The Dutch Research Council (NWO) awarded 21 grants in the domain of Science, of which two are led by Radboud researchers. The grants, ranging from €400,000 to €800,000, are intended for innovative, high-quality fundamental research of scientific urgency.
Shaking-up complex magnets with light
Dmytro Afanasiev (Institute for Molecules and Materials, Radboud Universiteit)
Magnetic materials can remember and learn. While current technology already employs the memory of magnets in data storage, in order to benefit from their capabilities to learn, one has to understand how to control complex magnetic materials that have multiple ground states. The goal of the project is to develop a set of efficient tools to control such magnets via optical control of their crystal lattice. The idea is to develop the most efficient means for memory retrieval for multi-valley magnetic systems and explore the dynamics of retrieval and memory lifetime.
Foliate and conquer
Peter Hochs (Institute for Mathematics, Astrophysics and Particle Physics, Radboud Universiteit) & dr. Hessel Posthuma (UvA)
The places on earth where days have the same length form the circles of constant latitude, and the north and south poles. This forms a foliation of the earth’s surface: a subdivision into lower-dimensional parts inside which points are related in some relevant way. Foliations encode crucial information on many different problems, and have therefore been studied and applied extensively over the last 80 years. Until recently, however, it was not possible to study foliations with singularities, like the poles in the example above. In this project, we develop new techniques to study and apply such singular foliations.