Author: Mikhail Lemeshko

We are happy to welcome Fumika Suzuki as an ISTplus postdoctoral Fellow. Here is how Fumika describes her way here:

“I grew up in Tokyo, Japan. Like many people in Tokyo who go to work/school on jam-packed trains, I was always dreaming of living in the countryside, surrounded by nature and farms. Studying abroad at the University of Leeds, England fulfilled my dream. There I obtained a BSc in Theoretical Physics, thanks to support by Ian D. Lawrie, who taught me particle physics with extra dimensions. Afterwards, I moved to the University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver, Canada to obtain an MSc. in Mathematical Physics, advised by Richard Froese and Joel Feldman. In 2018, advised by Taka Momose, Bill Unruh and Roman Krems, I completed a PhD in Theoretical Physics from UBC, where I studied quantum mechanics and quantum field theory of complex systems. It was also Bill who introduced me to the beauty of Vienna through the film “The Third Man”. From 2018-2020 I worked as IRTG fellow at UBC and the University of Freiburg, Germany, and since February 2020 I have been working as ISTplus fellow in Prof. M. Lemeshko’s group. In my free time I like observing nature and animals and enjoy other cultures.“

This year Wojciech Rzadkowski has been awarded one of the prestigious DOC-Fellowships from the Austrian Academy of Sciences. His research project “Analytic and machine learning approaches to composite quantum impurities” aims to apply the techniques of computer science to state-of-the-art problems of condensed-matter physics. Congratulations, Wojciech!

It’s a great pleasure to welcome Dr. Ekaterina Pärschke as an IST Plus postdoctoral fellow in our group! Here is how Ekaterina describes her way here:

“I was born in Moscow, Russia, and obtained my M.Sc. degree from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. In 2013, I moved to the beautiful city of Dresden in Germany for my doctoral studies at the Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research. There, I worked on correlated materials, in particular, iridates, which are Mott insulators well-known for being similar to the high-temperature superconducting cuprates, and yet not showing any superconductivity. I was interested in the interplay of strong correlations, spin-orbit coupling, and electron-phonon interactions in these 5d materials, leading to exotic phases and their peculiar behavior. From my supervisor Prof. van den Brink, I learned a lot about resonant inelastic X-ray scattering and became fascinated with theoretical modeling of various spectroscopic technics. In 2017, I moved to Alabama, USA to experience some subtropical climate and dive deep into computational methods, like exact diagonalization, as a postdoc at the University of Alabama at Birmingham with Prof. Cheng-Chien Chen. My research interests span from magnetism, orbital physics, and polarons to quantum materials under pressure, strain, or an out-of-equilibrium quench. I like hiking and am always up for a discussion over a cup of tea.”

Welcome to Dr. Artem Volosniev, who just joined our group as an IST Plus postdoctoral fellow. Here is how he describes his way here:

“I spent most of my childhood hanging around in Slavyansk – a small town in Ukraine. Theoretical Physics won me over only after I moved to Kharkiv to study for a university degree. My life as a scientist commenced in 2010 when I started as a PhD student at the Aarhus University (Denmark). My research there was focused on few-body physics in cold atomic gases. After graduating, I experienced a possible solution to a two-body problem in physics – I got attracted by my wife to Darmstadt (Germany). TU Darmstadt gave me the opportunity to learn about recent developments in nuclear physics. Later I attempted to apply some of that knowledge to solving problems relevant for cold atomic gases.”

This year, Julia Liebert (Ludwig Maximillian University, Munich, Germany) and Jiří Etrych (Cambridge University, UK) have been awarded an “ISTernship” stipend which will allow them to spend a few summer months working in our group. Welcome, Julia and Jiří!

Good news, everyone! When the size of an institution is taken into account, IST Austria scores 3d worldwide:

Nature Index: Top 10 academic institutions in 2018: normalized

Here is more info from the IST website und der Artikel im Standard (auf Deutsch)

(yes, we know)

Volker Karle just joined our group as an intern, and will be “promoted” to a PhD student at IST Austria in September. Here is how he describes his way here:

“My fascination for physics originated from youth science competitions during my adolescence. I grew up near Künzelsau in Germany and obtained my bachelor’s degree in Physics at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg where I worked with Andreas Buchleitner on Floquet physics. During a year abroad in Como, Italy, I worked together with Italo Guarneri on classical dynamical localization and enjoyed the Italian way of life. I did my master’s Degree in physics at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg and wrote my thesis about binary Bose mixtures in two dimensions under the supervision of Tilman Enss. Further, I have worked together with Jonathan Donges on interacting tipping elements in the climate system and with Kolja Bailly on machine learning methods for time series prediction. Apart from physics, I am interested in philosophy of science and epistemology. In my free time I enjoy cooking, playing the piano and dancing.”

 

After almost 5 years as a tenure-track professor at IST Austria, Misha Lemeshko has been promoted to Professor with tenure.

In collaboration with the experimental groups of Ronen Rapaport (Hebrew University Jerusalem) and of Paulo Santos (Paul Drude Institute, Berlin) we have demonstrated anisotropic dipole-dipole interactions between excitonic fluids created in semiconductor bilayers.

This paves the way to use indirect dipolar excitons as a new platform for quantum simulation of many-particle phenomena.

C. Hubert, Y. Baruchi, Y. Mazuz-Harpaz, K. Cohen, K. Biermann, M. Lemeshko, K. West, L. Pfeiffer, R. Rapaport, P. Santos
Attractive dipolar coupling between stacked exciton fluids
Phys. Rev. X 9, 021026 (2019), arXiv:1807.11238