On 11 July, the International workshop “Superconducting and Magnetic Hybrid Structures” began at the Laboratory of Theoretical Physics JINR. The event brought together about 70 leading scientists from JINR and research centres in Cameroon, Egypt, France, Iran, the Netherlands, Russia, South Africa, and Sweden. The conference is being held at BLTP for the first time. Its working language is English.

Director of the Laboratory of Theoretical Physics JINR Dmitry Kazakov opened the meeting. He noted the relevance of the topic of the event, which brought together a strong team of researchers at the JINR site. He highlighted that the participants would have a rich programme and expressed hope for the development of further contacts between scientists and possible joint work.

“Physics of superconducting and magnetic hybrid structures is currently one of the promising areas of condensed matter physics in general,” Chairman of the organizing committee, a BLTP leading researcher Yury Shukrinov said. “The goal of the conference is to focus the attention of the scientific community on structures combining superconductivity and magnetism.” These two antagonistic phenomena were brought together in Josephson junctions in hybrid structures with layers of superconductor and magnetic material. Scientists all over the world are studying such structures. Their practical application lies in the fields of spintronics and quantum computing, and not only.

Two reports, devoted to experimental confirmations of the phenomenon of paired electrons with parallel spins in Josephson junctions, by Alexander Golubov (University of Twente, the Netherlands, and MIPT) and Vladimir Krasnov (Stockholm University, Sweden) opened the plenary meeting of the first day. At the plenary session, Yury Shukrinov reviewed studies of the anomalous Josephson effect conducted at BLTP JINR for five years. In particular, the latest results achieved over the past few months were announced.

Among other topics, which speakers will cover at the Workshop, there are superconductor-normal metal structures, two-dimensional systems and multifractality, decoherence of quantum states, practical applications of Josephson structures, and much more. Participants will present new data from experimental research groups.

The Workshop will last until 15 July. The online broadcast is available via the link.