Prof. Kedar Damle, Assoc. Prof. Dept of Theoretical Physics, TIFR, Mumbai
Prof. Kedar Damle is also Joint Faculty ICTS-TIFR, Bangalore, and Adjunct Faculty at IIT Bombay. He did B.Tech. in Engineering Physics, from I.I.T. Bombay, and Ph.D in Physics, from Yale University. He was awarded the Birla Science Prize (2010)

Some insulating solids contain magnetic moments (spins) on a regular lattice of sites. These are formed when electron-electron interaction effects cause electrons to become localized instead of moving freely like they do inside a metal. These spins predominantly interact with each other via antiferromagnetic `exchange' interactions between neighbours, giving rise in many cases to long range antiferromagnetic order below transition temperatures of order the exchange energy scale. However, if the geometry of the lattice
forces various exchange interactions to compete with each other, the spins can evade this ordering tendency down to temperatures much lower than the exchange scale, forming a `spin liquid'. I will describe this physics and talk about our work on impurity effects in such spin liquids.