Poster award for OPTIMAS Ph.D. student Moritz Barkowski

Moritz Barkowski was recently awarded the second poster prize at the prestigious CECAM Workshop "Exploration of ultra-fast timescales using time dependent density functional theory and quantum optimal control theory” in Lausanne, Switzerland. The poster by him and his co-authors O. Schmitt, J. Urbancic, S. Eich, J. Mao, S. Sadashivaiah,  D. Steil, M. Cinchetti, S. Mathias, and M. Aeschlimann was entitled "Depth-dependent study of femtosecond spin-currents in Ni/Au".

In a new experimental regime of the magneto-optical Kerr-effect (MOKE) the authors studied a sample consisting of a 10nm nickel layer on a 100nm gold layer. They recorded the induction of a magnetization through spin currents in the gold layer induced by a second laser pulse from the nickel layer in the fs time range.

CECAM (Centre européen de calcul atomique et moléculaire) is a European Association founded in 1969. The aims of the association are to promote cooperation amongst European research organisations and their scientific communities in research involving computationally intensive methods. Thus, the workshop brought together leading scientists from both experimental and theoretical approaches in order to discuss current hot topics in ultrafast magnetism.