Carl-Ramsauer Award for PhD student from MBI
Dr Lisa-Marie Kern receives the prize of the Berlin Physical Society for her outstanding dissertation
Each year, the Berlin Physical Society bestows the Carl-Ramsauer Award to a maximum of four PhD students from Berlin and Brandenburg universities. Dr Lisa-Marie Kern from TU Berlin is one of the 2023 prizewinners who was honoured for her dissertation.
Kern carried out her PhD research at MBI, studying the controlled manipulation of tiny swirls of magnetization, called skyrmions. Such magnetic skyrmions can exist in ferromagnetic thin films and they have captured the interest of researchers for two primary reasons: their dynamics depends on their non-trivial topology, and they may be used in future data storage and processing concepts as bits encoding “0” and “1”.
Magnetic skyrmions can be generated by single impulses of laser light or electrical current. Kern developed an approach that allows to control and to predefine - with a precision of 20 nanometers - exactly where a skyrmion is formed by such a pulse. Furthermore, she developed a “nanometer rails system with stops” which enables the controlled motion of skyrmions along a guiding path using current pulses, bringing them to well-defined stops. These capabilities are essential for both fundamental studies on skyrmion dynamics as well as to realize applications in future devices. In fact, she could realize the very first pump-probe imaging experiments on the current- and the laser-induced skyrmion nucleation, unveiling intricate details on how a skyrmion comes into existence and responds on ultrashort timescales.
“In my PhD research at MBI, I could combine expertise in laser technology, x-ray imaging and nanofabrication to drive my research forward” says Dr. Kern, “and I am truly grateful for the opportunities that came with being part of a great team and having access to the unique technical resources.”
Contact:
Dr. Lisa-Marie Kern
Max Born Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Short Pulse Spectroscopy
Lisa-Marie.Kern(at)mbi-berlin.de
+49 30 6392-1343
Press release MBI, 22 November 2023