News 2021

CFEL researcher Saša Bajt has been awarded the title Ambassador of Science of the Republic of Slovenia for her outstanding scientific achievements and her intensive collaboration with ... The Slovenian-born physicist heads the group for X-ray Optics for Extreme Conditions in CFEL and is also a principal investigator in the Cluster of Excellence (CUI) at the University of Hamburg. ...

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A new analytical technique is able to provide hitherto unattainable insights into the extremely rapid dynamics of biomolecules. The team of developers, led by Abbas Ourmazd from the University of ... “In order to precisely understand biochemical processes in nature, such as photosynthesis in certain bacteria, it is important to know the detailed sequence of events,” Santra explains ...

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A review involving a team of MPSD scientists at CFEL, just published as a colloquium in the prestigious Reviews of Modern ... A piece of material, when left alone, is usually in thermal equilibrium and governed by the laws of thermodynamics, in which a few known external conditions (such as temperature, pressure) fully ...

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When light interacts with matter, for example when a laser beam hits a two-dimensional material like graphene, it can substantially change the behavior of the material. Depending on the form of ... "Imagine you are given a set of construction bricks to build a model of the famous Berlin Gate," says Christian Schäfer, lead author of the study. "Intuitively, we start placing the ...

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A team of researchers from Germany, China and the United States has discovered that two twisted layers of MoS₂ can be used to control kinetic energy scales in solids. In addition to using ... In recent years, two-dimensional (2D) materials stacked at a relative twist to each other (known as ‘twisted van der Waals materials’), have revolutionized condensed matter research. ...

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Theoreticians at the MPSD at CFEL predict that a unique laser source could produce highly controllable electric currents in any bulk material. The team’s work, now published in the current ...

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Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) at CFEL and RWTH Aachen University have suggested a surprising connection between the nematic behavior of a ...

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MPSD researcher Ankit Disa has accepted a professorship at Cornell University in the United States. He has been working as an experimental physicist in the Institute’s Condensed Matter Dynamics ... Ankit’s research concentrates on understanding and manipulating the properties of complex electronic and magnetic materials. Together with colleagues from the MPSD and the University of Oxford ...

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Photons trapped in a cavity can cause a crystal known as strontium titanate (SrTiO₃) to become ferroelectric, according to a new study by the MPSD’s theory group at CFEL. The photons ... The team’s findings pave the way for the exploration of novel mixed light-matter phases, dubbed ‚photo-groundstates‘. These are phases where the material’s atoms and electrons ...

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Researchers from the Fritz Haber Institute in Berlin, the MPI for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter at CFEL and the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg have provided important new insights ... Energy generation in light-based technologies relies on the ability of materials to convert light into electrical power and vice-versa. Certain organic molecular solids have the peculiar ability to ...

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Prineha Narang, an Assistant Professor of Computational Materials Science at Harvard University, is coming to the MPSD at CFEL for an extended research stay. She has been granted a Max Planck ... Prineha Narang holds a professorship at the University’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, leading the NarangLab. Her group has made key contributions in ...

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James McIver, the leader of the Non-Equilibrium Transport in Quantum Materials group at CFEL, has accepted an assistant professor position with the Physics Department at Columbia ... James’ research focuses on transport phenomena in quantum materials at terahertz frequencies and on ultrafast timescales. His group investigates how charge and spin transport are ...

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An international research team led by CFEL researcher Francesca Calegari and with the key participation of the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) has demonstrated ... High energy radiation can cause irreparable damage to our own biological molecules – such as DNA – leading to mutations and potentially cell death. Damage is often occurring as a ...

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Though they both consist only of H₂O molecules, water and ice exhibit apparently distinct characters: The former is solid and the latter is the very indispensable liquid for all living ... Many branches of condensed matter theory have focused on the phases of materials, or on phase variations of a given material. In so-called ‘phase changing ...

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The LUX team at CFEL is celebrating not just one but two milestones in the development of innovative plasma accelerators. The scientists from the University of Hamburg and DESY used their accelerator ... Plasma acceleration is an innovative technology that is giving rise to a new generation of particle accelerators which are not only remarkably compact but also extremely versatile. The aim is to make ...

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Ángel Rubio, the Director of the MPSD’s Theory Department located at CFEL, has been chosen as a Fellow of the European Physical Society (EPS). The Society awards Rubio the ... Rubio’s research focuses on the electronic and structural properties of advanced materials, nanostructures and molecular complexes. His work includes the development of theoretical ...

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A team of researchers from the MIT, DESY, the University of Hamburg and the UC Davis, has succeeded in generating electron pulses with a duration of only a few hundred attoseconds on metallic ... Independent of the observed frequency, the oscilloscope records the electric fields by discrete sampling. It thus measures the shape of the wave by determining the respective height of the wave at ...

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A team of researchers has identified several candidates for drugs against the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 at DESY´s high-brilliance X-ray lightsource PETRA III. They bind to an important protein of the ... In contrast to vaccines, which help healthy people to defend themselves against the virus, drug research is looking for drugs that slow down or stop the reproduction of the virus in the body of ...

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An international team of scientists has found evidence of an unconventional melting process in diamond induced by an X-ray laser beam. While in conventional melting the atoms of a sample start moving ... X-rays are routinely used for scanning bags at airports and capturing medical images. In both cases, X-rays are produced by X-ray tubes (the X-ray equivalent of the electric light bulb). The X-ray ...

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An international team of researchers from the MPSD (Max Planck institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter) at CFEL, the University of Toronto (Canada), the Diamond Light Source in Oxford (UK) ... All life is dynamic and so are its molecular building blocks. The motions and structural changes of biomolecules are fundamental to their function. However, understanding these dynamic motions at a ...

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Excitons are quasiparticles which can transport energy through solid substances. This makes them important for the development of future materials and devices – but more research is needed to ... Excitons consist of a negatively charged electron and a positively charged hole in solids. They are a so-called many-body-effect, produced by the interaction of many particles, especially when a ...

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An international research team involving the MPSD's Theory department at CFEL has developed a unique platform to program a layered crystal, producing imaging capabilities beyond common limits on ... Nature sets a limit on how tightly light can be focused. Even in microscopes, two different objects that are closer than this limit would appear to be one.  But within a special class of layered ...

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Superconductivity – the ability of a material to transmit an electric current without loss – is a quantum effect that, despite years of research, is still limited to very low ... Superconductivity is one of the most fascinating and mysterious phenomena of modern physics. It describes the sudden loss of electrical resistance in certain materials when they are cooled below a ...

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Researchers from the MPSD at CFEL, the RWTH Aachen University and the Flatiron institute as well as Columbia University (both in the USA) and part of the Max Planck – New ... The team of researchers has laid out an exciting road map for the vibrant field of twisted van der Waals materials, reviewing the rapid progress made recently and adding their unique vision of ...

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Electrons in solids can have only certain energies, called bands. In recent years, it was shown experimentally that the range of energies allowed for electrons can be tuned by twisting two layers of ... The researchers demonstrated a new, simple and robust method for producing large (micrometer-scale) regions of uniform rhombohedral four-layers graphene in their work, by introducing a small twist ...

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Hard X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) have delivered intense, ultrashort X-ray pulses for over a decade. One of the most promising applications of XFELs is in biology, where researchers can capture ... Many biological systems – and some non-biological ones – suffer damage when they are excited by an X-ray pulse from an XFEL. One of the causes of damage is the process known as Auger ...

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An international team of scientists, led by Kartik Ayyer from the MPSD at CFEL, has obtained some of the sharpest possible 3D images of gold nanoparticles. The results lay the foundation for ... “The techniques used to obtain high-resolution images of biomolecules include X-ray crystallography, which requires the biomolecules to be crystallized," says Kartik Ayyer, the leader of ...

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All photo-electronic devices work on the basis that the materials inside them absorb, transmit and reflect light. Understanding the photo properties of a specific material at the atomic level not ... The work has now been published in the current issue of Nature Physics.

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