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Junhang Duan, a talented master student researcher from Professor Xiao’s Group, has been recognized with the ScM Research Excellence Award by the Physics department. Her research on the physics of magnetic skyrmion and domain wall motion, conducted under the guidance of Professor Gang Xiao, has earned her this well-deserved recognition.

Upon completing her master’s studies, Junhang will continue her academic journey as a PhD student at Northwestern University, beginning this Fall semester.

Congratulations to Junhang on this significant achievement, and we wish her the best of luck in her future research endeavors at Northwestern!

Professor Xiao gave a lecture for the “Frontiers of Condensed Matter Physics” (FCMP) Columbia 2023 Spring Series on April 3rd, 2023. The lecture, titled “Generating true random numbers with single skyrmions: exploring local dynamics and skyrmion interactions”, is part of a lecture series featuring leading CMP-AMO researchers sharing their latest findings and insights.

About FCMP: Since 2011, Columbia University has been hosting the “Frontiers of Condensed Matter Physics (FCMP) Lectures” to bring in leading CMP/AMO researchers and provide a platform for them to present their latest research to a diverse audience comprising graduate students, postdocs, and senior researchers. The lectures aim to be historically, pedagogically, and intuitively presented to enable even entry-level CMP graduate students to enjoy and gain valuable insights from them.

In response to the ongoing pandemic, the lectures have been moved fully online since 2020, and recordings of the lectures are made available to subscribed students and interested observers from the research community. The FCMP is organized by Professor Yasutomo Uemura of Columbia University. The 2023 Spring series is co-hosted by Professors Philip Kim (Harvard), Pengcheng Dai (Rice), Liuyan Zhao (Michigan), and Weiwei Xie (Michigan State), who circulate flyers among their groups and institutions and recommend speakers. The lecture series promises to be an exciting and informative event for all those interested in the latest developments in condensed matter physics.

On March 8, 2023, Professor Xiao gave an invited talk at the APS March Meeting 2023 in Las Vegas, NV. The talk was part of Session M44 on Topological Magnetic Textures and was titled “Single skyrmion true random number generator using local dynamics and interaction between skyrmions”.

During the talk, Professor Xiao discussed the creation of a single skyrmion true random number generator, which utilizes local dynamics, and a multi-skyrmion system whose dynamics is influenced by the interaction between skyrmions. This new physics could have implications for a range of fields, from cryptography to probabilistic computing.

The video recording of Professor Xiao’s talk is available till June 20, 2023 on APS March Meeting website. Access to the recording requires APS March Meeting registration.

This innovative research represents an exciting advancement in the field of topological magnetic textures, and we look forward to seeing how this technology will be utilized in the future.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation (OMA-1936221).

Magnetic skyrmions are tiny magnetic swirls that hold great potential in innovative electronic devices owing to their desirable properties of long-term stability, small size, and highly efficient controllability by various external stimuli. In this recently published review, we address the fundamental physics of the static, global and local dynamic properties of skyrmions and provide an overview of recent advances in computational models that utilize these unique properties. A discussion on the challenges lying ahead is also provided.

For more information, click here.

A research group, including Brown University Professor of Physics and Engineering Gang Xiao, has successfully observed the world’s largest tunnel magnetocapacitance (TMC) ratio and explained its mechanism. In addition to Xiao, the international collaborative was comprised of Kenta Sato, a second-year master’s student at Keio University’s Graduate School of Science and Technology in Japan, Hideo Kaiju, Associate Professor at Keio University’s Faculty of Science and Technology, and colleagues including Hiroaki Sukegawa, Principal Researcher at the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan.

TMC is a phenomenon in which capacitance (electrical capacitance, or the amount of electricity that a system can store) changes based on a magnetic field. This phenomenon is observed in textured magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) with a thin insulating layer between two magnetic layers. Until now, the largest observed TMC ratio, a figure-of-merit on magnetic sensitivity, has been 332%. In this study, researchers achieved the world’s largest TMC ratio of 426% by using an insulation tunneling layer and applying voltage biasing. Furthermore, they explained the mechanism behind this phenomenon using dielectric theory, which incorporates quantum mechanics and statistical theory.

These results pave the way for creating new capacitance-detecting, high-performance magnetic sensors and magnetic memory devices. They are also expected to be applied in next-generation Internet of Things (IoT) technology—a major driver of the Digital Age—and to make significant contributions to the acquisition, accumulation, and analysis of big data. In the future, these findings are expected to be put to practical use not only in the Information Technology/Information and Communication Technology (IT/ICT) field but also in a wide range of other fields, including environmental energy, healthcare, health sciences, transportation, agriculture, and manufacturing.

The research results were published online in Scientific Reports (via Springer Nature Group) on May 16, 2022.