Forschungsgruppe Prof. Dr. Samir Lounis

Functional Nanoscale Structure Probe and Simulation Laboratory (Funsilab)

Research interests

We are interested in investigating physical phenomena across several length scales, i.e. from adatoms to large non-collinear spin-textures such as magnetic skyrmions, involving the interplay of spin, orbital, charge degrees of freedom, which defines the field of spin-orbitronics.

We develop theoretical concepts and methods based on density functional theory (DFT), time-dependent DFT and many-body perturbation theory. We investigate electronic, magnetic and transport properties with a particular focus on dynamical effects, paramount in information and communication technology and essential in any reading and writing processes involving magnetic bits of information.

From a first-principles perspective, not much is known about the dynamical behaviour of complex magnetic materials in reduced dimensionality and their signature in the AC transport regime. Magnetic bits can be the building blocks or matter, such as adatoms and clusters deposited on surfaces, or much larger objects such as magnetic skyrmions, which are topological entities linking the so-called spintronics to topotronics.

In these videos, we present a brief description of our activities:

ERC Consolidator Grant for Jun. Prof. Samir Lounis

Samir Lounis: Physics at the Nanoscale

Methods

The main method developed in our group is based on the Korringa-Kohn-Rostoker Green function method, which is ideal to treat periodic materials or materials including defects using an embedding scheme made possible thanks to the use of the so-called Dyson equation.

We also develop a method based on a tight-binding treatment in order to investigate dynamical transport properties, the AC-Hall effect, of large sized nanostructures. Here is the set of methods we are developing or applying in our daily research activities:

Funding

While the initial funding, which allowed us to create Funsilab, came from the Helmholtz Association, our current activities are mainly funded by the European Research Council via the ERC consolidator grant DYNASORE.

We also receive funding from other sources (see below).