The Annual Director's Awards for 2024

Dr hab. Szczepkowski's experimental research at IF PAN concerned ultra-precise measurements of the energy structure of two groups of polar molecules - KCs as well as KSr i RbSr, which are of direct interest to researchers in many groups around the world who are working to obtain them at ultra-low temperatures.

Dr Alam's PhD thesis, under the supervision of Prof. Marcin Matusiak, concerns the properties of Weyl semimetals and the so-called chiral anomaly. The research presented in it demonstrates, among other things, the observation of pumping of chiral fermions between Weyl cones in the topological semimetal α-Sn, the so-called “grey” Tin. Also, a change in the sign of the anomalous Hall conduction associated with the reconstruction of the electronic structure which is a consequence of the reorientation of spins was found.

In this publication in the top physics journal Physical Review Letters, in collaboration with researchers from Tsinghua University and Aalto University, Dr Shen and Dr Trif have extended the application of the traditional Fermi-Dirac distribution to non-Hermitian systems. The new formalism provides a general framework to compute quantum many-body observables in equilibrium systems coupled to dissipative environments.  The paper was chosen as an Editor's suggestion.