News

Dr Matjaž Gomilšek: Jožef Stefan Golden Emblem Prize for his doctoral thesis “Quantum spin liquids on

geometrically frustrated kagome lattices”, Ljubljana, Jožef Stefan Institute

Prof. Samo Kralj, PhD: the Zois Certificate of Recognition for important research achievements in the

field of soft-matter physics, Ljubljana

As a member of an international consortium, “Jožef Stefan” Institute received the European Athena project, whose aim is the implementation of gender equality plans to release the potential of research institutions in Europe. The F5 department will have an active role in this project, joined by 9 other “Jožef Stefan” Institute departments (U1, F4, K1, K3, K5, K7, E3, E5 and E7). Despite the large number of highly qualified women with degrees, women make up only a third of research workforce in the EU. The aims of this project are to remove the barriers that make it difficult for women to become employed in a research facility and to be promoted to researchers, to strengthen the presence of the gender dimension within research programs and to address the gender inequality in decision making. The two main project goals are development and implementation of a plan for gender equality on a systemic, institutional level. The members of the international consortium are research institutions from Central and Eastern Europe and from remote regions with a low gender equality index, as the project aims to reduce the gap between research organizations across Europe.

During a football match at the Stožice Stadium in Ljubljana in 2019, the F5 department researchers measured nanoparticle air pollution. During the match, the fans of both teams used pyrotechnic devices to support their teams despite the prohibition. Researchers of the Department of Condensed Matter Physics, Luka Pirker, Anton Gradišek, Bojana Višić and Maja Remškar discovered the number of nanoparticles in the range between 30 nm to 300 nm increased by 1200 percent when flares were light and the players inhaled 300 % more particles than usual. In addition to carbon, the chemical analysis also showed the presence of potentially poisonous elements which are used for colouring and as fuel such as strontium (red colour), barium (green colour), potassium, magnesium and chloride. The findings were published in the Atmospheric Environment journal.

Tina Arh, Matjaž Gomilšek, Matej Pregelj, Martin Klanjšek and Andrej Zorko from the Solid State Physics Department and Peter Prelovšek from the Department of Theoretical Physics at the “Jožef Stefan” Institute, in collaboration with researchers from United Kingdom, USA and China, have published a paper “Origin of Magnetic Ordering in a Structurally Perfect Quantum Kagome Antiferromagnet” in Physical Review Letters. They confirmed more than a decade old theoretical prediction of a quantum critical point of a kagome antiferromagnet between a quantum spin liquid and a magnetically ordered state, induced by the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya magnetic anisotropy. YCu3(OH)6Cl3 is the first known material with a perfect kagome lattice without any impurities, in which the magnetic anisotropy can be studied in isolation from other perturbations. Understanding the mechanism of magnetic ordering in this material is crucial for understanding the stability of enigmatic quantum spin liquids.

Andrej Zorko from the Department of Condensed Matter Physics at Jožef Stefan Institute and the Physics department at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, University of Ljubljana, was part of the international research team that confirmed the gapless ground state in the archetypal quantum kagome antiferromagnet ZnCu3(OH)6Cl2. Their research, which was published in the Nature Physics journal, disproved the decades old conviction that a spin-gap must exist in this material and shone new light on the enigmatic state of this spin liquid. This experimental conclusion aligns with the most recent theories which propose a gapless Dirac spin liquid as the ground state of the Heisenberg kagome antiferromagnet.