Shufeng Zhang from the University of Arizona visited our group in July and gave an inspiring talk on "Angular momentum transport in magnetic structures".

On July 4th and 5th the SPICE team and INSPIRE group had an internal group workshop in the picturesque village of Sörgenloch close to Mainz. In the nice atmosphere of Schloss Sörgenloch the SPICE team and INSPIRE group focused on team building processes and internal working strategies. The group also used the occasion to welcome Ulrike Ritzmann, as well as Bertrand Dupé and Marie Böttcher, who will join the group in October 2016. After a very successful first day, the group enjoyed the food and a variety of local wines served on the Schloss Sörgenloch terrace in the evening. On the second day of the workshop the group worked on presentation techniques and communication skills under the guidance of two coaches from an improvisational theater. We thank the participants for two beautiful and very successful days in Sörgenloch..

With the impending end of traditional Si based electronics due to Moore's law limitations, the need for novel approaches to next generation device design is not only apparent, but has become a popular interdisciplinary research topic. From research in fabrication engineering and device architectural design to devices based on intrinsically different physics, there is ample room for research from physics, chemistry, and engineering perspectives. From June 13th to 17th, our  SPICE Young Research Leaders Workshop was held to approach the problem from a primarily materials perspective aiming to use external stimuli such as classical gating, ionic liquid gating, optical excitation, magnetic field control, strain, etc. to cause large physical property changes in Dirac and Weyl materials due to their unique, sensitive and modifyable Fermi surfaces. Together with co-organizer Jairo Sinova, the organizers Mazhar Ali and Binghai Yan brought together 22 young experts in theoretical and experimental physics, solid state chemistry, and electrical engineering in a multi-disciplinary collaborative effort to quickly bring the exciting new physics of Dirac and Weyl materials to practical application. Through the foundations laid in this workshop, we hope to spark a new field of electronics, discover new materials, new properties, new physics, and possibly create devices based on changing between fundamental states of matter.

For videos of the talks and further information, visit the workshop home page.

This week, SPICE hosted a Workshop boosting the new field of Quantum Acoustics‐ a phonon analogue of quantum optics on chip – where single phonons in the form of high‐frequency surface acoustic waves (SAWs) propagate in acoustic waveguides coupling remote qubits. The team of organisers consisted of Göran Johansson (Chalmers, Sweden), Christopher Bäuerle (CNRS, France), Paulo Santos (PDI, Germany) and Floris Zwanenburg (Twente, Netherlands). They brought together three scientific communities which have not interacted substantially before, i.e. Surface Acoustic Waves, Solid State Spin Qubits and Superconducting Qubits. In the beautiful location of Schloss Waldthausen, fifty-two international scientists used talks, discussions and a poster session to explore contact points and potential synergies for these three fields. We thank the organizers and all participants for a successful workshop.

For videos of the talks and further information, visit the workshop home page.

This year, the Universidad del Norte in Barranquilla celebrated its 50th anniversary. As part of the festivities, the 19th Catédra Europa took place from March 14th - 18th. The large scale event provides a platform for scientific and cultural encounters between Colombian and European Academia. Jairo Sinova was invited to introduce his visions for new interdisciplinary approaches to scientific work, which he likes to compare to a scientific tango. Accordingly, his lecture was entitled "El tango de la fisica".

View the video of the lecture.

Read the news article in El Heraldo from March 17th.

Read the news article in El Heraldo from March 18th.

On March 6th, the first day of this year's DPG spring meeting in Regensburg, Christian Back from the University of Regensburg, Stefania Pizzini from the Institut Néel, CNRS and Yuriy Mokrousov from Forschungszentrum Jülich, gave an introductory session on "Spin Hall Effect and Spin-Orbit Torques." In their respective talks, Christian Back introduced the basic concepts of spin currents and spin Hall effect, Stefania Pizzini gave an experimental introduction to spin-orbit torques and Yuriy Mokrousov explained the basics of berry phase physics and spin Hall conductivity on the example of the curvature of a potato chip. Read the full German article.

The organising team, Karin Everschor-Sitte and Matthias Sitte thank all speakers and participants for a very successful session.

Since Wednesday, Xavier Waintal from the Grenoble Institute of Nanosciences and Cryogenics has been our guest. On Thursday, he gave an engaging talk on "Ultrafast pulses, spin torque and artificial antiferromagnets."

This year we repeated an experience we already made last February: You better avoid wearing your favourite tie on Weiberfastnacht, the German tradition of the women's carnival, as on that day, everything that dangles freely is likely to be... well... cut off.