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Dear colleagues, dear members of the MaNEP association,
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Here we are at about two years into the COVID-19 pandemic,
which continues to pose challenges for both society and the scientific
community. The crisis has forced us to find new solutions for how to foster scientific communication within the association. This
edition of the newsletter reports on two online workshops that helped
to meet some of this need, which were both well-attended and featured
“trial runs” of online technologies meant to foster direct interaction.
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As we look into
the future where such online-only formats will likely be used not only
for public health but for environmental reasons such tools will become
more important.
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Nonetheless, I think that there is still widespread
recognition that the pandemic continues to highlight the critical role
that in-person interactions have on scientific communication,
particularly for younger colleagues. Hopefully one lasting outcome will
be an “optimisation” of such opportunities when they become possible. The upcoming MaNEP winter school in Saas-Fee planned for January 2022 is one such opportunity. Demand was impressive, with registrations quickly meeting the capacity of the venue. This highlights the need for such meetings by the community. Later in the year there is the SWM workshop in Les Diablerets, scheduled for August.
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Despite the stalled pace of vaccinations and the worrying
recent rise in cases, I am hopefully that eventually we can settle into a
new equilibrium that will allow for such meetings to continue and
encourage the culture of open exchange of ideas that is essential to
science. I look forward to meeting you all in person when that happens.
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ETH Zurich / Paul Scherrer Institute
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What's new ?
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On December 9th 2021, the association MaNEP Switzerland
Network met for its 9th Forum Meeting. The president of the board, Prof.
Christian Rüegg (PSI, UniGe, ETH Zurich, EPFL), welcomed 20
participants online and reported on the status and activities of the
association.
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We are glad to inform our members that the SWM 2022 is
scheduled from August 29th to 31st, 2022. The last edition of the SWM,
initially planned for August 2021 and delayed due to the pandemic,
offers an updated program.
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The Scienscope of the Faculty of Science at Université de
Genève was inaugurated on October 5th, 2021. It consists of seven new
spaces dedicated to the discovery of the sciences taught and studied in
the Faculty.
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After a first live meeting in January 2020, the second Van
der Waals meeting waited a while and was finally held online, on June
24th, 2021. Five young speakers covered very different topics, and
inspired lively discussions. There were up to 68 participants. An
informal way of meeting online happened through a virtual corridor
meeting.
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The MaNEP mini-workshop on Oxide Heterostructures took place
on the 28th of October 2021. The goal of this online meeting was to
bring together Swiss researchers working in the field of complex oxides
and provide them with an opportunity to present and discuss their work,
especially for PhD students and postdocs.
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Prof. Fabian von Rohr received the Ruzicka Prize 2021 for
his work on the discovery of quantum materials by combining chemical and
physical design principles.
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Work in the Network
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Scientific perspective
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By Jean-Philippe Brantut, EPFL and Tilman Esslinger, ETHZ
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Cavity Quantum
Electro-Dynamics (QED) has been one of the most successful platforms for
the study of fundamental processes in quantum physics. It allows for
the investigation of light-matter interactions including a detailed
understanding of dissipation channels. In
this article we would like to give a brief introduction to the basic
ideas of cavity QED and discuss recent experiments of our research
groups, which show different ways to control atom-light coupling in cold
atomic gases using high-finesse cavities.
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Scientific highlights
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By Simon Gerber, PSI
An international
team with participation of the Paul Scherrer Institute reviews how light
can fundamentally change the properties of solids and how these effects
can be used for future applications. The team summarises the progress
in this field, which is based among other techniques on experiments that
can also be carried out at the Swiss X-ray free-electron laser
SwissFEL, in the journal Reviews of Modern Physics.
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By Ivan Maggio-Aprile, Tim Gazdić, Christoph Renner, UNIGE
Magnetic
vortices in superconductors are singular objects at the center of which
the superconducting order parameter is locally destroyed. As a
consequence, the electronic excitations in their cores are expected to
be fundamentally different from the ones occurring in the electronic
superfluid surrounding the vortices.
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Discover more MaNEP Network's research and innovations trough other publication highlights.
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Portrait
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What have been your main fields of research and your most surprising scientific finding during these last years ?
Broadly
speaking, our research deals with the investigation of atomic scale
quantum materials using scanning probe microscopy. This includes
scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) based electron spin resonance,
atomic force microscopy, time-resolved measurements, and quasiparticle
interference imaging.
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Upcoming events
January 16 - 21, 2022, Saas-Fee, Switzerland
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(Photo credit: Scientify-UNIGE, UNIGE, ETHZ, PSI, EPFL, UZH)
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MaNEP Switzerland Network
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24, quai Ernest-Ansermet - 1211 Geneva 4
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