Heinrich Büssing Prize for research on frustrated materials Physicist Dr. Leonie Heinze awarded prize worth €10,000

The Braunschweigische Hochschulbund (Braunschweig University Association) and its foundation have honoured Dr. Leonie Heinze with the 2024 Heinrich Büssing Prize for her outstanding dissertation. In her doctoral thesis, she researched so-called frustrated magnetic materials. Due to their special properties, such materials are of great interest in solid-state physics and also offer promising applications, for example in the demanding cooling of quantum computers. The prize, which has been awarded by the Braunschweigische Hochschulbund and its foundation for 28 years, honours outstanding young scientists at TU Braunschweig.

As part of her doctoral studies at the Institute of Condensed Matter Physics at TU Braunschweig, Dr. Leonie Heinze investigated naturally occurring frustrated minerals. How frustration arises in minerals: “Just as three people cannot all sit directly opposite each other at the same time, three electron spins arranged in a triangle cannot all align antiparallel to each other at the same time, even if this is dictated by couplings between the spins. Such a competitive situation can also be found in some magnetic materials.” This frustration has a direct impact on the properties of the material: “The material becomes magnetically ‘confused’ by the competing couplings, and novel and unusual magnetic states arise, especially in quantum spins,” says Dr. Heinze.

A particular focus of her work was on the rare mineral linarite, which is highly prized by collectors for its bright blue crystals. “As experimental physicists, we investigate materials that serve as model systems for frustrated spin systems. We expose them to extremely low temperatures in the Kelvin or even millikelvin range, i.e. close to absolute zero, and in some cases also to high magnetic fields,” explains Dr. Heinze. “Many phenomena of quantum magnetism can only be observed at such low temperatures.”

According to the reviewers, Dr. Heinze’s work, entitled ‘Competing magnetic phases of frustrated quantum magnets,’ which has been highly acclaimed in expert circles, demonstrates “exceptional depth in experimental research and excellent integration of theoretical models.” Dr. Heinze has thus made “an outstanding contribution to solid-state physics and, in particular, to quantum magnetism.” She is now being awarded the Heinrich Büssing Prize by the Braunschweigischer Hochschulbund and its foundation for this scientific achievement. The prize is endowed with €10,000. Previous recipients include Dr. Alexander Henkes (2023) and Dr. Phillip Keldenich (2022).

Dr. Leonie Heinze is currently continuing her research on frustrated magnets as a postdoc at the Jülich Centre for Neutron Science (JCNS) of the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Zentrum (MLZ). “I particularly like how the magnetism of a material can be increasingly better understood through many different, complementary experiments, like a puzzle. An important experimental technique here is neutron scattering, which I grew very fond of during my PhD,” says Dr. Heinze.