Our papers "Bose-Einstein condensation in systems with flux equilibrium" and "Towards an experimental proof of the magnonic Aharonov-Casher effect" have been selected for Editors’s Suggestions in Physical Review B

Quasiparticles, created in dissipative nonlinear wave systems by external excitation, can form a Bose-Einstein condensate. In this article, we describe the physical phenomena and conditions leading to condensation in various regimes of external excitation from weak and stationary to ultrastrong pumping. We have developed a stationary nonlinear theory of kinetic instability for the latter, supported by the experimental data for magnons, parametrically pumped in roomtemperature films of yttrium iron garnet.

The Aharonov-Casher effect is the accumulation of the wave function phase when a particle with magnetic moment passes through an electric field. This phenomenon is observed for real particles and predicted for quasiparticles such as magnons. In this letter, we investigate the impact of a strong electric field on the phase of dipolar spin waves exited in a ferromagnetic yttrium iron garnet (YIG) film and report the experimental results in favor of the magnonic Aharonov-Casher effect.

The advanced research workshop "Functional Spintronic Nanomaterials for Radiation Detection and Energy Harvesting" (SPINNANO-2023) was successfully held at the National Technical University of Ukraine "Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute" (Kyiv, Ukraine) with the support of the NATO Science for Peace and Security Programme and in partnership with the University of Kaiserslautern-Landau.

Three days of exciting presentations and scientific debates were concluded by an online panel discussion moderated by the conference co-chairs Prof. Dr Burkard Hillebrands and Dr Igor Vladymyrskyi on the scientific cooperation between Ukrainian scientific and educational institutions within the framework of European and national research funding programs.

We continue our fruitful cooperation with Ukrainian scholars and, like other participants in this workshop from Ukraine and abroad, express our solidarity with the Ukrainian people in these difficult times and look forward to meeting our colleagues in person in Ukraine soon after the Ukrainian victory in this terrible war.

Selected videos of the invited talks, which the speakers agreed to distribute, are collected in the SPINNANO-2023 YouTube playlist.

From September 25 to 27, 2023, the advanced research workshop "Functional Spintronic Nanomaterials for Radiation Detection and Energy Harvesting" (SPINNANO-2023) supported by the NATO Science for Peace and Security Programme will be held in the capital of Ukraine, Kyiv, in a hybrid format.
The conference is organized by the University of Kaiserslautern-Landau and the National Technical University of Ukraine "Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute" (Kyiv, Ukraine).

The main objectives of the workshop are:

• To engage experts in the fields of fundamental and applied nanomagnetism, material science and related areas from Ukraine, Germany and other NATO member and partner countries in conversation on the fundamental physical concepts but also on the development of novel spintronic structures;
• To enhance the knowledge and qualification of young scientists working in the field of spin-torque nano-oscillators and related areas of modern spintronics and spinorbitronics;
• To consolidate NATO and partner countries around improving defense technologies against heavy weapons on their borders and provide a base for new research collaborations.

Prof. Dr. Burkard Hillebrands and Dr. Igor Vladymyrskyi from Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute are co-chairs of this workshop.

We consider the participation of our group in the organization of this scientific event not only as a contribution to the further development of spintronics and magnonics, but also as a support of Ukrainian science in the context of the aggressive war unleashed by the Russian Federation, and of the entire Ukrainian people in their struggle for freedom and independence.

Anna Maria Friedel and David Breitbach receive best poster prize at Magnonics 2023

Our PhD students Anna Maria Friedel and David Breitbach both received a best poster prize at the Magnonics 2023 Conference in Le Touquet-Paris-Plage, France.

David Breitbach presented a poster on “Bistability based Magnon Computing”, which is part of his PhD work under supervision of Jun. Prof. Philipp Pirro. Anna Maria Friedel presented a poster on “Magnetisation dynamics of epitaxial Co2MnSi / X / Co2MnAl Heusler bilayers with metallic and non-metallic interlayers”. This work is part of her PhD equally supervised by Jun. Prof. Philipp Pirro in an international joint PhD program with the Institut Jean Lamour in Nancy.

Both students received a travel grant by the RPTU Nachwuchsring for their trip to the conference in France.

Kaiserslauterer Physiker für Lebensleistung in der Magnetismus-Forschung geehrt

Physik-Professor Dr. Burkard Hillebrands wurde auf der Konferenz INTERMAG-2023 in Sendai/Japan von der Magnetismus Society der internationalen Ingenieur-Vereinigung IEEE (Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers) der Achievement Award verliehen. Damit würdigt die IEEE sein Lebenswerk in der Magnetismus-Forschung: „Für seine bahnbrechenden Beiträge auf dem Gebiet der Spindynamik, insbesondere in der Magnonik“. Hillebrands ist der erste Deutsche, der diese Auszeichnung erhält. Sie kann im Bereich des angewandten Magnetismus als weltweit höchste Ehrung angesehen werden. Hillebrands hat an der Technischen Universität Kaiserslautern (TUK) den Lehrstuhl für Magnetismus inne. In seiner Forschung untersucht er unter anderem die Eigenschaften und Anwendungsmöglichkeiten von Magnon-Quantenteilchen und die Materialeigenschaften magnetischer Nanosysteme.

Energieeffizientere Geräte dank Spintechnologie

Burkard Hillebrands has been elected as Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences (EurASc).
EurASC is a non-profit non-governmental, independent organization of the most distinguished scholars and engineers performing forefront research and the development of advanced technologies, united by a commitment to promoting science and technology and their essential roles in fostering social and economic development.

Kaiserslauterer Physiker für Lebensleistung in der Magnetismus-Forschung geehrt

Physik-Professor Dr. Burkard Hillebrands wird von der Magnetismus Society der internationalen Ingenieur-Vereinigung IEEE (Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers) mit dem Achievement Award geehrt. Damit würdigt die IEEE sein Lebenswerk in der Magnetismus-Forschung: „Für seine bahnbrechenden Beiträge auf dem Gebiet der Spindynamik, insbesondere in der Magnonik“. Hillebrands ist der erste Deutsche, der diese Auszeichnung erhält. Sie kann im Bereich des angewandten Magnetismus als weltweit höchste Ehrung angesehen werden. Hillebrands hat an der Technischen Universität Kaiserslautern (TUK) den Lehrstuhl für Magnetismus inne. In seiner Forschung untersucht er unter anderem die Eigenschaften und Anwendungsmöglichkeiten von Magnon-Quantenteilchen und die Materialeigenschaften magnetischer Nanosysteme.

Laura Scheuer erhielt einen Preis für das beste Poster auf der Magnonics-Konferenz 2022 in Oxnard (USA)

Hannover Messe 2022: Rechenintensive Prozesse in Forschungs- und Entwicklungsprojekten per Cloud beschleunigen

Ist ein Prototyp entwickelt, folgt in Forschung und Entwicklung in der Regel eine zeitaufwändige Test- und Analysephase. Unmengen an Daten aus verteilten Quellen fließen dabei durch komplexe, sich mehrfach wiederholende Rechenprozesse. Diese Phase zu beschleunigen, hat sich das Kaiserslauterer Startup Aithericon auf die Fahne geschrieben. Die Gründer arbeiten an einer cloud-basierten Plattform, die in einer zentralen Umgebung die nötige Infrastruktur zusammenführt und so computergestützte Forschungs- und Entwicklungsprozesse automatisiert. Auf der Hannover Messe stellen die Gründer vom 30. Mai bis 3. Juni ihr Vorhaben am Forschungsstand des Landes Rheinland-Pfalz (Halle 2, Stand B40) vor..

Zum Artikel

Der Spin schlägt Wellen

We are very happy that our group could contribute to this article for the general public which explains the idea of spin-wave based computing. It recently appeared in the „Bild der Wissenschaft“ (in German).

Zum Artikel

We are happy to announce the "CHIRON workshop on hybrid spin-wave computing“ (workshop chair: Philipp Pirro).

The workshop will take place in Heraklion, Crete, on 27 April 2022 in a hybrid (digital and physical presence) format. The venue of the workshop is the main amphitheater of the Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH) in Heraklion.

The aim of the workshop is to discuss recent and future concepts for spin-wave computing and the experimental and theoretical methods needed to explore them. Topics include energy efficient spin-wave excitation using the magneto-elastic interaction, large scale spin-wave circuits, nonlinear spin-wave phenomena and the use of novel material systems for magnonics.

Chiron workshop

ERC Starting Grant to investigate magnonic hardware for neuromorphic computing

Our group member Junior professor Dr. Philipp Pirro has been awarded a 1.5 million euro ERC Starting Grant by the European Research Council (ERC) for five years.

In the ERC-funded project "CoSpiN - Coherent Spintronic Networks for Neuromorphic Computing," spin waves will be used to enable linking and information transfer. The goal is to develop physical building blocks for a novel spintronic network on the nanoscale. In this way, we want to lay the foundation for an artificial brain that is as close as possible to the natural model. The research will take place in the new research building LASE (Laboratory for Advanced Spin Engineering) on the TUK campus.

We as the AG Magnetismus are shocked by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Our partnership with Ukrainian science, and with scientists in and from Ukraine, is very strong. Our thoughts are in Ukraine and with our colleagues there, especially those with whom we have direct scientific and personal contacts. Our full solidarity goes to our Ukrainian colleagues. 

Kaiserslautern, February 24, 2022 
Burkard Hillebrands

“Roadmap on spin-wave computing” edited by A. V. Chumak, P. Kabos, and M. Wu has been accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Magnetics and is available under the "Early Access" area on IEEE Xplore.

This roadmap is a product of the collective work of leading experts from different fields that covers versatile spin-wave computing approaches, conceptual building blocks, and underlying physical phenomena. We are happy to contribute to the following sub-sections of this roadmap:

• Single-mode sub-100 nm YIG magnonic nano-conduits;
• Magnonic Stimulated Raman Adiabatic Passage (STIRAP);
• Spin-wave directional coupler for magnonic half-adder;
• Inverse-design magnonics;
• Magnonic neuromorphic computing;
• Computing with magnonic macroscopic quantum states.

View accepted manuscript online

Our Spin-off "AIthericon" is funded by the "EXIST" Program of the European Social Fund and Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Klimaschutz

The mission of our spin-off is to provide a user-friendly cloud platform to conduct, analyze and archive numerical studies, e.g. micromagnetic simulation in combination with optimization algorithms on a large scale. The project takes its roots in a research project at the group of Jun. Prof. Philipp Pirro and grew to a successful in-house software, greatly supporting our numerical research. Now, he is actively mentoring the team behind the project.

The grant helps the team members, B.Sc. Milan Ender, Dipl. Phys. Pascal Frey and M.A. Jan Morbach to bridge the gap between a prototype and a commercial product.
The spin-off is now funded by the EXIST Gründerstipendium until end of the year.

AIthericon

Congratulations to Anna Maria Friedel!

Anna was awarded the first Franco-German University Award (“Prix Universitaire Franco-Allemand”) in the category "Science and Technology - Computer Science - Engineering" on January 21st by the president of the university Reims-Champagne-Ardenne, Guillaume Gellé. The prize has been awarded to Anna in recognition for her master thesis work titled “Thin film materials with ultralow damping for novel magnonic phenomena”, which Anna conducted jointly between the TU Kaiserslautern (TUK) and Université de Lorraine (UL) supervised by Philipp Pirro (TUK), Stéphane Andrieu (UL) and Sébastien Petit-Watelot (UL) as co-directors.

Currently, Anna is pursuing a double degree PhD work between the magnetism group at TUK and the spin team at UL, focusing on Heusler compounds for magnonic and spintronic applications.

Our paper "Control of the Bose-Einstein condensation of magnons by the spin Hall effect" has been selected as a highlight in Physical Review Letters

The authors demonstrate that the rapid-cooling induced magnon Bose-Einstein condensate formation can be controlled by combining the spin Hall effect and spin-transfer torque effect. Driven by the additional spin Hall effect mediated magnon injection or annihilation during the application of the dc heating pulse, the threshold voltage of the rapid-cooling induced condensation process is observed to be changed by up to 8%. Notably, it is demonstrated that the spin Hall effect allows for a complete suppression or enhancement of the condensation for voltages close to the threshold.

Physical Review Letters

Best Poster Award

Our PhD student David Breitbach was awarded the poster prize at ESM 2021 (European School on Magnetism 2021) for his poster entitled ‘Amplification of Propagating Spin Waves by Stimulated Condensation’. The ESM is organized annually by the European Magnetism Association and was hosted this year in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, from September 6-17, 2021.

The European Magnetism Association

Our paper "Double accumulation and anisotropic transport of magnetoelastic bosons in yttrium iron garnet films" has been selected as a highlight in Physical Review B

The authors use the avoided crossing region created via magnetoelastic coupling between the magnonic and phononic dispersion in yttrium iron garnet films as a thermalization gateway for an artificially populated magnon gas. Magnons thermalizing through the hybridization region become hybrid quasiparticles that mix magnon and phonon properties. Due to the varying magnon-phonon interaction, they experience bottleneck accumulation near the bottom of the magnon spectrum, forming two quasiparticle groups with different propagation directions and velocity values.

Phys. Rev. B 104, 014420 (2021)

Our review "Advances in coherent magnonics" has been published in Nature Reviews Materials

In this Review, we address specifically coherent spin waves. Coherency enables, for instance, the design of interference-based, wave processing spin-wave devices. We show that the field of magnonics is well suited for the implementation of wave-based computing devices, combining the excellent versatility, smallness, nonlinearity and external control it affords. Novel coherent states of matter, such as magnon Bose–Einstein condensates, enable a broad range of additional applications.

Nature Reviews Materials (2021)

Magnonic devices have the potential to revolutionize the electronics industry

Qi Wang and Andrii Chumak of the University of Vienna and Philipp Pirro of TU Kaiserslautern, have significantly accelerated the design of versatile magnonic devices using an optimization algorithm. Their "inverse design" of magnonic devices is now published in Nature Communications.

View publication

View press release

“The 2021 Magnonics Roadmap” has been accepted for publication in Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter

This is a topical review paper in which world’s leading experts in the field of magnonics review and discuss the current status, as well as present their vision of future perspectives of this rather young research field.

View accepted manuscript online

Burkard Hillebrands receives the acatech certificate of membership

On October 15, 2019, during the annual member assembly of the National Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech) in Berlin, Burkard Hillebrands received the certificate of membership from the acatech Presidents, Prof. Dieter Spath (left) and Prof. Karl-Heinz Streibich (right). (picture: acatech/D)

Burkard Hillebrands is President of EMA

The General Council of the European Magnetism Association (EMA) held its annual meeting in August 2019. Consistent with the statutes of EMA, the mandate of President Dino Fiorani came to an end. Dino Fiorani has been President for three years, since the very creation of EMA. Burkard Hillebrands, so far Vice-President, has been confirmed to become President of the association for the three years ahead. He will be assisted by Dino Fiorani, who will remain active in international networking, and Olivier Fruchart, who is the newly-elected Vice-President.[more]

Best Poster Award

Our poster "Separation of the two-magnon scattering contribution to damping for the determination of the spin mixing conductance", presented by Dr. Andrés Conca, has received a Poster Award at the Symposium of Magnetic Multilayers (MML 2019) in Madrid.

2018 Chinese Government Student Award

Our PhD student Qi Wang was awarded the “2018 Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-financed Students Abroad" which is considered as one of the highest student awards given by the Chinese government. The award ceremony took place at the Chinese Embassy in Berlin on Sunday, May 05, 2019.

SCIENCE AWARD of the GREATER REGION for the "MAGNETISM in the GREATER REGION NETWORK"

Our group together with the group of Dr. Martin Aeschlimann and our partners from the network "Magnetism in the Greater Region" have received the Interregional Science Award of the Greater Region 2018. The aim of the network, which includes also partners from France, Luxembourg and Belgium is to research magnetic phenomena in order to make them usable for industry. The 35,000 Euro prize is awarded to research teams from the Greater Region who profitably use the cross-border context to implement their research projects. The funds will be used to enhance the collaboration within magnetism research and outreach in the Greater Region.[more]