulation. We will also report the results of our M2M application to Gaia DR2. Finally, I will also talk about the the upcoming near-infrared astrometry mission, JASMINE, which will provide the Gaia-level astrometry for the stars in the Galactic centre region.

David Aguado, University of Cambridge

Looking for the Most Metal-Poor Stars in the Milky Way

In the Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN), hydrogen, helium, and small traces of lithium and beryllium, were produced. A few million years after BBN, the first stars were born. Important questions about star formation, galactic evolution, and the yields of the first supernovae can be answered from the study of these first stars and their descendants. The most chemically primitive stars in the Milky Way are invaluable to understand the early universe, but they are extremely rare and hard to find.

Over the past few years we have been digging in the SDSS and LAMOST spectroscopic surveys and identified tens of halo stars with estimated metallicities [Fe/H] < -3. We have obtained follow-up spectroscopic observations with the 4.2m William Herschel Telescope and the 10.4m Gran Telescopio Canarias, which were subsequently analyzed using the FERRE code. From this work, we have recently discovered two dwarf stars with extremely low iron content, SDSS J0815+4729 and SDSS J0023+0307, both at [Fe/H] < -5. In addition to it, in the context of the Pristine collaboration, we have selected and followed-up metal-poor candidates identified from narrow-band photometry. A brief description of the methodology used in all of these programs will be provided, summarizing the most important results.

Alex Walton, University of Manchester

Understanding Electrocatalysts – One Man’s Journey

Electrocatalysts are vital components of many future energy conversion and storage technologies, but state-of-the-art catalysts are almost always precious metals which makes them unrealistic for widespread uptake. Several earth-abundant materials have emerged as potential replacements (in this talk I will focus on cobalt oxide as a catalyst for the Oxygen Evolution Reaction), but development of these materials is hampered by poor fundamental understanding of the surface chemistry of these materials – particularly under reaction conditions.
I will present my attempts to gain some insight into the surface chemistry of electrocatalysts by using surface science techniques.
This begins with idealised model systems, characterised by scanning Tunnelling Microscopy and X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy under ultrahigh vacuum conditions, where the fundamental interaction of 2D metal oxides with water can be followed on the atomic level.
We’ll then take these systems out of ultrahigh vacuum and towards real-world conditions by using Near-Ambient Pressure XPS – a relatively new technique which allows samples to be studied under much more realistic conditions.
I’ll finish up by discussing how we are developing this methodology to truly representative conditions via operando studies of the electrode/electrolyte interface in XPS.

James Owen, Imperial College London

The Origin of Close-in Exoplanets

The observed exoplanet population unveiled by recent detection programs is billions of years old, distinctly separated in time from the planet formation process that only lasted ~10-100 Myr. I will argue that atmospheric escape has been one of the key evolutionary drivers shaping the exoplanet population we observed today. By understanding how these planet evolve in time, I will show we can place some intriguing constraints on how they formed.

Matt Owens, University of Reading

Sun to Mud: The Challenges of Forecasting Within the Coupled Space-Weather System

Space weather can adversely affect space- and ground-based technologies, as well as pose a health risk to humans in space and on high-altitude flights. Forecasting space weather with a lead time of more than an hour requires propagation of information through the whole Sun-Earth system. Changes in the dominant physical processes, as well as the characteristic spatial and temporal scales, means this is best achieved using separate models for each physical domain (e.g., the photosphere, corona, heliosphere, magnetosphere, ionosphere, etc). The fundamental sources of uncertainty and available observational constraints differ greatly across these models, meaning coupling them presents a wealth of scientific and engineering challenges.

Natasha Jeffrey, Northumbria University

Solar Flares: Our Local Laboratory for Studying Particle Acceleration

Solar flares, the observational product of magnetic reconnection in the Sun’s atmosphere, are highly efficient particle accelerators and prime laboratories for studying acceleration processes in astrophysics. Over the last decade, our understanding of flare particle acceleration has been enhanced by multi-wavelength observations from X-rays to (E)UV to radio, and by recent advances regarding the diagnostics of energetic particles at the Sun. However, many questions remain about how and where energetic particles are accelerated, and how different plasma environments (e.g., collisions, turbulence) affect the transport and observed properties of energetic particles. Further, data from a new generation of observatories (e.g. Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter) will help to understand the connection between energetic particles at the Sun and those measured in situ in the heliosphere.

Paul Keatley, University of Exeter

Time-Resolved Scanning Kerr Microscopy of Magnetization Dynamics at the Nanoscale

Time-resolved scanning Kerr microscopy (TRSKM) is a powerful tool for the investigation of magnetization dynamics at sub-micrometer length scales with picosecond temporal resolution. A variety of measurement configurations allows a broad range of dynamic magnetic phenomena to be explored including sub-gigahertz gyrotropic oscillations of magnetic vortices, picosecond magnetic re-orientation in hard disk writers, domain wall dynamics and excitations in nanowires, non-uniform confinement of spin waves in nanomagnets, and ferromagnetic resonance of thin films at low-temperature. Recently TRSKM has been used to understand the coupled response of vortices, domain walls, and spin-waves that govern the behaviour of magnonic metamaterials for magnetic logic and signal processing applications. At the same time, the influence of a spin-torque on these magnetic excitations is of fundamental interest for spintronic devices for non-volatile memory elements and microwave oscillators.
In this presentation a brief introduction to nanoscale magnetisation dynamics, magneto-optics, and TRSKM will be given, with exemplar studies on individual thin-film nanomagnets. Recent developments of TRSKM for the study of spintronic devices that utilise spin transfer torque or spin Hall effects will be presented, in addition to the recently demonstrated platform for near-field magneto-optical imaging. Finally, the Exeter time-resolved magnetism (EXTREMAG) facility will be presented. EXTREMAG is an ultrafast laser user facility offering external users access to low temperature and high magnetic field measurement environments for a variety of time-domain optical pump-probe, microscopy, and terahertz experiments. The current status of the facility and its planned capability for the first user call will be described.