Office: 2372 NPB
352.392.4718

Lab: 1126 NPB
352.392.4715

tanner@phys.ufl.edu






















































David Tanner

Distinguished Professor


Education

PhD Cornell University (1972)

Research Group

Condensed Matter Experiment/MAG Lab

Research Interests

Optical properties of solids. Optical effects in solids occur in the wavelength range from the far infrared through the near ultraviolet. Dr. Tanner's group studies materials by optical reflectance or transmittance over this entire range. We have spent a lot of time and effort to achieve coverage over a very broad spectral range (more than a factor of 104). The emphasis is on obtaining accurate reflectance values on small, often anisotropic, crystals, with analysis via Kramers-Kronig techiques to estimate the optical conductivity and dielectric function. The materials may be studied at temperatures down to that of liquid helium. Among the topics being studied are high-temperature superconductors, conducting polymers, and low-dimensional organic systems.

Axion search: The axion search is a hypothetical elementary particle which is a candidate for the "dark matter" of the universe. With Pierre Sikivie and Neil Sullivan, Dr. Tanner contributed to the design and construction of a pilot axion detector, which operated at UF for two years. Many of its features are incorporated into a full-scale experiment that is now operating at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The Florida group recently contributed a high-resolution spectral analysis package to this experiment.

LIGO: The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) project is constructing 4-km-arm Michelson interferometers at sites in Washington state and Louisiana for detecting gravitational waves from astronomical sources. LIGO will have the sensitivity to detect these gravity waves over a frequency band from 100 to about 10 kHz. Dr. Tanner is part of a group at the University of Florida which participates in the LIGO project, both by contributing to the construction of the initial LIGO facility, in particular the input/output optics, and by considering advanced configurations for the LIGO detector.

Selected Publications

Tanner DB, Sievers AJ, and Buhrman RA. "Far-infrared absorption in small metallic particles," Phys. Rev. B 11, 1330-1341 (1975).

Tanner DB, Cummings KD, and Jacobsen CS. "Far-infrared study of the charge density wave in tetrathiafulvalene tetracyanoquinodi-methane (TTF-TCNQ)," Phys. Rev. Lett. 47, 597-600 (1981).

Kamarás K, Herr SL, Porter CD, Tache N, Tanner DB, Etemad S, Venkatesan T, Chase E, Inam A, Wu XD, Hegde MS, and Dutta B. "In a clean high-Tc superconductor you do not see the gap", Phys. Rev. Lett. 64, 84-87 (1990).

Romero DB, Porter CD, Tanner DB, Forro L, Mandrus D, Mihaly L, Carr GL, and Williams GP. "Quasiparticle damping in Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8 and Bi2Sr2CaCuO6", Phys. Rev. Lett. 68, 1590-1593 (1992).

Kohlman RS, Zibold A, Tanner DB, Ihas GG, Ishiguro T, Min YG, MacDiarmid AG, and Epstein AJ. "Limits for metallic conductivity in conducting polymers" , Phys. Rev. Lett. 78, 3915-3918 (1997).