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Dr. Matjaž Humar, head of the Bio-integrated photonics lab and associate of the Condensed Matter Physics Department at the Jožef Stefan Institute was awarded the prestigious ERC Starting Grant by the European Research Council in the amount of 1.5 million Euro. The aim of the Cell Lasers Project is to study the interactions between lasers inserted into individual cells and the biological processes within those cells. Dr. Humar recently presented the first example of a laser within a living cell. Previous research has shown that lasers can operate within cells, but it has not yet been researched how the operation of lasers interacts with biophysical and biochemical processes of the cell. In the long term, the Cell Lasers Project aims to transform lasers within cells from a scientific curiosity into a robust method that can be used in the fields of research and medicine.

Dr Nych Andriy, Fukuda Jun-ichi, Ognysta Uliana, Prof. Žumer Slobodan, PhD, and Prof. Muševič Igor, PhD: award for the best paper published in 2018 in the field of liquid crystals, “Spontaneous formation and dynamics of half-skyrmions in a chiral liquid-crystal film”, Tsukuba, Ibaraki , Japan, The Japanese Liquid Crystal Society

Prof. Arčon Denis, PhD: The Žiga Zois Prize for outstanding scientific achievements in the field of quantum magnetism and unusual superconductivity, Ljubljana, awarded by the Republic of Slovenia

Gačnik Darja, MPhys: the award for the best oral presentation in the young scientists’ category, “Supercon-ductivity in Ti–Zr–Hf–(Sn,Ni,Nb) high-entropy alloys”, Dresden, Germany, European C-MetAC Days 2019

Dr Jelen Andreja: the award for the best poster, “Microstructure and magnetic properties of a single-crystalline FeCoCrMnAl high-entropy alloy”, Kranjska Gora, The 14th International Conference on Quasicrystals (ICQ14)

Dr Klanjšek Martin: The Blinc Award for Extraordinary One-time Achievements for proving the existence of unusual quasiparticles called anyons, Ljubljana, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, University of Ljubljana and Jožef Stefan Institute

Dr Koželj Primož: Golden Emblem Prize for his doctoral thesis with the highest impact in Slovenia and abroad, “Physical properties of high-entropy alloys and their Comparison to Complex Intermetallics”, Ljubljana, Jožef Stefan Institute

Assoc.… Read the rest “Awards 2019”

The International Conference on Quasicrystals – ICQ14 took place in Kranjska Gora from May 26 to May 31, 2019. It was attended by 120 scientists from 18 countries and three continents (Europe, Asia and America). Dr. Andreja Jelen of the F5 Department also attended the conference, where she presented the poster “Microstructure and magnetic properties of a single-crystalline FeCoCrMnAl high-entropy alloy”. The committee of three scientists from France, Japan and Poland selected her poster as the best poster contribution at the ICQ14 conference. The Best Poster Prize was sponsored by the Crystals journal. The photo shows dr. Andrej Jelen and the president of the committee, prof. Hiroyuki Takakura from the University of Hokkaido, Japan.

Matjaž Gomilšek, Martin Klanjšek, Matej Pregelj and Andrej Zorko from the Condensed Matter Physics Department and Rok Žitko from the Department of Theoretical Physics at the “Jožef Stefan” Institute, in collaboration with researchers from Switzerland and China, have published the paper Kondo screening in a charge-insulating spinon metal in Nature Physics. The Kondo effect where conduction electrons screen the local moments of magnetic impurities is well known to occur in ordinary metals. Here, the researchers have shown that an analogous phenomenon is possible also in electric insulators, in particular, in a quantum spin liquid with magnetic spinon excitations forming a Fermi surface. This discovery could be important for manipulating topologically protected spin-liquid states in quantum computing.

Researchers from the Condensed Matter Physics Department (F5), Matej Pregelj, Andrej Zorko, Matjaž Gomilšek, Martin Klanjšek and Denis Arčon, in collaboration with colleagues from Switzerland, UK and Croatia, published an article in npj Quantum materials entitled Elementary excitation in the spin-stripe phase in quantum chains. To describe the dynamics of a large number of interacting particles, we often use a decomposition into elementary excitation modes, such as phonons in case of lattice vibrations. In the published article, the researchers discovered a new excitation mode in the spin chains, a collective wiggling of spins occurring in a spin-stripe state. The work provides a new insight into the physics of stripe states, which are also found in high-temperature superconductors.