News

We are happy to welcome a group of enthusiastic and promising new team members who have joined the research groups in our department. These new members bring fresh energy and curiosity, and we are eager to support their growth as they begin their research journeys. The Dynamics of Quantum Matter group welcomes Artem Nigmatulin and Filip Scepanovic who will dive…

We are delighted to share that our colleague, Nerea Sebastian, has been honoured with this year's Blinc Award for outstanding contributions to physics, recognizing her work on ferroelectric liquid crystals. Her groundbreaking article, "Ferroelectric-Ferroelastic Phase Transition in a Nematic Liquid Crystal," published in Physical Review Letters in 2020, has garnered significant attention in the field. Since its publication, the paper…

We had the honour of welcoming Nobel Laureate Anton Zeilinger in our Ultrafast STM lab during his visit to Jozef Stefan Institute and the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Ljubljana University. Together with Alan Aspect and John F. Clauser, Anton Zeilinger received the Nobel Prize in Physics 2022 "for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and…

After many years—and even decades—of relying on our faithful but aging equipment, we are thrilled to finish the installation of a Labstar glove box from MBraun. This modern system represents a major upgrade, bringing us the capability to maintain highly controlled atmospheres for sensitive samples. With this new glove box, we can now precisely regulate moisture and oxygen levels, which…

A recent study by Qing Hu, Rok Venturini, Yevhenii Vaskivskyi, Jan Lipič, and Dragan Mihailovic has advanced our understanding of charge density waves (CDWs) and their interaction with superconductivity in transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs). Using low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), transport measurements, and magnetic susceptibility techniques, they revealed complex domain structures and a unique symmetry-broken stripe phase in Ta-substituted 1T-TiSe₂.…

Read more in an interview published in the 30.5.2024 edition of Delo on link: https://www.delo.si/novice/znanoteh/z-resevanjem-tezkih-problemov-postajam-boljsa-razlicica-sebe

In a new study, researchers from the University of Leeds and their colleagues Natan Osterman, Alenka Mertelj, and Nerea Sebastian have revealed two previously undiscovered polar liquid states of matter. The research, published in Nature Communications, highlights the union of spontaneous symmetry breaking and emergent polar order, phenomena crucial to various scientific disciplines and the intriguing behavior of liquid crystals…

Results of our recent paper in Nature Communications titled “Manipulation of Fractionalized Charge in the Metastable Topologically Entangled State of a Doped Wigner Crystal” are featured as a Result of the Month June 2024 on the Scienta Omicron web page. Link to the news article: https://scientaomicron.com/en/result/Manipulation-of-Fractionalized-Charge-in-the-Metastable-Topologically-Entangled-State-of-a-Doped-Wigner-Crystal/10501

Read more in an interview published in the 30.5.2024 edition of Delo on link: https://www.delo.si/novice/znanoteh/cas-je-pravzaprav-iluzija/

The groups “Light & Matter” and “Physics of Soft and Partially Ordered Matter” are organizing an international topical meeting on the emerging field of new ferroelectric soft matter materials entitled ‘Workshop on Ferroelectric Nematic Liquid Crystals”, taking place at IJS, from May 29 to 31, 2024. This closed event will be attended by some of the world’s leading researchers in…

In the ferroelectric nematic phase, spontaneous polarization order is long-range, while the material retains fluidity which allows for changes in the soft electric polarization structure to be generated by material flow. In the paper just published in Advance Functional Materials, Peter Medle Rupnik and co-workers from the Department of Complex Matter at the Jožef Stefan Institute demonstrate direct viscous mechano-electric…

The recently obtained ERC  by Prof. dr. Dragan Mihailović was the main podcast topic on the Prvi program on RTV Slovenia. Link: https://prvi.rtvslo.si/podkast/radiosfera/173251633/175038436

Dr. Dragan Mihailović, a leading researcher in the field of quantum systems at the Jožef Stefan Institute (IJS), has successfully won the third project of the European Research Council (ERC), HIMMS (High-Resolution Imaging of Metastable States). The project, worth 2.5 million euros and designed for a five-year duration, focuses on the investigation of hidden metastable states in quantum materials. The…

The article “Crystallization of polarons through charge and spin ordering transitions in 1T-TaS2” published in Nature Communications was highlighted by the collaborative research partners at Brookhaven National Laboratory who provided a comprehensive insight into the research which underlyed the article. The research team uncovered a previously unseen electronic state within 1T-TaS2 through advanced techniques and interdisciplinary collaboration, elucidating its quantum…

The Jožef Stefan Institute (JSI) organizes the Jožef Stefan Days every year, and this year they were held for the 32nd time. The highlight of the week-long event was the Open Day, which gave the public an insight into the work of the JSI and invited them to visit its premises. The event included a varied program of presentations and…

Dr Vaskivskyi shares his passion for the optical laboratory, where laser beams and screwdrivers combine to unlock the secrets of materials on the femtosecond timescale. Read more in an interview published in the 29.2.2024 edition of Delo on link: https://www.delo.si/novice/znanoteh/ze-kot-otrok-je-razstavil-vse-kar-se-je-razstaviti-dalo/  

The absence of efficient light modulators for extreme ultraviolet - EUV and X-ray photons considerably limits their real-life application, particularly when even slight complexity of the beam patterns is required. In the new article, we report on a novel approach to reversible imprinting of a holographic mask in an electronic Wigner crystal material with a sub-90-nm feature size. The structure…

The paper “Spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking and lane formation in ferromagnetic ferrofluids" was recently published in the journal Small authored by the researchers from the Department of Complex Matter Mojca Vilfan, Borut Lampret, Žiga Gregorin, Luka Cmok, Patricija Hribar Boštjančič and Alenka Mertelj, in collaboration with Darja Lisjak from the Department of Synthesis of Materials, Andrej Vilfan from the Department…

Metastability of quantum states is rare and still poorly understood posing a significant exprimental and theoretical challenge. In a paper just published in Nature Communications by Anže Mraz and co‑workers from the group of Dragan Mihailovic from the Jožef Stefan Institute in collaboration with with the Electrotechnical Faculty at the University of Ljubljana succeeded in visualising the microscopic dynamics of…

Active control of quantum materials is highly desirable for a wide range of applications. Metastable hidden states, such as the one discovered a few years ago by researchers at the Department of complex matter at the Jožef Stefan Institute, offer completely new functionalities. However, the underlying mechanisms that lead to hidden states remains a largely open scientific topic. In a…

Physicists from the Jožef Stefan Institute and Brookhaven National Laboratory (USA) describe an experiment, which for the first time reports the existence of individual polarons at very high temperatures in a crystal of TaS2. They are able to detect the displacements of ions surrounding individual electrons as they move around in the crystal at very high temperatures on ultrashort timescales…

The macroscopic properties of quantum materials arise from microscopic quantum phenomena and cannot be understood solely through classical physics and chemistry. Sometimes, they behave entirely counter to intuition. In an article recently published in the journal Nature, a group of authors from Italy, the IJS (Jožef Stefan Institute), and Germany revealed an unusual quantum effect, where the properties of a…

The paper »Polarization patterning in ferroelectric nematic liquids via flexoelectric coupling« has been published in Nature Communications, by the members of the Department of Complex Matter at the Jožef Stefan Institute and Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at University of Ljubljana Nerea Sebastián, Matija Lovšin, Natan Osterman, Irena Drevenšek Olenik in Alenka Mertelj, together with researchers from Ghent University (Belgium),…

A team from University College London in Great Britain and dr. Gašper Kokot from the Complex matter department at „Jožef Stefan“ Institute have published an article titled „Fabrication of High-Aspect Ratio Nanogratings for Phase-Based X-Ray Imaging“ in Advanced Functional Materials. Diffractive optical elements such as periodic gratings are fundamental devices in X-ray imaging – a technique that medical, material science,…