Welcome To KFUPM Physics

Welcome to the Department of Physics at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals. I invite you to explore our website where you can find information about our academic programs, courses, research activities, and faculty members. Physics has always been at the forefront of exploration. This is accomplished through cognitive enhancement by education transmitted through academic courses as well as carrying out research at the cutting-edge frontiers of human knowledge. The Physics department offer courses that are solidly based on the American system to meet international quality assurance requirements, which has placed the Department as a world-class regional center in a leading international institution. Our student body includes pure-physics students and double-major students, which reflects the interdisciplinary nature of our program. In addition, our research facilities span various fields of physics including condensed matter physics, lasers, materials research, magnetism and superconductivity, nuclear physics, and nonlinear and computational physics. Over the past five decades, our faculty members have conducted research using in-house facilities as well as collaborative research with national and international centers.

Mohammad Al-Kuhaili,
Professor & Chairman, Physics Department

Mission & Goals View Recent Events

Research and Academic activity statistics 2015 to 2021

3.1

Average Impact Factor Publications​

51

Patents

10042

Cumulative Citation Count​

452

Publications

Recent News

View all news

Recent Events

View all events
Seminar

Advanced Top-Gate-Controlled Superconducting Switches Enabling High Performance Logic Circuits

Speaker: 
Dr. Khalil Harrabi

Date: Monday, 30 September 2024
Time: 11:00 a.m.

Location: Bldg. 6/Room 125

Abstract: 

I will begin my presentation with a brief overview of superconductivity and its current hot-topic applications. Following that, I'll introduce our experiment at KFUPM. The suppression of the critical current of the superconducting wire is a cutting-edge development in superconductor-based logic circuits. Recently, the modulation of the critical current was reported in different type of materials. Controversy to the reported experiments, we have investigated the effect of top gate on superconducting wire. Our experimental measurements reveal a significant lower gate threshold value to suppress the superconductivity making its potential application attractive for the logic circuit. The output voltage of one wire at non-equilibrium regime will serve to control the gate of the others wires. We propose a phonon-mediated heating process as the underlying mechanism and analyze our experimental results using time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau (TDGL) theory. Additionally, our system shows promise for single-photon detection applications, where adjusting the gate voltage under a constant bias current allows for precise tuning of detectable photon frequencies.

Biography:
Dr. Khalil Harrabi is a Professor in the Physics Department at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. He obtained his D.E.A. (equivalent to a master’s) in Solid State Physics and a PhD in Condensed Matter Physics from Paris VI University. His postdoctoral research as an EU Research Officer at Royal Holloway, University of London, focused on quantum computing with qubits made from electrons on liquid helium surfaces. He then joined the Nano Electronics Research Laboratories at NEC Corporation in Japan, working on a project funded by the Japanese Science and Technology Agency (JST), NEC, and RIKEN, where he researched decoherence and demonstrated quantum algorithms using superconducting flux qubits.  In 2012, Dr. Harrabi completed his Habilitation at Pierre and Marie Curie University (Paris VI). Prof. Harrabi collaborates with prominent institutions including the University of Antwerp, MIT, Imperial College London, ENS Paris, and NEC Japan. His research interests encompass nonequilibrium superconductivity for single-photon detection, artificial neurons for networking, quantum cryptography, and quantum computing. He has published over 75 papers in prestigious journals such as Nature Physics and Science. In addition he has  more 2,550 citations.
 
All faculty, researchers and students are invited to attend.

    Location and Time

  • 6/125

  • 30 Sep, 2024

  • 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM