News 2026

Dr. Adam Škrlec joins our group as a Postdoc. Adam will be working on developing models to describe quantum transport in proximitized superconducting systems.

Welcome, Adam!

In collaboration with the Strunk/Paradiso group in Regensburg, we explored the anomalous φ₀-phase shift in the Josephson current-phase relations of junctions based on the topological insulator HgTe. We demonstrated that the effect is giant when compared to, e.g., SOC-induced phase shifts in parabolic-dispersion Al/InAs junctions, which we attributed to the fact that HgTe surface states feature a single Fermi contour. Moreover, we found that the spin of the surface states is not exactly perpendicular to their momentum, but shows a significant deviation of 19°.

Our preprint can be found at arXiv:2601.20410.

We studied the ab-initio band structures of commensurate twisted transition metal dichalcogenide bilayers unraveling that their in-plane spin textures mostly feature radial Rashba spin-orbit fields. Fitting the first-principles results to established model Hamiltonians, we obtained all relevant parameters such as the spin-orbit and exchange couplings.

Our results have been published as Editors' Suggestion in Physical Review B.

In this collaborative project with experimental colleagues from TU Munich, we explored magnetic proximity effects in Co/hBN/graphene heterostructures and demonstrated a pronounced localized spatial variation of the induced spin polarization of graphene's Dirac states.

Our preprint can be found at arXiv:2601.07781.