Dear Psi-k community,

I would like to draw your attention to the focus session "Strange bedfellows: Magnetism meets Superconductivity" during the DPG Spring Meeting in March of 2020, Dresden. We aim at putting together worldwide experts on the subject of magnetism interfacing superconductivity. Our goal is to provide a fundamental and practical understanding of the subject and to discuss the most recent and exciting theoretical and experimental developments. Among the topics that will be covered are Majorana fermions, spin-triplet supercurrents, Fe-based superconductors, and applications in quantum computing. See the description below.

The confirmed invited speakers are: Prof. Alexander Balatsky (USA); Prof. Katharina Franke (GER); Prof. Jelena Klinovaja (CHE); and Prof. Pengcheng Dai (USA).

Please consider submitting your abstract to our focus session (deadline is 1st December 2019). The website for abstract submission is https://www.dpg-tagung.de/dd20/submission.html?language=en . To submit an abstract for the symposium, choose “Ma: Magnetism division”, and later, as topic: PhD Focus Session I: “Strange bedfellows: Magnetism meets Superconductivity”.

With kind regards,

Flaviano José dos Santos

Description:

At first sight, it seems that the phenomena of magnetism and superconductivity just do not go along, as indicated by the Meissner effect, when a magnetic field is completely expelled from the interior of a conventional superconductor. However, the synergy of these two manifestations of nature in condensed matter does indeed occur and can be rather interesting! Theoretical works have predicted the occurrence of exotic states at the interface between a superconductor and a magnet, such as the much sought-after Majorana fermions, and spin-triplet supercurrents [Dai, Pershoguba, Ruby, Jeon, Eschrig]. The first has been predicted to route an efficient way to implement quantum computers [Kitaev, Mourik] (currently a European scientific flagship), while the latter allows the creation of spin-polarized supercurrents, opening up fundamentally-new possibilities for spintronics. Therefore, our symposium aims at putting together experts to provide a fundamental and practical understanding of the subject, to discuss the most recent developments from the theoretical and experimental sides, and to show perspectives for applications.

References:
[1] A. Kitaev, Fault-tolerant quantum computation by anyons, DOI: 10.1016/S0003-4916(02)00018-
0 (2003)
[2] M. Eschrig et al., Triplet supercurrents in clean and disordered half-metallic ferromagnets, DOI:10.1038/nphys831 (2008)
[3] V. Mourik et al., Signatures of Majorana Fermions in Hybrid Superconductor-Semiconductor Nanowire Devices, DOI:10.1126/science.1222360 (2012)
[4] P. Dai, Antiferromagnetic order and spin dynamics in iron-based superconductors, DOI:10.1103/RevModPhys.87.855 (2015)
[5] S. S. Pershoguba, Skyrmion-induced bound states in a superconductor, DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.94.064513 (2016)
[6] M. Ruby et al., Exploring a proximity-coupled Co chain on Pb(110) as a possible Majorana platform, DOI:10.1021/acs.nanolett.7b01728 (2017)
[7] S. Jeon et al., Distinguishing a Majorana zero mode using spin-resolved measurements, DOI:10.1126/science.aan3670 (2017)
[8] M. Ruby et al., Wave-Function Hybridization in Yu-Shiba-Rusinov Dimers, DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.156803 (2018)