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Hayashi Lab
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The lab explores how the spin of electrons and light behaves inside materials.
AboutAbout the lab
Examining how spin moves in materials
The Hayashi Lab studies how spin, the angular momentum of electrons, behaves inside materials.
Spin plays an important role in many phenomena, including magnetism, electrical conduction, optical response, and superconductivity.
In addition to electrons and photons, phonons, which are lattice vibrations, and magnons, which are magnetic excitations, also carry spin.
The lab experimentally investigates how these particles and waves move inside materials and what physical properties they give rise to.
Key terms
- Spin
- Angular momentum carried by electrons and photons, often likened to rotation. It is the origin of magnetic properties.
- Spin current
- A flow of electrons whose spins are aligned. It carries spin angular momentum rather than charge.
- Phonon
- A wave formed by the vibration of the atoms that make up a material propagating through it. It is one type of elementary excitation in a material.
NewsLab news
Paper: Clarifying the advantages of optical measurement of spin-orbit torque
Postdoctoral researcher receives the Japan Society of Applied Physics Young Scientist Presentation Award
Paper: Optical observation of the spin of Dirac electrons
Graduate student receives the Best Poster Award at WINGS-QSTEP
Paper: Successful control of optical anisotropy using light pulses
ResearchResearch themes
The spin of electrons plays an important role in many phenomena, including magnetism, electrical conduction, optical response, and superconductivity. The lab investigates how particles and waves that carry spin, such as electrons, photons, phonons, and magnons, move inside materials and what physical properties they produce.
*Illustrative imagePhysics of spin currents
A flow of electrons whose spins are aligned is called a spin current. Unlike an electric current, it involves no dissipation and carries spin angular momentum rather than charge. By injecting it into another material, the lab examines how spin affects the material's properties.
*Illustrative imageNonlinear optical effects
Photons also have spin, which appears as right-handed and left-handed circularly polarized light. It has been theoretically proposed that shining intense circularly polarized light greatly changes the electronic states in a material, and the lab investigates the properties that arise from this.
*Illustrative imageStates in which particles and waves are strongly coupled
Electrons, photons, phonons, and magnons couple with one another. When the coupling becomes strong, new states that combine the properties of two of them appear, so the lab experimentally studies the conditions for realizing these states and their nonlinear responses.
MembersFaculty
The members of the Hayashi Lab are faculty, postdoctoral researchers, and graduate students.As of 2026
- ProfessorMasamitsu HayashiPublications ↗
- Assistant ProfessorMasashi Kawaguchi
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Report an errorAbout the images
The top and research theme images are illustrative and were not taken at the lab. They are cropped from Wikimedia Commons images. Cropped CC BY-SA images are provided under the same CC BY-SA license as the original (version shown on each line).
- Top image: “Optical elements and green laser beem” Dasha Butova / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Physics of spin currents: “Wiki-YIG” Krizu / CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)
- Nonlinear optical effects: “Schematic representation of SHG Machine” Diwakar Karuppiah / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- States in which particles and waves are strongly coupled: “Cavity exiton polariton” Alexey Kavokin / CC0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Nakatsuji-Sakai Lab): “FZU AV CR Silicon Single Crystal C” Mojmir Churavy / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Kobayashi Lab): “Irradiated spot of diamond with high concentration of nitrogen-vacancy centers” Lillian B. Hughes ほか
/ CC BY 4.0 (cropped) - Related lab (Katsura Lab): “Icosahedrite Diffraction Pattern” Paul Steinhardt / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Arita Lab): “Magnetic levitation of a superconductor” Your stepbro sunset / CC BY 4.0 (cropped)
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