Congratulations to Dr Oleksandr Fialko on winning a FastStart award in the highly contended 2012 round of Marsden funding. The grant, which is valued at $345,000, will allow Dr Fialko to pursue independent research for a period of three years. In his project entitled "Understanding quantum thermodynamics with the smallest heat engine", Dr Fialko will explore the quantum mechanical origins of thermodynamics by theoretically studying heat engines consistent of isolated quantum systems that can be realised with ultracold atoms.

25 June 2012: We congratulate Prof. Peter Schwerdtfeger for being elected into the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Sciences (IAQMS).

The Academy is composed of persons chosen amongst the scientists of all countries who have distinguished themselves by the value of their scientific work, their role of pioneer or leader of a school and have most contributed to the advancement of quantum molecular sciences. The Academy currently has 107 members and Its headquater is in Menton (France). Peter is the first New Zealand scientist to receive this honour.

11 May 2012: Dr. Andreas Hauserand Prof. Peter Schwerdtfeger's work on graphene nanopores is featured in an article on the Royal Society of Chemistry's "Chemistry World" Website.

Dr. Andreas Hauser, in collaboration with Prof. Peter Schwerdtfeger, has performed ground-breaking work on the use of porous graphene membranes to seperate Helium-3 and Helium-4 isotopes. This fundamentally quantum process is very exciting and has many potential applications in fields ranging from environmental protection to nuclear fusion.

14 February 2012: We congratulate Prof. Peter Schwerdtfeger for being promoted to Distinguished Professor.

From the Massey University wepage:
"[...] Paul Rainey, professor of evolutionary genetics at the New Zealand Institute for Advanced Study and the Institute of Natural Sciences, and theoretical physicist Professor Peter Schwerdtfeger, director of the Centre for Theoretical Chemistry and Physics at the same institute, have been awarded the highest recognition the University bestows on professorial staff.
[...] Professor Schwerdtfeger says he is `deeply honoured, but really I do not feel distinguished at all. There are so many good scientists out there, and I`ve worked with so many gifted PhD students and postdoctoral fellows`.
[...] A career studded with research accolades and awards includes winning last year`s Fukui Medal for outstanding theoretical/computational chemists in the Asia-Pacific region for his achievement in quantum chemistry, in particular for his deeper understanding of quantum relativistic effects. In November 2010 Professor Schwerdfeger, whose research has helped explain the physics and chemistry behind the colour of gold, was awarded another prestigious international science prize, the Humboldt Research Award.
[...] The Human Resources office says the award of distinguished professor is the highest recognition the University can bestow on professorial staff who have achieved positions of eminence internationally in their field. No more than 10 can hold the title at any time."

We congratulate Peter for this great honour and congratulate him for all his achievement over the years and wish him all the best in the endeavors still to come.

For more information please visit the offical announcement on the Massey University webpage (click here)

12 January 2012: We congratulate Dr. Alberto Cetoli for being awarded a prestigious post-doctoral scholarship from the Wenner-Gren foundation.

Congratulations to Dr. Alberto Cetoli for being awarded a prestigious post-doctoral scholarship from the Wenner-Gren foundation. The Wenner Gren foundation will fully support Alberto for one year (extendible for another year) to work on the project "Dark solitons in superfluid Fermi gases" at CTCP within IAS. Well done, Alberto.

10 January 2012: We congratulate Thomas Ernst for passing his PhD exam and receiving the prestigious NZIAS Postgraduate Research Excellence Award.

Congratulations to Thomas Ernst who successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled "Quantum many-body dynamics of bright matter-wave solitons". The result of his Examination held on the 5th of December 2011 was approved by the Doctoral Research Committee on the 22. of December 2011. We congratulate him for this fabulous achievement and which him all the best for his future career.

In adddition, he was also awarded the New Zealand Institute for Advanced Study Postgraduate Research Excellence Award for his outstanding research in 2011.

Past Research News

April 2011: Prof. Peter Schwerdtfeger gave the 2011 ceremonial address at the University of Ulm

Prof. Peter Schwerdtfeger gave the 2011 ceremonial address (Festvortrag) on the occasion of the young achievers prize (Mez-Starck MSc Prize) for the top MSc chemistry students at the University of Ulm. The picture on the right shows the Dr. Barbara Mez-Starck-Prize winners for the years 2009/2010 Sylvia Flaig, Andrea Feinle, Simon Theil and Melanie Köntje together with Prof. Peter Schwerdtfeger (Massey University), Dr. Jürgen Vogt (University Ulm) and Alexander Fruhwirth (Commerzbank Ulm).
More information the University of Ulm.
(Photo: A. Bingmann, Ulm)

Ceremonial 2011, Ulm (Photo: A. Bingmann, Ulm)

18 February 2011: CTCP picture on cover of PCCP (click here)

The cover picture of our PCCP paper (2011) (designed by Martin Schwarzer, Marburg) shows the chemical evolution process with respect to the sublimation hypothesis. There are many different hypotheses on the origin of biomolecular homochirality, and one possible scenario concerns the enantiomeric enrichment of a nearly racemic solid via self-disproportionation of enantiomers. Here we present detailed theoretical studies of trifluoromethyl)lactic acid in the solid state as well as in the gas-phase dimeric form. The calculations for the Gibbs free energy show that in the solid state the enantiomeric pure compound is thermodynamically preferred, while in the gas phase the equilibrium shifts towards the racemic mixture (both dominated by entropic effects), thus providing a detailed microscopic explanation for the enantio-purification process for the first time. The paper written by R. Tonner, V. A. Soloshonok, P. Schwerdtfeger appeared in Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 13, 811-817 (2011). That this field is a very controversial one which is heavily disputed is shown by the comment of M. A. Suhm and M. Albrecht (Goettingen) and a reply by our group (Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 13, 4159-4162 (2011)).

25 January 2011: Fukui Medal 2011 for Prof. Peter Schwerdtfeger

We are happy to announce that the prestigious Fukui Medal for outstanding theoretical/computational chemists in the Asia-Pacific region goes to Prof. Peter Schwerdtfeger. The award is for "his achievement in quantum chemistry, in particular for deeper understanding of quantum relativistic effects" (taken from [1]).

From the Massey University webpage [2]:
The Asia-Pacific Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists announced this week it has awarded the medal to the Albany-based scientist for his achievement in quantum chemistry, in particular for his deeper understanding of quantum relativistic effects.
The medal is named after Japanese chemist Kenichi Fukui (1918-98) who was co-recipient of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1981. Candidates for the medal must be nominated by three eminent scientists.
Professor Schwerdtfeger is the director of the Centre for Theoretical Chemistry and Physics at the University's Institute for Advanced Study.
"This is a great honour for me," he says. "Looking at the other medallists, you see why."
In November Professor Schwerdfeger, whose research has helped explain the physics and chemistry behind the colour of gold, was awarded another prestigious international science prize, the Humboldt Research Award. The German-born scientist gained a degree as a chemicotechnical assistant at the Chemisches Institut in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1973, a chemical engineering degree from Aalen in 1976, and a PhD in 1986 from the University of Stuttgart. He has held a numerous positions as teaching and research fellow at universities in Germany, Australia and New Zealand.
His Marsden-funded projects include experimental and theoretical investigations of the nanostructures of gold for a better understanding of the quantum size effects in nanostructured materials, and understanding and modelling the behaviour of dynamic clusters of atoms and molecules in heavy metal clusters. He has supervised PhD students and collaborates intensively with more than 30 research groups worldwide on topics ranging from computational inorganic and organic chemistry to materials science and high-resolution spectroscopy. He has been the recipient of six Marsden grants totalling $4 million.

Weblinks:
[1] APATCC
[2] Massey University announcement
[3] Campus Daily

21 January 2011: Recent publication from Brand group featured in PRA Kaleidoscope

We are happy to announce that David Hallwood, Thomas Ernst and Joachim Brand's recent publication "Robust Mesoscopic Superposition of Strongly Correlated Ultracold Atoms" (link below text) is featured in the December 2010 edition of the Physical Review A Kaleidoscope.
The publication discusses a novel approach for improved stability of quantum superposition states due to large interaction strengths for cold atoms with arbitrary particle number.

Robust Mesoscopic Superposition of Strongly Correlated Ultracold Atoms
D. W. Hallwood, T. Ernst, J. Brand, Phys. Rev. A 82, 063623 (2010) [PDF]

20 January 2011: We congratulate Susan Biering for passing her oral PhD exam.

"Congratulations to Susan Biering who successfully defended her PhD thesis. Her outstanding written work left the referee's speechless demanding no changes to the work. Well done Susan." - Peter Schwerdtfeger
We want to join Peter and congratulate her again for this tremendous effort.

29 November 2010: Humboldt Prize for Prof. Peter Schwerdtfeger

Professor Peter Schwerdtfeger, Director of the Center for Theoretical Chemistry and Physics (New Zealand Institute for Advanced Study, at Massey University Auckland) has been elected a recipient of the prestigious Humboldt Research Award, known also as the Humboldt Prize, by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Bonn (Germany) for his fundamental work in the area theoretical chemistry. The international award valued at 60,000 Euros is named after the late Prussian naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt and is granted in recognition of a researcher's entire achievements to date. It is awarded to academics whose fundamental discoveries, new theories, or insights have had a significant impact on their own discipline and who are expected to continue producing cutting-edge achievements in the future. Professor Schwerdtfeger is internationally well known for his work on fundamental aspects of chemistry in relation to quantum physics. Past Winners in Chemistry include an impressive list like Anthony J. Arduengo III, Paul Josef Crutzen, Robert F. Curl, Ei-ichi Negishi, Robert H. Grubbs, Jean-Marie Lehn, Rudolph Marcus, John Anthony Pople, Richard R. Schrock, Keisuke Suzuki, or Ahmed H. Zewail. Award winners are invited to spend a period of 6 months to a year cooperating on a long-term research project with colleagues at research institutions in Germany. His primary host will be Professor Prof. Gernot Frenking at the Philipps University University in Marburg, where he will contribute to research into heavy element chemistry and physics.

For press releases see:

Massey University announcement
Massey University article
Royal Society of New Zealand
University of Marburg
SundayStar Times (from www.stuff.co.nz)
www.scoop.co.nz
www.campusdaily.co.nz

22 July 2010: Promotion of Dr. Joachim Brand to the professorial level

The CTCP proudly congratulates Dr. Joachim Brand for his promotion and his excellent and defining research in the field of ultracold gases.

'With much pleasure I like to announce the promotion of Dr. Joachim Brand to the professorial level. Promotion to this level is a clear mark of distinction, recognizing both professional and academic eminence not only at a national but also at an international level. Within a very short time being at Massey University, Joachim has proven himself to be a highly accomplished academic leader in his field of ultra-cold atoms, resulting in two successful Marsden awards in a row ("Few body dynamics with ultra-cold atoms" and "Vortices in Josephson junctions of Bose-Einstein condensates"). He has recently completed work on rotational Schrödinger cat states that are important for testing the very foundations of quantum theory. His fundamental research is world-class, and his high quality teaching is highly appreciated here in Albany. I have rarely seen a young person making such an impact to science in New Zealand within such a short time and we can be proud of having him here. Joachim will also be joining the New Zealand Institute for Advanced Study'.
(Prof. Peter Schwerdtfeger)

Joachim Brand already joined the New Zealand Institute for Advanced Study (NZIAS) where he will continue his outstanding research.

21 April 2010: Susan Biering and Thomas Ernst participated at the Massey University 3minute competition

From the webpage of the organisers of the University of Queensland in Australia:
'It (the 3minute competition) is an exercise in developing academic and research communication skills. Research higher degree (PhD and MPhil) students have three minutes to present a compelling oration on their thesis topic and its significance in language appropriate to an intelligent but non-specialist audience'.
Universities all over Australia and New Zealand are holding their own local competitions with the winners of each of them will be going to compete in a grand final in Australia. Susan and Thomas participated at the Massey University competition. Even though they did not make to the next round their talks gave a terrific introduction to the mysteries of their research in chemistry and physics. For a general audience those fields are typically not easily accessible. But Susan and Thomas were able to put their very comprehensive research into simple words, but still properly delivered the scientific content of their PhD as well. This is an incredibly difficult task if the allowed time for the talk should not exceed 3 minutes and only one powerpoint slide can be used. We want to congratulate Susan and Thomas again for their great talks and wish them all the best for the remainder of their PhD.

April 2010: We are proud to announce that a recent publication by Dr. Detlev Figgen and Prof. Peter Schwerdtfeger made it on the cover page of Angewandte Chemie.

The cover picture of our Angewandte Chemie paper in 2010 contains the words of Galadriel to Frodo in 'The Lord of the Rings' by J. R. R. Tolkien and continues: 'But the mirror will also show things unbidden, and those are often stranger and more profitable than things which we wish to behold. What you will see, if you leave the Mirror free to work, I cannot tell. For it shows things that were, and things that are, and things that yet may be. But which it is that he sees, even the wisest cannot always tell.' The large parity violation effects predicted for the chiral molecule N_WHClI from relativistic density functional theory are shown as a broken mirror image. The energy difference of 0.7 Hz for the N-W stretching frequency conveniently lies in the frequency range of CO2 lasers and may be revealed by future high-resolution spectroscopy experiments.

D. Figgen, A. Koers, P. Schwerdtfeger, "NWHClI - A small and compact chiral molecule with large parity violation effects in the vibrational spectrum.", Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. on-line (DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/anie.200906990)

4 March 2010: Dr. Matthias Lein has been interviewed in RadioNZ on "Chemistry and Supercomputers" for Thursday's program "About Our Changing World".

From the RadioNZ webpage:
"Massey University's Matthias Lein (left) is a computational chemist. Using quantum mechanical laws, he solves chemical equations for experimental chemists who know the chemicals that have gone into the reaction, and can determine what has been produced, but are unsure what's actually happened during the process. In particular, Matthias Lein is interested in chemical reactions that use gold as the catalyst, and to solve these chemical reactions, he uses the enormous computing power of a Massey University's Auckland-based supercomputer."

Follow this link for an audio stream of the interview or to download mp3/ogg files of it.

February 2010: Susan Biering wins first prize in the poster competition at the 34th Annual Condensed Matter and Materials meeting.

At the 34th Annual Condensed Matter and Materials Meeting, Wagga Wagga 2010, which took place in Auckland from February 2-5, Susan Biering was awarded first prize for her poster with the title ''The influence of relativistic effects on the structure of the group 12 chalcogenides: A density functional study''. The meeting gives condensed matter and materials scientists the opportunity to discuss their research in an informal atmosphere, focussing on contributed poster papers with a number of invited and contributed oral papers completing the program. Susan Biering is a PhD student in her final year in the research group of Prof. Peter Schwerdtfeger at the Centre for Theoretical Chemistry and Physics and the conference contribution represents the results of her thesis related reseach.

September 2008: Peter Schwerdtfeger receives a remarkable third consecutive grant through the Marsden Fund.

Exceptional Recognition for a Theoretician

Professor Peter Schwerdtfeger, Head of the Centre for Theoretical Chemistry and Physics and founding member of the New Zealand Institute for Advanced Study, both situated at the Oteha Rohe Campus of Massey University Albany, has been awarded a remarkable third consecutive grant through the Marsden Fund. The Marsden Fund is administered by the Royal Society of New Zealand. The competition for grants is intense: over the last three years, less than 10% of all applications received funding. Over the last decade, the Marsden Fund has become a synonym for excellence in research, enabling New Zealand's best researchers to explore their ideas. It is the only major fund in New Zealand for blue-sky research.

Peter was granted NZ$ 870,000 for his project "The Search for Molecular Parity Violation" (funded 2007 through 2009), NZ$ 720,000 for investigating "Chemistry at Extreme Conditions: Materials at Ultra-High Pressures from First Principles Quantum Theoretical Methods" (funded 2008 through 2010), and most recently NZ$ 780,000 over the next three years for the project "The Variation of Fundamental Constants in Space-Time", in collaboration with Professor Victor Flambaum from the University of New South Wales, Australia. Only four scientists had previously been awarded three Marsden grants in three consecutive years. Peter received earlier Marsden grants as principal investigator for the periods 1996-1998 (NZ$ 570,000), 2000-2003 (NZ$ 590,000), and 2004-2006 (NZ$ 630,000).

These exceptional achievements highlight Peter's excellence in research and his great intuition for 'hot topics' in the truly interdisciplinary area of theoretical chemistry and physics. Over the last two decades, theoretical and computational sciences became increasingly more important as computer technology and computation power developed enormously during that time. While there is huge activity at the international scene in this area, New Zealand is still lagging somewhat behind these developments. Large supercomputer facilities are not available in New Zealand, and there are only a handful of academics here performing quantum chemical calculations. With the development of the Centre of Theoretical Chemistry and Physics, Peter Schwerdtfeger points out, New Zealand will be put into the forefront of research activities in theoretical and computational aspects of important areas such as materials science or nanotechnology. For that, Massey University is currently in the process of purchasing a new 512 processor supercomputer.

Staff updates

May 2012: Sergej Flach joins the CTCP.
October 2011: Alberto Cetoli joins the Brand group.
March 2011: James Avery joins the Schwerdtfeger group.
January 2011: Gabriele Jaritz joins the Brand group.
October 2010: Jonas Wiebke joins the Schwerdtfeger group.
October 2010: Mustafa Hasanbulli joins the Schwerdtfeger group.
October 2010: Andreas Hauser joins the Schwerdtfeger group.
September 2010: Oleksandr Fialko joins the Brand group.
May 2010: Michael Wormit joins the Schwerdtfeger group.
January 2010: Andrew Punnett joins the Bowman group.
September 2009: David Hallwood joins the Brand group.
November 2009: Anastasia Borschevsky joins the Schwerdtfeger group.
October 2009: Kyle Beloy joins the Schwerdtfeger group.
July 2009: Jake Gulliksen joins the Brand group.
January 2009: Julie Coxe joins the Schwerdtfeger group.
October 2008: Renyuan Liao joins the Brand group.
September 2008: Patrick Bowman is promoted to Senior Lecturer in Physics. Congratulations, Patrick!
May 2008: Beata Dąbrowska-Wüster joins the Brand group.
January 2008: Joachim Brand is appointed Associate Professor and Subject Leader (Albany) in Physics. Congratulations, Joachim!
January 2008: Ralf Tonner joins the Schwerdtfeger group.
June 2007: Thomas Ernst joins the Brand group.
May 2007: Detlev Figgen joins the Schwerdtfeger group.
June 2006: Joachim Brand and Elke Pahl join the CTCP.
March 2006: Gloria E. Moyano joins the Schwerdtfeger group.