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Associate Prof. Dr. Uroš Tkalec is one of this year's honorees of the Oustanding Referee Program. The lifetime award is granted by the American Physical Society (APS), which has more than 50.000 members from all over the world. Each year, the editors of the APS select around 150 of the best referees for papers to be published in their journals, with the number and quality of reviews being the main criteria. So far, ten physicists at Slovenian research institutions have received this award, including F-5 members Prof. Dr. Slobodan Žumer and Prof. Dr. Robert Blinc.
 
More information can be found here:
https://journals.aps.org/OutstandingReferees

Matjaž Gomilšek from the Condensed Matter Physics Department at the Jožef Stefan Institute and the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, University of Ljubljana has published a paper Anisotropic Skyrmion and Multi-q Spin Dynamics in Centrosymmetric Gd₂PdSi₃ in Physical Review Letters as the leading author, together with co-authors from the UK, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, and Japan. In the paper they discover a pronounced directional dependence of magnetic dynamics in topologically-protected whirls of magnetization called skyrmions. The observed behavior is very unusual, since the studied material is highly symmetrical. The researchers also discover a strong directional dependence of magnetic dynamics in the previously-unidentified ground state of the material, which suggests that it is the much-sought-after lattice of merons (“halves” of a skyrmion). These discoveries significantly contribute to solving the puzzle of the stability of topological magnetic textures in highly symmetrical materials.

Skyrmions can be used for data storage, spintronics (a magnetic analogue of electronics), or as a platform for advanced (reservoir-computing) artificial intelligence.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.134.046702