Department of Physics

Faculty Description


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Research Statement
  • As an experimentalist working in the area of condensed matter physics, I am interested in strongly correlated electron phenomena in novel d- and f-electron materials. These phenomena include superconductivity, magnetism, and effects arising from their interplay, heavy fermion behavior, and non-Fermi liquid behavior. I am especially interested in unconventional superconductivity that occurs in cuprates in which the superconducting critical temperature Tc attains values as high as ~ 130 K and heavy fermion materials in which Tc ~ 1 K. Heavy fermion materials are compounds of rare earth or actinide ions with partially-filled f-electron shells (e.g., Ce, Yb, U) in which the conduction electrons have effective masses as large as several hundred times the free electron mass. It is widely believed that the unconventional superconductivity found in these two classes of materials involves pairing of electrons, mediated by spin fluctuations, in states with angular momentum greater than zero (p- or d-wave superconductivity). Recently, superconductivity with Tc = 1.85 K in the filled skutterudite compound PrOs4Sb12, the first heavy fermion superconductor based on Pr, was discovered in our laboratory at the University of California, San Diego. There is evidence for triplet-spin (p-wave) pairing of superconducting electrons in PrOs4Sb12, which may be mediated by electric quadrupole fluctuations, rather than spin fluctuations. I also have a strong interest is non-Fermi liquid behavior and other exotic states, such as unconventional superconductivity, that are found in d- and f-electron materials in the vicinity of quantum critical points, values of a control parameter such as composition, pressure, or magnetic field where a second order phase transition is suppressed to 0 K.
Awards & News
  • UCSD Professor of Physics Elected To National Academy Of Sciences
  • The National Academy of Sciences today elected a biology professor and a physics professor at the University of California, San Diego to membership in the prestigious academy, one of the highest honors bestowed on U.S. scientists and engineers.

    M. Brian Maple, Bernd T. Matthias professor of physics and director of UCSD's Institute for Pure and Applied Physical Sciences, and Charles S. Zuker, a professor of biology and of neurosciences at UCSD, were among the 72 new members and 18 foreign associates from 13 countries elected to the academy this morning in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

    Their election brings the number of current faculty members at UCSD who are members of the National Academy of Sciences to 71, ranking the university seventh in the nation in the number of academy members. The National Academy of Sciences, established by Congress in 1863, serves as an official adviser to the federal government on matters of science and technology.

    Mark Thiemens, Dean of UCSD's Division of Physical Sciences, and Eduardo Macagno, Dean of UCSD's Division of Biological Sciences, noted that The election of Professor Maple and Professor Zuker to the academy today is a testament to their scientific achievements and underscores the intellectual vitality of UCSD's two science divisions.

    It's often said that Roger Revelle built this university from the top down by recruiting members of the National Academy of Sciences to UCSD. But much of our scientific talent, as demonstrated by the election today, resides in the faculty who have developed and established themselves at UCSD, added the two deans.

    Maple received his doctorate in physics from UCSD in 1969, working under the renowned UCSD physicist Bernd Matthias, and was named Distinguished Alumnus of the Year at UCSD in 1987. An expert on high-temperature superconductors materials that lose all resistance to electricity at commercially attainable, cold temperatures he presided over the celebrated high-temperature superconductivity session, dubbed the Woodstock of Physics, during the American Physical Society's March meeting in 1987. His research interests also include magnetism, low-temperature physics, high-pressure physics and surface science. Maple has been on the faculty at UCSD since 1973.

    Zuker, a 46-year-old neurobiologist, was born in Chile and moved to the U.S. to obtain his doctorate in molecular biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Zuker is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and has been on the faculty at UCSD since 1987. Recently elected to the Academy of Arts and Sciences, Zuker and his colleagues in his laboratory employ a combined molecular, genetic, and physiological approach to investigate the biology of sensory transduction mechanisms in photoreceptors, mechanoreceptors and taste receptors.

    Attribution: Kim McDonaldhttp://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/science/mcnas.asp

  • M. Brian Maple Named Honorary Professor of the W. Trzebiatowski Institute of Low Temperature and Structure Research, Polish Academy of Sciences, Wroclaw, Poland
  • Professor M. Brian Maple was awarded the title of Honorary Professor of the W. Trzebiatowski Institute of Low Temperature and Structure Research, Polish Academy of Sciences, Wroclaw, Poland. The Honorary Professorship was conferred at the Institute during the International Conference on f-Elements that was held in Wroclaw, September 20 - 25, 2006. Professor Maple is the 10th person, and first American, to be awarded an Honorary Professorship of the Institute since this honor was first bestowed in 1994. The conferment of the Honorary Professorship was conducted in Latin and included the presentation of a certificate and a medal. Following the Conferment Ceremony, Professor Maple gave a lecture entitled "Novel types of superconductivity in f-electron materials."

    The Institute of Low Temperature and Structure Research was established in 1966 and is named after Professor W. Trzebiatowski, who played a key role in the establishment of the Institute, served as its first Director, and later became the President of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Professor Trzebiatowski is known for the discovery in 1952 of ferromagnetism in uranium hydride UH3. This came as a great surprise since metallic uranium was known to be completely nonmagnetic and, at that time, ferromagnetic ordering had only been found in metals and alloys of the iron group, as well as in gadolinium, one of the rare earth metals.

    Professor Maple has collaborated with researchers at the W. Trzebiatowski Institute since 1976 and coauthored eight joint papers. His most recent projects with the Institute concern the nonmagnetic Kondo effect in actinides and the physics of strongly correlated electron behavior in lanthanide and actinide filled skutterudite arsenide compounds.

    See full article here: http://physicalsciences.ucsd.edu/news_events/news_archives/2007_Archive/07.26.02.maple.poland.htm
Selected Publications
  • - M. B. Maple, E. D. Bauer, V. S. Zapf, and J. Wosnitza, "Unconventional Superconductivity in Novel Materials," in The Physics of Superconductors, eds. K. H. Bennemann and J. B. Ketterson, Springer, Berlin, 2004, Vol. II (Superconductivity in Nanostructures, High-Tc and Novel Superconductors, Organic Superconductors) ch. 8.

  • - B. J. Taylor, Shi Li, M. B. Maple, and M. P. Maley, "Vortex-melting and vortex-glass transitions in a high purity twinned YBa2Cu3O7-? single crystal," Physical Review B 68, 054523 (2003).

  • - M. B. Maple, P.-C. Ho, N. A. Frederick, V. S. Zapf, W. M. Yuhasz, E. D. Bauer, A. D. Christianson, and A. H. Lacerda, "Superconductivity and the high-field ordered phase in the heavy-fermion compound PrOs4Sb12," Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter 15, S2071 (2003).

  • - V. S. Zapf, R. P. Dickey, E. J. Freeman, C. Sirvent, and M. B. Maple, "Magnetic and non-Fermi-liquid properties of U1-xLaxPd2Al3," Physical Review B 65, 024437 (2001).

  • - D. L. Cox and M. B. Maple, "Electronic pairing in exotic superconductors," Physics Today 48, 32 (1995).

  • - M. B. Maple, M. C. de Andrade, J. Herrmann, Y. Dalichaouch, D. A. Gajewski, C. L. Seaman, R. Chau, R. Movshovich, M. C. Aronson, and R. Osborn, "Non-Fermi liquid ground states in strongly correlated f-electron materials," Journal of Low Temperature Physics 99, 223 (1995).