Department News

Mechanical strain is one of the most common tools used to tailor the properties of materials. In piezoelectric materials, stretching or compressing a crystal generates an electrical polarization. In piezomagnetic materials, it induces magnetization. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) and the University of Oxford have now discovered that mechanical strain also induces chirality in non-chiral crystals, opening a new direction to control this property on demand and potentially imprint chiral electronic properties. This work has just been published in Nature. more

Dongsung Choi, a postdoctoral researcher in the Quantum Condensed Matter Dynamics group led by Andrea Cavalleri, has been awarded a Humboldt Research Fellowship. He joined the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) in September 2024 and will continue his work in the institute as a humboldt fellow. more

Two postdoctoral researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) have been awarded Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Postdoctoral Fellowships. Dasom Kim, in the Quantum Condensed Matter Dynamics group led by Andrea Cavalleri, and Na Wu, in the Theory Department led by Angel Rubio, will use the fellowships to explore how engineered electromagnetic cavities can be used to control quantum materials — one from the experimental side, the other from theory. Together, their projects illustrate the breadth of MPSD’s work on light–matter interactions and the coherent control of condensed matter. more

The world is never really at rest. Even in a vacuum near ultracold temperatures where all classical motion should come to a halt, you will find quantum fluctuations. In thin, two-dimensional materials, these include random vibrations that can alter electromagnetic fields – a feature that theorists have long posited could be useful for modifying materials. Angel Rubio, Director of the Theory Department at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) in Hamburg, has been one of the principal architects of this idea. Together with colleagues Rubio developed the theoretical framework predicting that quantum fluctuations inside cavities could reshape the properties of solids – without any external force. Now, that prediction has been confirmed experimentally for the first time. In a new paper published in Nature, an international team of 33 researchers from 17 institutions – including a large MPSD contingent – demonstrates that quantum fluctuations from the vacuum alone inside atom-thin layers of a 2D material can alter the properties of a nearby crystal. more

Andrea Cavalleri, founding director of the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD), will be awarded the Stern-Gerlach-Medal of the German Physical Society (DPG). He receives the Prize in recognition of his “pioneering work in light-based control of quantum materials, with which he made groundbreaking contributions to controlling emergent phenomena in solid-state physics”. more