10 December 2013
Günter S. Bauer died on Dec 10, 2013
It is with deep sadness, that we inform friends and colleagues in the neutron source and neutron scattering community that Dr. Günter S. Bauer on December 10, 2013, after a severe disease, passed away at the age of only 72. We will always remember Günter for his enthusiasm for challenging projects in science and neutron source development, his active engagement in the neutron user community, his support and advice for new facility projects, and his distinctive visions for novel developments in neutron sources and instrumentation. As former colleagues and collaborators at PSI, we are deeply touched and saddened by his passing away. Our thoughts are with his family.In name of friends and former colleagues from PSI,
Werner Wagner and Kurt Clausen
24 September 2013
SPS 2013 Prize "General Physics" awarded to Titus Neupert
Titus Neupert has been awarded the 2013 Prize of the Swiss Physical Society (SPS) in "General Physics" for his pioneering PhD work, especially for his theoretical discovery of “Fractional quantum Hall states at zero magnetic field”. The experimental discoveries of the integer and fractional quantum Hall effects in 1981 and 1982, respectively, at cryogenic temperatures. The discovery of graphene in 2005 established that the integer quantum Hall effect could be achieved at room temperature. Theorists predicted that the integer quantum Hall effect was one out of many examples of a larger family of semiconducting states supporting quantized susceptibilities in materials called topological band insulators. Titus Neupert gave the first quantitative answer to the question whether strong interactions could drive a fractional topological insulator in very much the same way as interactions drive a fractional quantum Hall insulator. One of the most remarkable prediction made by the award winner is that, by taking advantage of materials with strong spin-orbit coupling, it might become possible to achieve a fractional quantum Hall effect that is robust at room temperature and this without the use of any laboratory magnetic field. The picture (courtesy: Swiss Physical Society) shows Titus with the SPS president Andreas Schopper (left) and jury president Louis Schlapbach (right).
20 September 2013
JUM@P user meeting 2013
From September 18-20, 2013 the 3rd edition of the JUM@P user meetings was organized. The meeting brought together more than 150 scientists and users of SLS, SINQ and SμS. JUM@P'13 started with a plenary session with invited lectures as well as information about PSI and its user facilities. One highlight of the session was the award of the third PSI Thesis Medal to Matti M. van Schooneveld from the MPI for Chemical Energy Conversion, Mülheim a.d. Ruhr, Germany. On the second day three topical parallel workshops have been organized. Two poster sessions and the 2013 annual meeting of the European Synchrotron User Organisation ESUO completed the program. In total, 55 talks and more than 70 posters have been presented by our highly active user community. Thanks to everybody helping us to make that meeting being a success. The full program is still available from the JUM@P website.
13 May 2013
Restart of proton accelerator 2013
On May 13, 2013 the PSI proton accelerator has started its 2013 campaign successfully. From now on until the end of the year experimentalists from all over the world will again benefit from the use of the large scale facilities, which are linked to the world's strongest proton accelerator: the PSI neutron and muon sources SINQ and SμS, respectively, the installations for particle physics and the Ultracold Neutron Source UCN.
18 February 2013
SINQ Scientific Advisory Committee: new chairman
From summer 2013 on Peter Böni from TU Munich has been appointed as new chairman of the SINQ SAC. Peter takes over that function from the leaving chairman Andrew Boothroyd (University of Oxford), who served the SINQ SAC since 2004 and acted as its chairman from 2006 on. PSI, the NUM division and the whole SINQ crew thank Andrew very warmly for all his great support over the last years and we wish Peter all the best and a good start for his new duties. The photo shows Peter Böni (left) and Andrew Boothroyd (right) together with the head of the Laboratory for Neutron Scattering Christian Rüegg.
15 January 2013
