Where does all this intuitive science come from? From asking, studying, applying… Science is no more than a body of knowledge which helps us understand things better, the universe and the principles governing the laws of nature.
What are you currently working on? Our UBX unit in Barcelona works on investigating and discovering new fundamental laws of physics inside the field we call quantum magnetism. It may seem a cabbalistic pirouette and little more but I assure you that the basic researchers have an important surplus. Everything that is new helps.
And you also give classes. I dedicate a fourth of my time to teaching. It is essentials for me. I find it exciting to explain physics; I like to see the effect a specific question may have in the imagination of one of my students. The most gratifying for a teacher is to transmit knowledge. Maybe the much grumbled Bologna is no more than an interaction area between what one teaches and what the others learn, and that is a reward which is difficult to achieve in other professions. Some students of this faculty have become professors at different universities in Spain and other parts of the World, like the United State or China. And all we have done is play a game of questions and answers with nature.
When and how did you decide to study physics? It comes from family. My father, a chemist, worked in a bleach plant and I liked to take part in the experiments he did. I also liked mathematics a lot and to understand physics, a mathematical language is needed.
Your love for discipline was then born. It was like an irresistible attraction. In my opinion, physics is the mother of all sciences, and many of the great questions life makes could be answered in physical keys.
Have you found any answer to some of these questions? In our unit, we have humbly identified the effect of spin-resonant tunnelling, internationally considered as an historic milestone. We have recognized quantum phenomena in the area of magnetism at very low temperatures; we do experiments of magnetization of materials and rehearse microwaves applied to the field of biomedicine. Another important finding has been the magnetic deflagration, which is the only deflagration of nature governed by the quantum law.
A LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL The tunnelling of magnetization was an historic milestone for the science of the twenty-first Century. It is based on an unusual property of quantum mechanics discovered by Tejada's team, together with the City University of New York and the Xerox Company in the 90. It was the first time that a Spanish physicist discovered a new phenomenon in the most recent history of sciences. Nature magazine, in fact, qualifies this finding as a point of inflection as well as Milestones in Spin places the experiment amongst the main contributions of physics like Albert Einstein, Paul A. M. Dirac, Otto Stern, Felix Bloch, E. M. Purcell, Douglas Osheroff, Robert Richardson, David Lee, Frank Wilczek, David Gross, David Politzer, Albert Fert or Peter Grünberg.
What to expect from such a discovery? Not long from now: quantum computers, electric transformers, magnetic plastics and fridges, mesoscopic compasses of very high sensitivity, magnetic catalysts and a long et cetera.
