people: A. Passian

Dr. Ali Passian

Dr. Ali Passian is a researcher with the Nanoscale Science and Devices Group at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He received a Master of Science degree in physics in January 1993 from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden with a thesis work related to fusion plasma spectroscopy carried out at the Plasma Fusion and Science Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

He then joined the Manne Siegbahn Institute for Atomic Physics in Stockholm Sweden, where he studied the atomic life times in XeII. Thereafter, he worked at the physics department of the Stockholm University until May 1994 when he joined the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Tennessee. In August 2000 he received his Ph.D. in physics for his work related to collective electronic effects in Scanning Probe Microscopy carried out at ORNL.

Dr. Passian’s current research interests include:

• Surface physics, in particular those relating to collective electronic behavior, surface plasmons, optical modes (near field phenomena, photon tunneling, plasmon interference, localized field enhancement), photon scanning tunneling microscopy (PSTM).
• Electrodynamic modeling and simulation, Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD), Finite Elements.
• Surface plasmon assisted coupling (SPAC), photothermal spectroscopy, thermal lensing.
• Application of integral transforms in potential theory, in particular those pertaining to Mehler-Fock, and Lebedev-Kontorovich transforms.
• Microscale flow phenomena, in particular those occurring in the non-continuum regime, in moderate-high Knudsen number range, and thermal transpiration systems.
• Linear and non-linear dynamical systems, in particular those described by functional differential equations such as Delay Differential Equations (DDE).
• Microcantilever research.
  

Selected publications

L. Broström, S. Mannervik, A. Passian, and G. Sundström, “Investigation of Some Transitions and Lifetimes in XeII,” Phys. Rev. A 49 (5), 3333-3337 (May 1994).

F. Meriaudeau, T. R. Downey, A. Passian, A. Wig, and T. L. Ferrell, “Environmental effects on surface plasmon spectra in gold island films potential for sensing applications,” Applied Optics 37 (34), 8030-8037 (1998).

A. Passian, A. Wig, F. Meriaudeau, M. Buncick, T. Thundat and T. L. Ferrell, “Electrostatic force density for a scanned probe above a charged surface,” J. Appl. Phys. 90 (2), (2001).

A. Passian, G. Muralidharan, S. Kouchekian, A. Mehta, S. Cherian, T. L. Ferrell, and T. Thundat, “Dynamics of self-driven microcantilevers,” J. Appl. Phys. 91 (7), (2002).

A. Passian, H. Simpson, and T. L. Ferrell, “On the orthogonality of the MacDonald's functions,” In review process in Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications (JMAA), (2003).

A. Passian, R. J. Warmack, T. L. Ferrell, and T. Thundat, “Thermal transpiration at microscale: A Crookes cantilever,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 90 (12), 124503 (2003).

A. L. Lereu, A. Passian, T. L. Ferrell, and T. Thundat, “Effect of thermal variations on the Knudsen forces in the transitional regime,” Appl. Phys. Lett. 84 (6), 1013 (Feb. 2004).