2023 EPS Europhysics Prize for Claudia Felser

Professor Claudia Felser, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids in Dresden and Principal Investigator of the Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat, has been honored with the 2023 EPS Europhysics Prize. She shares this esteemed recognition with Professor B. Andrei Bernevig from Princeton University, USA. The European Physical Society presented this award to celebrate their “seminal contributions to the classification, prediction, and discovery of novel topological quantum materials.”

The scientific duo worked together closely. Bernevig and his team spearheaded theoretical predictions. Then, together with Felser, they designed potential materials using analytical methods and sophisticated theoretical density-functional techniques. This allowed Felser and her team to grow high-quality single-crystalline materials and gauge their physical properties. Using the design rules developed by Bernevig and Felser, previously unknown quantum materials classes were discovered in insulators and semimetals. Among them are materials exhibiting the quantum spin Hall effect, new Weyl semimetals, and materials with unconventional surface properties. Many of these materials are responsive to external factors like magnetic fields, mechanical stress, pressure or light, and hold promise for futuristic high-tech applications. Research into such materials lays the foundations for advancements in quantum computing, superconductivity, and groundbreaking sensor technologies. Last but not least, the unique collaboration between Bernevig and Felser led to the discovery that roughly 30 percent of the nearly 200,000 documented inorganic compounds exhibit topological signatures within their electronic wave functions – a significant revelation considering the ubiquitous nature of many of these materials.

Felser and Bernevig were presented with the €10,000 EPS Europhysics Prize on September 6, 2023, during the 30th General Conference of the EPS Condensed Matter Division held in Milan. Presented every one or two years since 1975 and now in its 40th cycle, this accolade is among Europe’s premier awards celebrating scientific excellence in condensed matter physics. The duo’s contributions had previously been acknowledged with other notable awards, such as the 2019 APS James C. McGroddy Prize for New Materials.