Agenda

Past colloquia and seminars

16
Apr

From Chiral Electronics to Mottness in Momentum-Space

General public Colloquium / Congress / Forum
16.04.2025 16:45
Onsite

The term chirality is derived from the Greek word for ‘hand’ χειρ (kheir) and describes objects that are distinct from their mirror image. It is long known that chirality plays a crucial role in nature, providing powerful functionality to chiral molecules in living organisms. By extending this concept from the molecular to the solid state, my group aims to uncover new chirality-enabled phenomena that could form the basis for new technologies. The first part of my talk will focus on chiral semimetals, an emerging class of quantum materials at the intersection of structural and electronic chirality. These materials can host new fermionic quasiparticles without analogue in high-energy physics (1–4), which carry large and controllable topological charges (5). We have recently demonstrated that these quasiparticles realize an isotropic Weyl-type parallel spin-momentum locking that can be considered the natural counterpart of Rashba spin-orbit coupling (6). Moreover, I will present fingerprints of controllable orbital angular momentum monopoles in these materials (7), which could be exploited in memory devices for field-free switching of magnets with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. In the second part of my talk, I will present our investigation of the origin of the magnetic field-induced (8) and field-free (9) Josephson diode effect. For the latter, we identify a momentum-resolved signature of Mottness that allows us to distinguish band-insulators from unconventional Mott-insulators with an even number of electrons (10). Time permitting, I will also mention our latest investigation of Majorana flat bands on the side surfaces of cuprate superconductors.


When? 16.04.2025 16:45
Where? 0.51
Chemin du Musée 3, 1700 Fribourg 
speaker Dr. Niels Schröter
Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics Weinberg Germany
Invited by group Schueler
Contact Département de Physique
Prof. Michael Schueler
michael.schueler@unifr.ch
Chemin du Musée 3
1700 Fribourg
0263009113
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