News

Elena Hassinger has been appointed Professor of Low-Temperature Physics of Complex Electron Systems at the Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat. The professorship has been newly established at TU Dresden. The researcher is an expert in solid-state physics at very low temperatures down to 0.01 Kelvin (-273.14 °C). She studies unusual quantum phenomena that only occur in the freezing cold, with the focus currently being on cerium rhodium arsenic (CeRh₂As₂) – a promising unconventional superconductor.

The study of ultra-pure materials still has many ways to surprise and delight! For delafossite metals it was shown that wires sculpted from the same single crystal have very different resistivities depending on the angle at which they are cut. From the fundamental physics point of view, the laws of bulk resistivity are being broken.

Dr. Tobias Meng is awarded the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize 2022 by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the Federal Ministry for Education and Research. This Prize is considered Germany’s most important award for early career researchers, and is endowed with 20,000 Euros.

The special structure of the atomic lattice of potassium-vanadium-antimony leads to an extraordinary combination of outstanding quantum properties, which have now been demonstrated for the first time and could enable a completely new type of superconductivity. Prof. Ronny Thomale, Würzburg researcher of the Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat, predicted such quantum effects theoretically already ten years ago. The latest experimental results have been published in the journal Nature.

Prof. Claudia Felser, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids Dresden and principal investigator of the Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat, will be awarded the Max Born Prize 2022 for her outstanding scientific contributions to physics.

Researchers from the Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat have recently conceived and realized a new quantum material. The research results have appeared in the journal Nature Communications.

Physicists from the Würzburg–Dresden Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat have discovered a minimum distance at which electrons in wires made of quantum materials must flow in order to conduct electricity in a dissipationless manner. The research results have been published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Scientists from the Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat have developed a new understanding of how electrons behave in strong magnetic fields. Their results explain measurements of electric currents in three-dimensional materials that signal a quantum Hall effect. These results have just been published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.

The extraordinary material manganese bismuth telluride is the first topological insulator to exhibit a number of spectacular physical effects due to its internal magnetic field. Now, researchers of the Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat found out which atomic layer has to be on the surface for this to happen. This makes it possible to better control the properties of this quantum material and brings it a little closer to everyday use. For the future, this promises a more energy-efficient technology.

The early career research team leader Tobias Meng launches a three-year research project connecting the physics of semimetals to the theory of black holes. The German-Luxembourg research project has just received funding of roughly one million Euros.

With the help of a novel algorithm, magnetic topological compounds can now be searched for automatically. The computer method developed is considered a milestone for research into topological materials and paves the way for systematic identification of such materials, which have so far only been determined on a case-by-case basis.