Johan Åkerman is one of only four researchers in the country to be selected by The Swedish Research Council for a Distinguished Professor Grant within natural and engineering sciences in 2024. The four researcher will share a total of 123 million SEK for the years 2025-2032, of which Johan Åkerman will receive 32 million SEK.
The project for which Johan Åkerman applied for the distinguished professor grant is called "Extremely Large Networks of Extremely Small Nano-Oscillators: Fundamentals, Quantum Materials, and Applications."
Hi Johan! How would you describe the feeling this invokes?
Seismic.
Can you tell us a bit about the project – what is it focused on, what do you hope to achieve?
We will study very large networks (millions of oscillators) of very small spintronic nano-oscillators (10 nm and smaller).
Nano-oscillators are driven by something called the spin-Hall effect and generate signals in the microwave range, around 1 – 50 GHz. Oscillators interact strongly with each other, allowing us to build large and complex networks of interacting nano-oscillators to perform various types of calculations. We can also build Ising machines used to solve complex combinatorial optimization problems.
You are one of the professors here at the Department of Physics whose research collaborations reaches across plenty of international borders. What are you looking forward to in that regards with this distinguished professor grant?
In my application, I particularly highlighted my long-term collaborations with Japan, but also with strong groups in Europe where we collaborate on various measurement methods to study our nano-oscillators in ways that we do not have access to at the University of Gothenburg. This includes measurements with synchrotron light down to single nanometer resolution, MFM microscopes also down to nm resolution, and so-called NV center microscopes, also with very high resolution.
Finally – how will you celebrate?
Tonight, my family and I are going to IMAX to see one of our family's favorite movies celebrating its 10th anniversary – Interstellar.
