Report on the International Workshop on "Diluted Magnetic Semiconductors"
CECAM, Lyon, June 12-14, 2003
Sponsors:
- ESF Ψ-k Programme "Towards Atomistic Materials Design"
- Centre Europen de Calcul Atomique et Moleculaire (CECAM)
- EU RT-Network "Computational Magnetoelectronics"
- Office of Naval Research, USA
Organisers:
- Peter H. Dederichs, Institut fur Festkorperforschung, Research Center Rilich
- Josef Kudrnovsky, Institute of Physics, Academy of Sciences, Prague
- Allan H. MacDonald, Department of Physics, University of Texas at Austin
Aim:
To strengthen the understanding of diluted magnetic semiconductors and bring together theorists from the ab-initio and model hamiltonian field with leading experimentalists.
The workshop took place close to the CECAM office in the Biology lecture hall of the ENS building. It was attended by 52 participants, among them eight from the USA, funded by ONR, and three from Japan. The workshop started with three longer introductory talks by Allan MacDonald on model Hamiltonians, Ilja Turek on density functional theory, and Peter Schiffer on experimental results. They were followed by 34 invited presentations, of either 30' or 20' length, and closed by a summary of Tomasz Died. While most of the participants were theorists, there were nevertheless 7 authoritive experimental reviews about the latest state of the art.
The workshop was very lively and well received. There were lots of discussions after practically every talk. The special discussion period forseen in the programme had even to be extended by two hours. For the first time a large number of theorists from all around the world joined in a workshop on this hot topic, discussing the physics of DMS and the success and problems of the model Hamiltonian approach on the one hand and the ab-initio approach on the other. The workshop was very informative and motivating and the general opinion was that we have still some way to go before we have a good understanding of the complicated systems and hopefully achieve ferromagnetism at room temperature.
Another point will make this workshop unforgetable for all participants: the weather. On all three days the temperature outside was 37-38 degrees Celsius, and not much less in the lecture hall, since air-conditioning was not available. Even the overhead projectors gave up because of overheating; at the end we had 5 projectors lined up in a row, three of them dead. However the participants stayed alive and active and even at the last talk of Tomasz Dietl on Saturday afternoon the room was well filled.
Peter H. Dederichs
Phivos Mavropoulos
More details may be found in newsletter 58 from page 4