Thanks to everyone who attended the First Order Reversal Curve (FORC) Workshop held last week on the campus of the University of Minnesota. Approximately 60 researchers attended the one and a half day event, with the group of attendees evenly represented by physicists, material scientists, and earth and planetary scientists.
Organized by Dr. Josh Feinberg of the University of Minnesota’s Institute for Rock Magnetism and Dr. Leonard Spinu of the University of New Orleans’ Advanced Materials Research Institute and sponsored by Lake Shore, the workshop began with an introduction to the theory underlying the FORC technique and a symposium of speakers from a range of disciplines. Symposium talks were presented so they would be easily accessible by researchers outside the presenters’ immediate fields of study.
In addition to Dr. Feinberg and Dr. Spinu, symposium speakers included Dr. Alexandru Stancu of Cuza University, Dr. Richard Harrison of Cambridge University, Dr. Kai Liu and Dr. Gergely Zimanyi of University of California Davis, and Dr. Victorino Franco of University of Seville.
Day 2 was dedicated to hands-on training on the use of FORCs to characterize materials. During this time, Dr. Spinu discussed the procedures for acquiring FORC data, and Dr. Harrison discussed the methods of FORC data processing.
At the conclusion of the workshop, several people suggested that the workshop be held again. Therefore, if it can be arranged, we’re hoping future FORC workshops can be scheduled on either an annual or a biennial basis either immediately before or after major magnetics conferences.
Here are some photos from the two days:
