Université de Strasbourg

Bertrand Dupé

Biography

University of Liège and FRS-FNRS, Belgium & USIAS Fellow at the Institute of Physics and Chemistry of Materials of Strasbourg (IPCMS), University of Strasbourg and CNRS

Bertrand Dupé, USIAS Fellow 2019

Bertrand Dupé obtained his PhD, with a thesis on dielectric and magnetic properties of multiferroic thin films, at the École Centrale Paris (now CentraleSupélec) in 2010. After a year of postdoctoral research at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), he decided to focus on the theoretical studies of magnetic nanomaterials based on density functional theory at the University of Kiel (Germany) and at the Jülich Research Centre (FZG), Germany. He participated in the European project Magnetic Skyrmions for nanospintronic devices: a Future Emerging Technology (MAGicSKY-FET), in collaboration with Professor Albert Fert’s group in Paris on the link between topology and magnetism.

In 2016, Bertrand Dupé was recruited as Interim Professor at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Germany), where he was appointed full researcher in 2017. He was subsequently appointed as Qualified researcher of the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (FRS-FNRS). Currently, he is leading a research group of five people focusing on the link between topology and electronic structure at the University of Liège (Belgium).

Bertrand Dupé will be welcomed by Professor Paul-Antoine Hervieux, Institute of Physics and Chemistry of Materials of Strasbourg (IPCMS), during the project.

Project - Coupled spin and charge femto-second dynamics for topological material

01/12/2019 - 31/03/2022

Modern societies are based on fast and reliable communication media that are also energy efficient. At the atomic level, information is transmitted by a fundamental constituent of matter called the electron. Similar to rivers, electrons flow in matter and their accumulation or depletion is associated with the presence of a data bit of 1 or 0, respectively.

In this project, Dr. Dupé's group intends to establish a new methodological framework where information is transmitted without moving matter. The information vector will be constituted of the spin rather than the charge of the electron, which will considerably accelerate the speed of information. They foresee that light and spins could act as the information medium. To study their interactions, they will develop numerical tools that are parametrised by density functional theory, where the dynamics of light and the electron charge and spin will be treated on an equal basis. They will thus explore the dynamics of topologically protected magnetic textures such as skyrmions and hopfions.

Post-doc biography - Louise Desplat

Institute of Physics and Chemistry of Materials of Strasbourg (IPCMS), University of Strasbourg & CNRS

Louise Desplat

Dr. Louise Desplat obtained her Bachelor's degree in physics at the University of Franche-Comté in Besançon (France) in 2013, followed by a Master's degree in condensed matter and nanophysics (CMN) at the University of Strasbourg in 2015. She subsequently obtained her PhD in condensed matter physics at the University of Glasgow (United Kingdom) in December 2019. Initially supervised by Professor Robert Stamps, her PhD work consisted in studying the thermal stability of metastable magnetic skyrmions, within the European programme FET-Open (MAGicSKY-FET). During her PhD, she collaborated with Professor Dieter Süss at the University of Vienna (Austria), which she visited twice for a period of two months. During her stays in Vienna, she deepened her knowledge on numerical resolutions of the problem of the thermal stability of magnetic nanostructures. Her two main approaches were the Kramers' method (reaction rate theory), and Langevin magnetisation dynamics within the forward flux sampling method (FFS). She spent the last two years of her PhD at the Centre for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (C2N) of the University of Paris-Saclay in Palaiseau (France), under the supervision of Dr. Joo-Von Kim.

Louise Desplat joined the team of Professor Paul-Antoine Hervieux at the Institute of Physics and Chemistry of Materials of Strasbourg in March 2020 as a postdoctoral researcher, within this project led by Dr. Bertrand Dupé. Her research work now focuses on the nucleation of magnetic skyrmions under ultrafast laser pulses within a magnetisation dynamics approach. She is also interested in the thermal stability of thin magnetic films, such as the ones used in magnetic data storage.

France 2030