Invitation to the lecture: Dominik Kriegner – Altermagnetism and its application in spintronics

The lecture by Dr. Dominik Kriegner (Institute of Physics of the CAS, Prague) will take place on Monday, 7 April 2025, at 12:00 pm in the lecture room P8

Altermagnets are a recently identified class of magnets distinct from both ferromagnets and antiferromagnets. Unlike antiferromagnets, where opposite magnetic moments are related by simple translations or inversions, altermagnets connect them through rotational symmetries. This unique property results in a special type of spin splitting in the electronic structure, breaking time-reversal symmetry without producing a net magnetization.
In this lecture, I will discuss how symmetry analysis distinguishes different types of magnetic order and how angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) reveals this spin splitting in MnTe, providing experimental confirmation of altermagnetism. We will also explore the unusual electronic and magnetic responses of these materials, such as the anomalous Hall effect and X-ray magnetic circular dichroism, which offer new ways to study and image magnetic domain structures. Altermagnets present exciting opportunities for spintronic applications, making them a compelling topic in modern condensed matter physics.

Dr. Dominik Kriegner

Dominik Kriegner is from Linz, Austria, and researches advanced materials with a focus on spintronics and nanoelectronics. Spintronics is a fundamentally new concept of information processing and writing using the quantum property of the electron – spin. Dr. Kriegner studied physics at the Johann Kepler University in Linz and after receiving his PhD worked at the Department of Condensed Matter Physics at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of Charles University and later at the Max Planck Institute and the Technical University of Dresden. Since 2016, he has been working at the Institute of Physics of the CAS, where in the department of Tomas Jungwirth he specializes in the study of antiferromagnets and now also in the newly discovered altermagnets, which are magnetic arrangements where not only the directions of magnetic fields on neighboring atoms alternate, but also the spatial orientation of atoms in the crystal alternates. Dominik Kriegner was awarded the NF Bernard Bolzano annual prize in 2017 and the Lumina quaeruntur prize in 2021, which enabled him to start his own research group.