Institute and Research News

A new Scientific Support Unit has been set up at the MPSD to expand the Institute’s computational research capacities. The new SSU Computational Science is led by Hans Fangohr, who was previously in charge of the European XFEL‘s Data Analysis activities. more

X-ray screening has revealed several promising candidates for drugs against the coronavirus. The collaborative DESY-led study, which involved the MPSD and many other organisations, discovered seven substances which inhibit the activity of the main protease and thus slow down the multiplication of the virus. Two of them are particularly promising candidates. more

A universal Doppler effect limits the maximal spin current in magnetic insulators which have been driven out of equilibrium by magnetic fields. These findings by an international research team present a surprising parallel to what happens in superconductors driven by electric fields and could aid the design of future nano-devices. more

Two young researchers, Albert Liu and Alan Lewis, have been awarded Humboldt Fellowships to pursue their work at the MPSD. Albert Liu is based in Andrea Cavalleri’s group in the Condensed Matter Dynamics Department while Alan Lewis works in Mariana Rossi’s independent Lise Meitner research group, Simulations from ab Initio Approaches. more

Although they operate on very different timescales, synchrotrons and XFELs can produce data of equivalent quality as long as serial data collection is used in the imaging process, according to a new study. The findings open up a new avenue for collaborative applications. more

Researchers engineer the first technique to exploit the tunable symmetry of 2D materials for nonlinear optical applications, including laser systems and optical spectroscopy as well as next-generation optical quantum information processing and computing. more

Excitons can simultaneously adopt atomic-like and solid-like characteristics when stimulated by light. The discovery opens up an important new avenue for the manipulation of excitonic as well as materials’ properties by light. more

New switch for nanolight: Team develops a unique platform to program a layered crystal, taking an important step toward the control of nanolight. The work also provides insights for the field of optical quantum information processing. more

MPSD researchers discover a long-lived superconducting state in K₃C₆₀ at a temperature five times higher than the one at which superconductivity sets in without photoexcitation. This metastable state, produced with a new type of laser, lasts nearly 10.000 times longer than previously achieved. more

New perspective on the future of twisted van der Waals materials presented in Nature Physics. Researchers outline the materials' significance in terms of fundamental science as well as their potential applications in materials science and quantum information technologies. more