Minerva Fast Track Fellowship for Dr. Annika Johansson
The Max Planck Society has awarded Dr. Annika Johansson a Minerva Fast Track Fellowship.
The focus of Annika Johansson's research is on the theoretical consideration of transport phenomena relating electronic and magnetic properties. These transport effects are of particular interest for the field of spintronics. While the basic concept of conventional semiconductor technology is to utilize charge currents, the idea of spintronics is to additionally use the spin degree of freedom, which comes along with a magnetic moment, for storage, processing and transfer of data. The concept of spin-orbitronics relates to effects driven by spin-orbit coupling. Since besides the spin also the orbital angular momentum of the electrons can contribute to magnetism, Annika Johansson considers effects relating both spin and orbital moment with electronic properties, such as the Edelstein effect and the chiral anomaly. Besides conventional metals and semiconductors she examines topologically nontrivial materials like topological insulators and Weyl semimetals which can exhibit unique spin-orbitronic effects.
Annika Johansson was born 1992. She studied medical physics at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU). In her Bachelor and Master thesis she started working in the field of theoretical solid state physics. During her doctorate in the group of Prof. Ingrid Mertig at the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics (2015-2019) she was examining transport phenomena driven by spin-orbit coupling. After her Postdoc in the group of Ingrid Mertig at the MLU she has joined the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics in October 2021 as Minerva Fast Track Fellow and will establish a junior group.