Mar. 2013:

New publication in Nature Materials: Optical excitation of Josephson plasma solitons in a cuprate superconductor

The europian research network 'Frontiers in Quantum Materials'Control (Q-MAC) wins one of the first 'Synergy Grants' of the European Research Council (ERC). Principal investigators of Q-Mac are Andrea Cavalleri (MPSD, Uni-Hamburg), Prof. Dieter Jaksch (University of Oxford), Prof. Jean Marc Triscone (University of Geneva) and Prof.  Antoine Georges (Ecole Polytechnique, Collège de France und University of Geneva).

Finally 11 projects have been selected (out of 710 applications) to receive funding for up to six years.

⇒ ERC press release
⇒ Univ. Hamburg Press release (german)

Lijian Zhang was awarded a Humboldt Research Fellowship of the the Alexander-von-Humboldt foundation.

The fellowship will support Lijian's research plan on coherent control of cuprate high-temperature superconductors with quantum-optical methods. The work will not only have an impact on fundamental studies of high-Tc superconductors but also shed light on fabricating quantum devices with such materials.

Aug.2012, new publication in PRB:

Evolution of three-dimensional correlations during the photoinduced melting of antiferromagnetic order in La0.5Sr1.5MnO4

During the annual meeting of the Max Planck Society Isabella Gierz was honoured with the 'Otto Hahn Award' for the 'discovery of a massive spin-orbit splitting on semiconductor surfaces', her PhD work performed at the MPI for Solid States Physics in Stuttgart.

© MPG

Info: The Rashba-Bychkov effect describes how the spin-degeneracy in different two-dimensional systems such as quantum well states in semiconductor heterojunctions or surface states on noble metal surfaces can be lifted by the spin-orbit interaction in case of a broken space inversion symmetry. The resulting band structure consists of two nearly parabolic bands with opposite spin-polarization that cross at time-reversal invariant points of the Brillouin zone. Such a spin-polarized band structure bares great potential for applications as a spin field effect transistor. Furthermore, theoretical predictions for a superconducting state have been made, and these systems are prime candidates for the observation of the spin Hall effect. Different two-dimensional systems are best compared using the so-called Rashba-parameter, a measure for the size of the spin splitting. The biggest spin splitting measured so far has been detected in two-dimensional bismuth-silver surface alloys. There, the giant spin splitting can be traced back to (1) the presence of heavy atoms with a strong spin-orbit coupling and (2) the corrugation of the two-dimensional alloy that leads to a strong asymmetry of the electron cloud in the vicinity of the nucleus. However, the application of these surface alloys in a spin field effect transistor is prevented by the presence of spin-degenerate three-dimensional states from the silver substrate. In collaboration with scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart and the Max Planck Institute for Microstructure Physics in Halle, Isabella Gierz was able to transfer the concept of a giant spin splitting to a semiconducting silicon substrate [see Physical Review Letters 103, 046803 (2009)]. For the discovery of a giant spin splitting on the surface of a semiconductor Isabella Gierz has now received the Otto Hahn Award of the Max Planck Society.

April 2012: Ekaterina Moehr joins the group in Oxford.

Mar. 2012:
New publication in PRL: Ultrafast Strain Engineering in Complex Oxide Heterostructures

Dec. 2011:
New publication in PRB: Driving magnetic order in a manganite by ultrafast lattice excitation.

Nov. 2011:
Andrea Cavalleri has been elected a fellow of the American Physical Society.

Oct. 2011

New publication in PRL: Clocking the Melting Transition of Charge and Lattice Order in 1T-TaS2 with Ultrafast Extreme-Ultraviolet Angle-Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy

Aug. 2011,
new publication in Nature Physics:
Nonlinear phononics as an ultrafast route to lattice control

July 2011:
Print version with additional Interview ("Controlling superconductivity"
Interview with A. Cavalleri, Nature Photonics, 5, 506), News&Views and
Cover image of this issue

June 2011,
new publication in Nature Photonics online:
Bi-directional ultrafast electric-field gating of interlayer charge transport in a cuprate superconductor

→ Publication links/PDF