The research center started in October 2023 and brings together researchers at the University of Augsburg, the Technical University of Munich, the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Physics, the University of Leipzig, the University of Tokyo, and the Walther-Meissner-Institute of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities. In 18 projects, 32 PhD and postdoctoral researchers will address questions on magnetic band topology, entangled states of matter, and non-equilibrium dynamics in selected solid-state systems. The basic guiding principle is that a reduction of the degrees of freedom through suitable constraints can yield exciting physical phenomena. Our approach will facilitate the realization as well as detection of quantum entanglement and the exploration of novel quantum effects in solid-state materials with the long-term goal of stabilizing them at practical conditions, thus fostering applications on a broad scale.

At the Walther-Meissner-Institute, a team around Hans Huebl and Stephan Geprägs will team up with Christian Pfleiderer and Mark Wilde from the School of Natural Sciences of the Technical University of Munich to investigate the properties of quantum materials in non-equilibrium situations using multiple excitation and detection techniques. For example, we plan to drive low-energy excitations by intense microwave radiation while the response function is probed with a second probe. This approach aims at (i) investigating and understanding the coupling between spin, orbital, lattice or nuclear spin degrees of freedom under intense resonant microwave radiation, (ii) a targeted driving of quantum excitations such as topological magnons, orbitons or topological electronic quasiparticles, (iii) inducing non-thermal melting of long-range order by intense microwave radiation, and (iv) realization of dynamical forms of quantum order in bulk materials such as time crystals or many-body localization.