research area

The discovery of the iron pnictides as a new class of high-temperature superconductors early 2008 has triggered a huge worldwide increase of the research activities to improve the understanding of the scope, mechanism and applications of high temperature superconductivity in general. The iron pnictides constitute the first class of high-temperature superconductors based on intermetallic compounds with a complex multi-band Fermi surface. The aim of this Graduate School is an interdisciplinary study of the iron pnictides and structurally and electronically related intermetallic superconductors like the transition-metal chalcogenides. The involved research institutions in Dresden are already working in this young research field with great success on an internationally leading and competitive level. One focus will be the examination of the mechanisms and conditions how superconductivity can emerge in competition with a weakly correlated itinerant magnet in contrast to the case of the cuprates where superconductivity emerges in the vicinity of a highly correlated Mott insulator. Experimentally a broad spectrum of methods ranging from single-crystal growth and thin film preparation over X-ray and neutron spectroscopy to charge- and spinsensitive spectroscopy methods will be employed. Theoretical studies and modelling will include electronic-structure calculations, many-body methods to examine the stability and competition of magnetic and superconducting ground states and to study transport phenomena in these systems. The focused topic of the Graduate School is reflected in a strong entanglement of the individual research topics of the PhD theses. This fact calls for and promotes an interdisciplinary cooperation of the students from chemistry and physics. By means of several week long practical tutorial training units in the complementary disciplines all students will develop a profound overview over the concepts and methods of modern material science which goes far beyond their own PhD research topic.

Term of the graduate school: 01.04.2011 - 30.09.2015