Description of the main research facilities
Laboratory of Matter out of Equilibrium
Surface Physics and Nanomaterials Lab
Laboratory for Robust Optical Phenomena
Mechanical workshop
Computational clusters
Laboratory of Matter out of Equilibrium
Surface Physics and Nanomaterials Lab
Laboratory for Robust Optical Phenomena
Mechanical workshop
Computational clusters
In our Laboratory with a 300m2 surface, we study hydrodynamic instabilities in free-surface flows, such as the Faraday instability and the generation of non-propagative hydrodynamic solitons and their interactions. We also study the effect of noise and fluctuations in turbulent flows and fludized granular systems, wave turbulence and noise-induced surface wave localization. In addition, we perform acoustic characterization of materials using resonant ultrasonic spectroscopy (“in-house” built RUS system using a SR870 spectrum analyzer and NI-PCI M Series acquisition card and PCI-GPIB system).
Lastly, we study the fluidized nature of vibrated quasi-two dimensional granular systems (2 electromechanical VTS 80 shakers, 1 electromechanical VTS100 and B&K 4824 shakers, and their respective power amplifiers). For these studies we possess a high speed camera (IDT X3), which is used for PTV analysis and general image analysis purposes, and also we are implementing an “in-house” PIV techinque. We also use a new local surface wave measurement technique using capacitive sensors developed by phase-sensitive detection (4 SR830 lock-in amplifiers).
We have recently implemented a microfluidics fabrication room and laboratory facilities, with an optical table, oven, optical microscope, chemical cabinet, spin-coater and digital camera.
(*) Upon collaborations the access to these facilities may be discussed.
Constructed recently (2012), it is located at the basement of the DFI building, with a surface of 20 m2. It has a 1×2 m2 optical table with actuators to reduce vibration, a V2 green laser (Verdi 2, CW, 532 nm, monomode), a probe red laser (Thorlabs 24 mW, CW, 630, monomode), 6 CCD cameras with motorized capabilities, 1 Spatial Light Modulator (Holoeye, 400×720 pix, Transmission), 1 microscope with a mounted CCD camera, 4 power stations to control and analyze data, and optical devices, mounts, splitters, polarizers and lenses (up to 80k USD in optics with a wide range of properties) to create new experimental setups (including a nonlinear optical valve with nonlinear feedback including a fiber bundle).
Currently, in this laboratory there are implemented: a liquid crystal light valve with optical feedback, a dye-doped liquid crystal cells under intense rays of light, and cells with carved electrodes.
Presently, besides several distributed workstations, the Physics Department has a parallelizable cluster for exclusive use. The cluster with 96 cores of Xeon 5504 CPUs allows for sequential computations and shared or distributed memory parallelism. Also, the DFI has access to a large cluster for intensive parallelism with 528 cores in a IBM iDataPlex machine.
These clusters have been used to make simulations of dense granular systems at large hydrodynamic times (3), spin dynamics in nanostructures (2), quantum and classical transport in heterogeneous media (2), diffusion in bacterial baths (1), and nuclear collisions starting from nucleon-nucleon interactions (1). In parenthesis it is indicated the number of students that have done MSc or PhD thesis using extensive numerical simulations in the past 5 years.
More information on its use and access / Más información sobre su uso y acceso