We are on TV –

NDR magazin made a report on new equipment at the physics institute (Tuesday 22.12, 19:30 Nordmagazin). Link to the contribution NDR Mediathekmore ...

Press release Wieck bridge and three-dimensional laserlithography more …

Wieck drawbridge in nano: New equipment allows to fabricate three dimensional objects with a resolution of 150nm.

As a test object we fabricated the dutch style drawbridge in the fisher village Wieck, a Greifswald local landmark (original on Wiki). The process works with pulsed laser writing by two-photon laser polymerization. This serves in the future as a platform for nanostructurization of spintronic devices (see A. Boehnke, et al., Sci. Rep. 5, 8945 (2015)), but also to study nanobiomechanics (see R. Palankar et al., Adv. Healthc. Mater.,(2015)). Read the full press release more ...

New publication out: Coherent spin dynamics in Topological Insulators

What happens if a Topological Insulator is driven with circularly polarized photons? In Topological Insulator spin-currents are connected with their surface states. In our research we could identify the origin of a recently seen spin-signal present at the ultrafast time scale. It originates from a coherent spin-polarization. 

Read article: Coherent ultrafast spin-dynamics probed in three dimensional topological insulators, F. 
Boschini et al. Scientific Reports 5, 15304 (2015).

more ...

Symposium „Spins, Waves and Interactions“ – Spins and spin waves for future information technologies, Networking of researchers in Greifswald

The topic „Spins, Waves and Interactions“ is the headline for a meeting 9.-11. September in Greifswald, to discuss new developments and trends in spintronics. On two days from Tuesday to Friday at the Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg renowed speakers will give their presentations. This time as international speakers from Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan, Shunsuke Fukami (Center for Spintronics Integrated Systems), Masahiro Yamashita (Department of Chemistry), and Shigemi Mizukami (Advanced Institute for Materials Research), will talk on spin-orbit torques, organic spintronics and THz dynamics of spin waves.

The workshop is hosted for a second time in the maritime atmosphere of Greifswald, city of the Hanse and university since 1456, place for networking and a look into technological path for the future. We hope to establish this meeting as regularly event for young researchers.  

The workshop will start with a joint dinner Wednesday and informal meeting. Feel free to join from at around 7pm to 11pm, location Theatercafe (located in the Theater Vorpommern building, directions found here, dinner served until 10 pm). The Morning session will start at 9am at the Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg, Martin-Luther-Straße 14, 17489 Greifswald, close to the central old market place (Markt), directions found here. Conference dinner Thursday evening 7 pm Restaurant Goldmarie, Fischstraße 11, directions here.

 The workshop is organized together with Andy Thomas, IFW Dresden, Mathias Klaui, Mainz University, Tobias Kampfrath, Fritz Haber Institute Berlin, Timo Kuschel, Bielefeld University, Ilie Radu, TU Berlin and Markus Münzenberg, Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University Greifswald. We are seeing forward to welcome you here!

For further information see the conference website with program and detailed information more ...

Dates:	9. September Welcome and get together,  	10. September - 11. September, 09:00 - 18:00 Uhr

Location:	Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg Greifswald 

New publication out: A scenario for spin wave traps formed by ultrashort laser pulses

Spin waves can be controlled in local temperature gradients by femtosecond laser pulses on the micrometer length scale: in a heated region spin-waves have to adapt the local frequency in the heated region. 

Read the article at Scientific Reports: Original Publication, A scenario for magnonic spin-wave traps F. Busse et al., Scientific Reports 5, 12824 (2015). 

more ...

Collaboration kick-off FemtomagTopo with Charles University Prague and joint-publication with ZIK HIKE

In the framework of the Project start DAAD-PPP project with the Czech Republic in a joint project FemtomagTopo with Dr. Eva Schmoranzerova (Laboratory of Opto-Spintronics, Charles University Prague) a start-up workshop will be held on ultrafast spin dynamics in topological insulators, Thursday 12.03.

Work that is carried out together with the center of ZIK-HIKE (Centre for Innovation Competence - Humoral Immune Reactions in Cardiovascular Diseases) in the group of Dr. Mihaela Delcea , by Dr. Raghav Palankar and exchange student Tania Patin from
 Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona at ZIK-HIKE - on the possibilities of femtosecond lasers for targeted nanoscale manipulation, using functionalized gold nanoparticles in biological systems, has been published in Nanoscale as advance article. In joint-work with former ZIK-HIKE new directions on nanostructuring at the campus are currently developedmore...

Spins, Waves and Interaction. Workshop 11.-12. September, Greifswald

The "Spins, Waves and Interaction" workshop in September, organized together with Andy Thomas, Bielefeld University, will start with a dinner Wednesday and informal meeting at evening at around 7pm at the[Fritz], Markt 13, 17489 Greifswald. The Morning session will start at 9am at the Alfred Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg, Martin-Luther-Straße 14, 17489 Greifswald. Both is close to the central old market place (Markt). 

We are seeing forward to welcome you here!

Read the press information (German) more ...

DFG grants project in the Priority Program "Spin Caloric Transport" 1538

Spin polarized currents in magnetic nanostructures arising from thermal gradients? Within the second term of the Priority Programme "Spin Caloric Transport" 1538 we aim to understand thermocurrents and voltages including the spin. Together with Andy Thomas (U Bielefeld) and Christian Heiliger (U Giessen) we investigate the effects of thermal currents in magnetic tunnel junctions, and the ability to switch infomation by thermal gradients on ultrafast time scales. The research of the three collaborating groups is funded with more than 0.5 million Euro.

Read the press information (German) more ...

The new optics and cleanroom labs at Greifswald have been opened

New papers out on Arxiv:

Joint work with Bielefeld-Gießen "On/off switching of bit readout in bias-enhanced tunnel magneto-Seebeck effect" and with Michael Seibt's group at Göttingen "Controlling boron redistribution in CoFeB/MgO magnetic tunnel junctions during annealing by variation of cap layer materials and MgO deposition methods"

more ...

Seminar in summer term 2014

Please check out our seminar talks announcements together with theory, Monday's 16:00 (s.t.)

Link to the Program:

more ...

Millenium Prize for Stuart Parkin

British scientist Prof Stuart Parkin, Max-Planck-Institute Halle, Germany, has won the 2014 Millennium technology prize worth €1m for research that has led to a phenomenal increase in the storage capacity of digital devices and heralded the era of cloud computing. The 2014 Millennium technology prize worth €1m will be awarded for research that has led to a phenomenal increase in the storage capacity of digital devices and heralded the era of cloud computing.

Press release: The Guardian, Die Zeit

British scientist Prof Stuart Parkin, Max-Planck-Institute Halle, Germany, has won the 2014 Millennium technology prize worth €1m (£824,400) for research that has led to a phenomenal increase in the storage capacity of digital devices and heralded the era of cloud computing. The 2014 Millennium technology prize worth €1m (£824,400) will be awarded for research that has led to a phenomenal increase in the storage capacity of digital devices and heralded the era of cloud computing.

Link The Guardian

New article out!

New article out on ultrafast dynamics of FePt in Scientific Reports. In a joint work with a theory team at Madrid and HGST/ Western Digital San Jose we uncovered the ultrafast hard disc drive dynamics.

Resolving the role of femtosecond heated electrons in ultrafast spin dynamics, J. Mendil, P. Nieves, O. Chubykalo-Fesenko, J. Walowski, T. Santos, S. Pisana  & M. Münzenberg, Scientific Reports 4, 3980 (2014)

doi:10.1038/srep03980

Pictures - with Ranga Yogeshwar at the IdeenExpo Hannover

Bob Meservey, the pioneer of spinelectronics, died at age of 92

The far sighted pioneer of spinelectronics, Bob Meservey, discovered electron spin-polarized tunneling in 1970, with Paul Tedrow at MIT, and demonstrated for the first time that electron spin could carry information in an electrical current. He developed the Meservey-Tedrow method to measure the spin polarization of a metal. It is a sad news that Bob Meservey died at age of 92 on June 18th in Cambridge, Mass..

Read the obituary on the MIT web page more ...

New grant for investigation of spin dynamics in topological insulators

Within the priority program SPP 1666 „Topological Isolators: Materials – Fundamentals - Applications“, we will be involved in the investigation of ultrafast spin currents generated in tolopogical insulators, in a joint project together with Dr. Tobias Kampfrath, Fritz-Haber-Institute and Prof. Christian Heiliger, University of Gießen. Start is 1th of July

Read the press release (in German) more ...

India exchange got covered in "Uni|inform"

As a starter for the new round of exchanging students with IISER Kolkata within the G-KOSS initiative between physics and chemistry, an article in the university magazine “Uni|inform” covers the last exchange with an interview, “Monkeys at the breakfast table” on page four. Link to the magazine (in German):

Uni|inform July 2013 more ...

Future of information storage – with Ranga Yogeshwar at the Ideen Expo Hannover

Come and see us at the IdeenExpo 2013 on the topic of future of information technology and energy storage. We present some new ideas in an interview with Ranga Yogeshwar at Hannover on Sunday 25th of August.

IdeenExpo 2013 more ...

Offer from University of Greifswald

The group may be moving – Prof. Markus Münzenberg got an offer for a W3 chair position at the traditional Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University of Greifswald at the baltic sea, third oldest university in Germany, since 1456. We look forward to an excellent, vibrant environment for our future research of the femto-spin and spin transport group.

Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University more ...

DFG funds a new SFB on energy conversion in materials

The German funding agency Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) granted the Collaborative Research Center (Sonderforschungsbereich (SFB)) "Control of energy conversion on atomics scales". The SFB involves 17 scientific projects and an integrated graduate school. The fundig includes a sum of 8.3 Million Euro for four years. 27 researchers of the faculty of physics, chemistry and Max Plack Institute for bio-physical chemistry belong to the SFB. We contribute two projects in the context of ultrafast dynamics, "A02 Understanding and manipulating relaxation channels to tailor energy transport" and "B01 Photon-induced structural phase transition controlled by electronic correlations". Start is 1th of October.

Read the press release more ...

New paper out in Nature Nanotechnology: THz spintronics

A recent work in Nature Nanotechnology shows that ultrafast spin currents can be generated by femtosecond laser excitation. The spin current can be converted to a charge current via the Inverse Spin Hall effect (ISHE) and detected by the emission of THz radiation. The latter acts as an ultrafast Ohm-meter that allows detecting current on picoseconds time scales. The spin current can be controlled by adjacent materials (Au or Ru) and opens up possibilities for a THz spinelectronics. Vice versa this allows designing new sources of THz radiation.

Original publication:

Terahertz spin current pulses controlled by magnetic heterostructures

T. Kampfrath et al., Nature Nanotechnology, advance online (2013).

Read the press release of the Georg-August-University more ...

See also the press release:

Fritz-Haber Institute (FHI), Berlinmore ...

Our work on organic molecular level spin memory made it on the MIT front page today's spotlight

Organic molecular level spin memory works at room temperature

Approaches to store spin information on a single molecule so far involved the use of a magnetic atom. By taking a small number of non-magnetic carbon atoms, connected in three benzene rings, a material similar to graphene is realized in a tunnel junction using a chemical spin injector. This collaboration involved resreachers at IISER Kolkata, MIT, Forschungszentrum Jülich, the physics and chemistry department at Göttingen University. The results of this research have been published in the current issue of the renowned journal Nature.

Original publication:http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v493/n7433/full/nature11719.html

Interface-engineered templates for molecular spin memory devices, K. V. Raman, et al., Nature 493, 509 (2013).

Read full information: more ...

See also the press release:

Goerg-August-University Göttingen, more ...

Mass. Institute of Technology (MIT),more ...

The Göttingen Spindynamics and Spintransport group wishes a Happy New Year 2013!

Last year we have started our funded research on Magnonics “Materials and Devices” which had been granted by the DFG - the interest in this young field is still increasing, visible in the recent book “Magnonics: From Fundamentals to Applications (Topics in Applied Physics) Sergej O. Demokritov (Editor), Andrei N. Slavin (Editor)”.

Also in 2012 we had the University 275 Years Jubilee with Exhibition of the University Collections, “Highlights of Physics” for young researchers and a the international conference “Universität der Dinge" in October.

Our collaboration with international groups at IISER Kolkata (G-KOSS) and MIT is prospering and we are looking into an exciting year. We wish our colleagues healthy and a Happy New Year 2013!

Read our new article on ultrafast spin dynamics

How do microscopic processes contribute to the ultrafast demagnetization using ultrafast laser pulses and how can we design materials to control the flow of hot spins? Read our article on Physical Review X (open access):

Insights into ultrafast demagnetization in pseudo-gap half metals

A. Mann, J. Walowski, M. Münzenberg, S. Maat, M. J. Carey, J. R. Childress, C. Mewes, D. Ebke, V. Drewello, G. Reiss, A. Thomas, Phys. Rev. X 2, 041008 (2012)

SPP SpinCaT PhD student workshop in Göttinge

The PhD students meeting of the DFG priority program "Spin Caloric Transport"1538 will be held in Göttingen: Monday 08.10.-Tuesday 09.10., starting 9:15, seminar room in C.02, physics building at the North Campus. It is aimed to strengthen interaction and discussion: we are seeing forward to see you here!

Infos: info sheet

Program: full program

DFG magnonics grant for spin-wave computing

We have been awarded with a grant on spin-wave computing using magnonic structures from the German Research Foundation (DFG). Focus are novel magnonic materials and devices. Magnonic computing schemes use spin-waves for data transmission and logic operations. We will investigate the fundamental elements for that novel concept and test first simple devices: magnonic wave guides and active spin-wave elements. Spin-wave pumping and detection is realized optically using femtosecond laser pulses. The research is funded with a quater million Euro.

A successful year has ended,

with the discovery and first publication of the large magnetic thermopower in magnetic tunnel junctions,"Magneto-Seebeck effect in magnetic tunnel junctions", together with our colleagues at Bielefeld and Gießen, explored at the same time at Braunschweig and AIST Tsukuba, Japan, and Nancy, France, opening many new possibilities and research opportunities from thermal spin injection, a magnetic control of energy flow towards new logic devices.

To the more and more interest gaining field of magnonics, we have contributed summarizing activities in an extensive review "The building blocks of magnonics" and a review on tunneling "Tunneling path toward spintronics".

Our student exchange with IISER Kolkata has been started for the first round successfully found great response of the participating students.

The physics museum Physicalisches Cabinet displaying the institutes heritage from Lichtenberg to Gauß and Weber has been opened to public and objects are displayed in new light. For the 275th year celebration of our university in 2012 the article "Witnesses of the Past, Teachers of the Future? How Early Physics Instruments Helped Us Understand the World" in the December issue Collections – Wisdom, Insight, Innovation is published in the university's science magazine Georgia Augusta. Maybe an inspiring and entertaining journey into the past …

Last but not least, the DFG priority programme "Spin Caloric Transport" 1538 had been granted, see you at the first meeting 3 Kings Meeting at Bad Honnef in the new year.

We wish all the best for the upcoming year 2012!

Markus Münzenberg

Magnonic review published at Physics Reports

The building blocks of magnonics

B. Lenk, H. Ulrichs, F. Garbs, M. Münzenberg, Physics Reports 507, 107 (2011). The article gives a broad overview over the fast moving field, from spin-wave computing, towards introduction into band structure calculation, to methods and overview on experimental results, here with a certain focus on photo magnonics.

New effect found and published in Nature Materials

The new effect allows to switch Seebeck voltages in magnetic tunnel junction via the magnetization and allows new control to convert heat in nanostructured devices. This magneto-Seebeck effect is a new effect in the novel field of spincaloritrincs, the electronics of heat and spins.

M. Walter, J. Walowski, V. Zbarsky, M. Münzenberg, M. Schäfers, D. Ebke, G. Reiss, A. Thomas, P. Peretzki, M. Seibt, J.S. Moodera, M. Czerner, M. Bachmann, C. Heiliger, Seebeck effect in magnetic tunnel junctions, Nature Materials, advance online (2011)

Press release: German/English

DFG grants Priority Programme "Spin Caloric Transport" 1538

Spin polarized currents in magnetic nanostructures arising from thermal gradients? The new Priority Programme "Spin Caloric Transport" 1538 started in July aims to understand thermocurrents and voltages including the spin. Together with Andy Thomas (U Bielefeld) and Christian Heiliger (U Giessen) we investigate the effects of thermal currents in magnetic tunnel junctions. The research at the three universities is funded with more than a million Euro.

Review on magnonics advance online

Our review building block of magnonics with special focus on photo-magnonics appeared as "advance online" publication at Physics Reports more ....

Welcome of first guests from IISER Kolkata for collaboration and exchange

The first five students together with Prof. Swadhin Mandal and Prof. Arindam Mukherjee from IISER Kolkata have arrived to work for a two month partner project in participating groups to establish G-KOSS in chemistry and physics on spin transport in organic materials, ultrafast spin dynamics, correlation in molecular magnets and molecular synthesis. Welcome!

Saturday morning physics and lecture series on the history of physics

Saturday morning physics:

14. Mai 2011, 11 Uhr c.t., Faculty of Physics, Max-Born-Hörsaal

Prof. Dr. Markus Münzenberg »Vom chinesischen Südweiser zum Musiktape bis zur Harddisk: 3000 Jahre Magnetismus (From south pointing chariot, tape to hard disc drive: 3000 years of magnetism)« Announcement, Flyer

Lecture series on the history of physics:

This summer term a lecture series is given - organized by students - covering the fields in-between physics, mathematics, philosophy and history - historic instruments, biographies or groundbreaking developments. The lecture series is open for all interested students the general public.

History of physics: 18 Uhr c.t., Faculty of Physics, Max-Born-Hörsaal

Göttingen University helps partner Universities in Japan

Georg-August.Universität Göttingen Japanhilfe Over the past two weeks, the “Göttingen region’s direct aid for Japan” aid programme has collected almost € 57,000 in donations. The money will go directly to help Japanese students and young researchers and scholars affected by the disaster.

Discussion on possibilities and riscs of nano technology:

Discussion on possibilities and risks of nano technology, CinemaxX 14.04.,17:30. Official link:Bürger treffen Experten, Nano heute, morgen und übermorgen

Nanotechnology has the potential to solve challenges we are facing today in economical use of energy, resources or in medicine - it is utilized in IT products miniaturization and by nature itself. Generally exposition arises only from free nanoparticels. However what are potential risks of a "wrong" use of it? Nanoparticles are already found in many consumer products -textiles (nanosilver), cosmetics (sun protection) or food-. Aim of this discussion is to inform and to discuss actions to be taken for consumer protection which is a paramount prerequisite of responsible science. This dialog is initiated by the ministry of education and research (BMBF) with the following speakers:

“Nano – Was ist das und was kann daraus werden?“
Markus Münzenberg, Georg‐August‐Universität Göttingen

“Nanotechnologie heute, morgen und übermorgen“
Rolf Buschmann, Verbraucherzentrale Düsseldorf, Steffi Friedrichs, Nanotechnology Industry Association, Brüssel, Katja Nau, KIT – Karlsruher Institut für Technologie

For more background see nanopartikel.info, Wikipedia on nanotoxology and actual article in the Physik Journal on Nanoparticle Cell interaction resolved by optical microscopy beyond the resolution limit.

Read the review article with G. Miao and J.S. Moodera:

The article on current developments in the field of spintransport is now online in Reports on Progress in Physics. Title: "Tunneling path toward spintronics".

Review article "Building Blocks of Magnonics" on photo-magnonics on arXiv:

Following a suggestion after the APS magnonics symposium in Portland 2010, we have now compiled recent ideas in this young field. The review article "Building blocks of magnonics" by Benjamin Lenk, Henning Ulrichs, Fabian Garbs and Markus Münzenberg can be read as a preprint. In focus is the control of localization and delocalization on the formation of bands in a magnonic crystal and the ultrafast laser excitation of spin waves (photo-magnonics).

Round table gave planned IRTG a name:

The collaboration with IISER Kolkata is further progressing: the intensive one week meeting with 10 researchers from IISER Kolkata in December tightened the research foci and formed new interactions. And, it gave the project a name: G-KOSS (Göttingen-Kolkata school on Open Shell Systems). In addition we are very happy that Prof. Herbert W. Roesky, who has a longstanding tradition of contacts to Indian researchers, agreed to be "senior advisor" for the school.

Article on photo-magnonics published at Applied Physics Letters:

Our work on structured CoFeB films, with very low intrinsic damping, appeared in the first September issue of Applied Physics Letters:
Magnonic spin-wave modes in CoFeB antidot lattices, Appl. Phys. Lett. 97, 092506 (2010).
We show that we can excite spin-wave Bloch modes at the zone boundary in the magnonic crystal with high intensity if these are energetically degenerated. Key is a low filling fraction to observe these modes.

The organization for the International and Interdisciplinary Research Training Group with IISER Kolkata is rapidly progressing: Prof. Sushanta Dattagupta, Director of IISER Kolkata, will visit Göttingen 11th to 13th of October. A round table will take place at Göttingen December 13th to 18th for the detailed planning of the subgroups and to forster collaborations further. Please look for the program and informations that I will put on a Research Training Group web-site.

Photo-magnonics: New articles on the preprint server related to magnonics and photo-excitation of spin waves:

Tuning spin-wave states in magnonic crystals from localization to free spin-wave states: Magnonic spin-wave modes in CoFeB antidot lattices, arXiv:1006.4038

spin-wave interaction in Ni films:Unusual spin-wave population in nickel after femtosecond laser pulse excitation,arXiv:0803.3686

and on the detection sensitivity by optical methods:
Analytical expression of the magneto-optical Kerr effect and Brillouin light scattering intensity arising from dynamic magnetization with Jaroslav Hamrle and collaborators, arXiv:1006.1906

Read the articles Physics Viewpoint "Taking advantage of nature for a greener nonvolatile memory" by Markus Münzenberg and Jagadeesh S. Moodera, Physics 3, 19 (2010)

and News and Views in Nature Materials "Magnetization dynamics: Ferromagnets stirred up" by Markus Münzenberg, Nature Materials 9, 184

(2010)

Former colleague from MIT Dr. Tiffany Santos, now at Argonne National Laboratory wins prestigious L'Oreal Award 2009 . "The aim of my research is to understand how materials interact with each other when brought together at the atomic level," Santos said. "If we can understand the origin of a material's properties at the nanoscale, then we can design and create new materials for the next generation of electronic devices that meet these global challenges".

Dr. Jagadeesh Moodera wins the Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize together with Robert Meservey, Terunobu Miyazaki and Paul Tedrow for pioneering work in the field of spin-dependent tunneling and for the application of these phenomena to the field of magnetoelectronics. In addition he was awarded by the National Science Foundation as American Competitiveness and Innovation Fellow "For his achievements and world-leading role in the field of spintronics".