Physics professor Dr. Burkard Hillebrands has been honoured with the Achievement Award by the Magnetism Society of the international engineering association IEEE (Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers). With this award, the IEEE recognizes his life's work in magnetism research: "For his pioneering contributions in the field of spin dynamics, especially in magnonics". Hillebrands is the first German to receive this award. It can be regarded as the world's highest honor in the field of applied magnetism. Hillebrands holds the Chair of Magnetism at the Rhineland-Palatinate Technical University of Kaiserslautern-Landau (RPTU). His research includes investigating the properties and potential applications of magnon quantum particles and the material properties of magnetic nanosystems.
Professor Hillebrands has been researching the phenomenon of so-called macroscopic quantum states for a long time. His focus is on supercurrents and magnon quantum particles. These can transport information and consume significantly less energy in the process. The Kaiserslautern research team led by the physicist uses them in their work as fast information carriers and transmitters. Hillebrands has established a separate branch of research for this purpose: supramagnonics.
This research could be relevant for technical applications: The processing and storage of data could become much more efficient in the future with these particles. For his work in this area, Hillebrands received an ERC Advanced Grant, one of the most highly endowed awards in the European Union, in 2016.
The physicist is also involved in collaborative research centers (SFB). Together with colleagues from Kaiserslautern and Mainz, he has been working in the CRC "Spin+X: Spin in its collective environment" since 2016, for example, in an interdisciplinary collaboration with chemists, mechanical engineers and process engineers on magnetic effects that are to be transferred to applications. From 2016 to 2017, Hillebrands was also Scientific Director of the Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research in Dresden. He is also one of the first members of the State Research Center OPTIMAS (Optics and Materials Science) at RPTU. In addition, he has been Chairman of the Mathematics and Natural Sciences Class at the Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz and a member of the German Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech) since 2017. He was recently admitted as a member of the European Academy of Sciences (EURASC, European Academy of Sciences).
The award was presented to Hillebrands on May 17 during the international conference on magnetism, INTERMAG, in Sendai, Japan. With over 400,000 members, the IEEE is the largest professional association in the world. Thematically, it is divided into 39 societies. They are each dedicated to a specific area of research, such as magnetism.
Questions answered:
Prof. Dr. Burkard Hillebrands
RPTU/Chair of Magnetism
E-Mail: hilleb(at)physik.uni-kl.de
Phone: 0631-205-4228