Ferrons and Magnons: friends or foes?

Workshop, July 7th - 9th, 2026

Ferromagnets/Ferroelectrics are materials in which magnetic/electric dipoles spontaneously align below an often high critical temperature. Applied magnetic/electric fields switch this order in devices such as MRAM/EPROM non-volatile memories. Magneto/electro-caloric cooling applications employ the entropy changes associated with the dipolar order. Both material classes are useful in electronics as inductors/capacitors.
“Magnonics” is a subfield of magnetism that studies spin waves, the excitations of the magnetic order that are quantized into “magnons”. A community that studies polarization waves or “ferrons” in ferroelectrics does not exist yet.
This interdisciplinary workshop brings together researchers actively interested in the excitations of the magnetic and ferroelectric orders, magnons and ferrons, respectively, motivated by recent seminal experimental results that both confirm and challenge existing theories of ferron excitations.

This workshop is organized by SPICE as part of the Gutenberg International Conference Center (GICC) at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU). The GICC is funded through the German Research Foundation’s (DFG) university allowance in the Excellence Strategy program and aims at fostering JGU as a national and international research hub. By organizing regular conferences and workshops in fields of excellent JGU research, the GICC provides a platform to build interest networks and collaborations – to promote exchange and dialog among academics and research groups from all over the world.

Organizers
Gerrit Bauer, Tohoku University/UCAS
Xianzhe Chen, Fudan
Ryo Iguchi, NIMS
Ping Tang, Tohoku University

Invited Speakers

Manuel Bibes, CNRS Hiroto Adachi, Okayama U Long-Qing Chen, The Pennsylvania State University Giovanni Finocchio, University of Messina Marcos Guimarães, RU Groningen Jorge Iñiguez, Luxemburg Dominik Juraschek, Eindhoven University of Technology Dennis Meier, NTNU & University of Duisburg Alexander Mook, JGU Alvaro Nunez, University of Chile Delaram Rashadfar, OSU Sergio Rezende, UFPE Eiji Saitoh, Tokyo U

Ka Shen, Beijing Normal U Libor Šmejkal, MPI Dresden Nicola Spaldin, ETH Ken-ichi Uchida, U Tokyo/NIMS Jiang Xiao, Fudan Kenji Yasuda, Cornell Tao Yu, HUST Ilaria Zardo, U Basel Changgan Zeng, USTC Yuelin Zhang, Beijing Normal U Zhicheng Zhong, USTC Xiaoyang Zhu, Columbia U