Theory of Unconventional Magnetism: exploring altermagnets and beyond

This workshop focuses on the theory of emerging unconventional magnetic material classes such as altermagnets, p-wave magnets, and other complex spontaneous magnetic ordered phases with emergent properties. These magnetic phases beyond the conventional s-wave order magnetic paradigm bring new points of views that connect with many fundamental areas of physics and motivated the search for a practical path towards teramagnetic technology.

The concept of altermagnetism and unconventional magnetism beyond the s-wave paradigm has interesting analogies and connections with diverse problems in condensed matter physics, such as unconventional superconductivity, correlated electronic liquid-crystalline phases, multipolar magnetic order, spintronics, and topological phenomena.

The goal of this one-week workshop is to bring together scientists interested in the general problem of altermagnetism who have complementary expertise and experience on these related condensed-matter physics problems. While the workshop will host a few daily talks covering the latest results of this fast-moving field, the focus will be on discussions and direct interactions between the participants, to foster a collaborative environment that will help advance the field and open new research directions.

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

Chiral Phonons

Chiral phonons are an emerging field of research focusing on the angular momentum carried by circularly polarized lattice vibrations. While physical mechanisms arising from electronic spin and orbital angular momentum are ubiquitous in solid-state physics, the role of phonon angular momentum has long only been seen in serving as a dissipation channel for the electronic system. In recent years however, an increasing number of phenomena based on phonon angular momentum has been described, including phonon Hall, phonon Zeeman, phonon Barnett, and Einstein-de Haas, as well as phonon spin Seebeck effects. The microscopic origins of these effects have often been found to be universal, which indicates that phonon angular momentum is a quantity of interest in its own right and chiral phonons need to be studied in a holistic approach.

In this workshop, we aim to bring together experts from diverse fields working on phenomena arising from phonon chirality and angular momentum. These include light scattering phenomena in chiral materials, phonon topology, transport phenomena, phonomagnetism, chirality-induced spin selectivity, ultrafast dynamics, and achiral-chiral phase transitions. Discussing chiral phonon physics in an overarching setting will promote collaborations within the community and strengthen our research efforts for the fundamental understanding of angular momentum in solids and the utilization of chiral phonons in potential applications.

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

Young Research Leaders Group Workshop: Magnetism in van der Waals materials: current challenges and future directions

Van der Waals materials are a fruitful playground for developing new emergent physical phenomena from bulk down to the two-dimensional limit. Regarding spins, magnetism arises in these systems either naturally —i.e., in van der Waals magnets— or by design —that is, engineering proximity or twist effects in van der Waals heterostructures, even if the starting layers are not magnetic per se!—. Some fundamental properties underlying these magnetic layers are the spin-switching and spin-transport mechanisms, the magneto-elastic coupling or the emergence of topological spin textures (e.g., skyrmions) and topological effects (e.g., the anomalous spin Hall effect), just to mention a few. Understanding these basic properties is key to its integration into devices, impacting in areas like spintronics, magnonics, or opto-electronics.

A characteristic fingerprint of this field is multi-disciplinarity since several disciplines are strongly involved, including chemical growth, advanced physical characterization techniques at the nanoscale (magnetic imaging, magneto-transport measurements, optical characterization, mechanical testing, …), and theoretical modeling, among others. This workshop gathers young researchers working in these areas, offering a holistic vision of the field of magnetism in van der Waals materials, discussing its current challenges, and envisioning future directions.

Overall, we aim to realize new synergetic effects not only between van der Waals layers but, even more importantly, between young researchers, thus creating a forum for future collaborations and scientific exchange.

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