Bradford Barker

Dr. Bradford Barker joined Florida Polytechnic University as an assistant professor in August 2024. Prior to joining the University, he was a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering at the University of California, Merced, from February 2023 to July 2023. Before this, he was a postdoctoral scholar at the institution and a graduate student researcher at the University of California, Berkeley’s Department of Physics.

Outside the classroom, Barker enjoys building, repairing, and sometimes even playing electronic instruments. His current literary interests include exploring the various strains of the 19th century Romantic movement, after encountering and taking seriously Bertrand Russell’s condemnation of Lord Byron in The History of Western Philosophy. Barker also is an increasingly good home cook.

Education

• Ph.D. in Physics, University of California, Berkeley, 2018
• M.S. in Physics, University of California, Berkeley, 2010
• B.S. in Physics and Mathematics, University of Florida, 2008

Expertise

• Electronic structure theory and computation
• Computational condensed matter physics
• Many-body perturbation theory development
• Atomic defects in wide-bandgap semiconductors
• Excited state theory

Professional Activities

• Member, American Physical Society, 2011-current
• Member, American Chemical Society, 2018-2021

Select Publications

• BA Barker, N Pokhrel, MK Hossain, K Inzani, SM Griffin, EA Nowadnick (2024). Highly tunable magnetocrystalline anisotropy energy in Fe3+-doped BaTiO3. Submitted.
• BA Barker, A Seshappan, DA Strubbe (2024). Computation of the expectation value of the spin operator for the spin-flip Bethe–Salpeter equation. Electronic Structure, 6 (2), 027001.
• JC Thomas, W Chen, Y Xiong, BA Barker, J Zhou, W Chen, A Rossi, et al., (2024). A substitutional quantum defect in WS2 discovered by high-throughput computational screening and fabricated by site-selective STM manipulation.  Nature communications, 15 (1), 3556.
• B Hou, D Wang, BA Barker, DY Qiu  (2023). Exchange-Driven Intermixing of Bulk and Topological Surface States by Chiral Excitons in  Bi2Se3. Physical Review Letters, 130 (21), 216402.
• BA Barker, J Deslippe, J Lischner, M Jain, OV Yazyev, DA Strubbe, SG Louie (2022). Spinor GW/Bethe-Salpeter calculations in BerkeleyGW: Implementation, symmetries, benchmarking, and performance. Physical Review B, 106 (11), 115127.
• BA Barker, DA Strubbe (2022). Spin-flip Bethe-Salpeter equation approach for ground and excited states of open-shell molecules and defects in solids. arXiv preprint arXiv:2207.04549.
• BA Barker, SG Louie (2022). The electronic structure of -HgS via GW calculations. arXiv preprint arXiv:2203.15831
• D Wing, JB Haber, R Noff, B Barker, DA Egger, A Ramasubramaniam, SG Louie, JB Neaton, L Kronik (2019). Comparing time-dependent density functional theory with many-body perturbation theory for semiconductors: Screened range-separated hybrids and the GW plus Bethe-Salpeter Approach. Physical Review Materials, 3 (6), 064603.
• BA Barker, AJ Bradley, MM Ugeda, S Coh, A Zettl, MF Crommie, SG Louie, ML Cohen (2019). Geometry and electronic structure of iridium adsorbed on graphene. Physical Review B, 99 (7), 075431.
• K Frohna, T Deshpande, J Harter, W Peng, BA Barker, JB Neaton, SG Louie, OM Bakr, D Hsieh, M Bernardi (2018). Inversion symmetry and bulk Rashba effect in methylammonium lead iodide perovskite single crystals. Nature communications, 9 (1), 1829.