MARVEL Distinguished Lecture — Ingrid Mertig

It will take place on Friday, December 3, 2021, 3 pm (CET) on Zoom:

https://epfl.zoom.us/j/68507823417
Passcode: 4154

Transversal transport coefficients and topological properties

Spintronics is an emerging field in which both charge and spin degrees of freedom of electrons are utilized for transport. Most of the spintronic effects—like giant and tunnel magnetoresistance—are based on spin- polarized currents which show up in magnetic materials; these are already widely used in information technology and in data storage devices.

The next generation of spintronic effects is based on spin currents which occur in metals as well as in insulators, in particular in topologically nontrivial materials. Spin currents are a response to an external stimulus—for example electric field or temperature gradient—and they are always related to the spin-orbit interaction. They offer the possibility for future low energy consumption electronics.

The talk will present a unified picture, based on topological properties, of a whole zoo of transversal transport coefficients: the trio of Hall, Nernst, and quantum Hall effects, all in their conventional, anomalous, and spin flavour. The formation of transversal charge and spin currents and their interconversion as response to longitudinal gradients is discussed.

About the speaker

Ingrid Mertig is a professor at the institute of physics of Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany.

She received her doctoral degree from the Technische Universität Dresden in 1982. She was a postdoctoral researcher and senior scientist at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (Russia), and was a regular guest scientist and guest professor at several universities.

She has been a professor at Martin Luther University since 2001 and her main research interests include the quantum theory of solids, density functional theory, transport theory, theory of magnetism, physics of nanostructures, spintronics and topological properties of solids.

Did you miss previous MARVEL Distinguished Lectures? You can watch them on the Materials Cloud dedicated page.