Theoretical Methods

Angel Rubio, the director of the MPSD’s Theory Department, has been elected as a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW). more

Jie Shan, Professor of Applied and Engineering Physics and Physics at Cornell University (USA), and Prineha Narang, Assistant Professor of Computational Materials Science at Harvard University (USA) and currently on a research stay at the MPSD, will be awarded the Mildred Dresselhaus Prize 2021. more

Prineha Narang is coming to the MPSD from Harvard University for an extended research stay. She has received two prestigious prizes: A Max Planck Sabbatical Award for her work in Germany and the Humboldt Foundation's Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award for her research work to date. more

Molecular quantum switches get help from the surfaces they are adsorbed on. In porphycene molecules, heavy surface atoms like copper participate in the intramolecular hydrogen tunneling reaction and can cause an increase in the tunneling rate by up to two orders of magnitude at a temperature of around 80 K. more

The Berry curvature - an important property of quantum materials - can be imaged with chiral light. An international research team has predicted the outcomes of photoelectron spectroscopy experiments and showed that the resulting images reveal information about the microscopic structure of electronic wavefunctions inside atomically thin, two-dimensional materials.  more