Spintronics

Coordinators: David D. Awschalom, Gerrit E.w. Bauer, Michael E. Flatté, Daniel Loss, Allan H. MacDonald, Dan Ralph
The Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, will be hosting a one week Conference on Spintronics from March 20-24, 2006. This scientific event will focus on discussing new phenomena and raising scientific challenges to the community. Moreover, one day will be centered on the frontiers of spintronics in honor of Professor Stephan von Molnar, recognizing his many contributions to the field of magnetic semiconductors. The conference will serve to launch the KITP four-month Program on Spintronics from March 13 - June 23, 2006. This theoretical program will address spin coherence and spin transport in both metals and semiconductors. Interest in spintronics is motivated in part by the technological appeal of the electron spin degree of freedom, which has already and will likely continue to enable new functionalities in electronic devices. Spin-based quantum information processing is one especially enticing possibility. The applicability of fundamental results has created a field in which the interests of theoretical, computational, experimental, and industrial physicists have an unusually large overlap. The goals of the program are to identify and to make progress on key theoretical problems, and to enhance interactions between the communities of researchers that share an interest in spintronics.


INVITED SPEAKERS INCLUDE

Gerhard Abstreiter (Walter Schottky Institute)
Dimitri Basov (UC-San Diego)
Gerrit Bauer (Delft)
Robert Buhrman (Cornell)
Michael Coey (Trinity College)
Paul Crowell (Minnesota)
Michael Flatte (Iowa)
Bert Halperin (Harvard)
Alan Heeger (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Tom Kennedy (NRL)
Daniel Loss (Basel)
Hideo Ohno (Tohoku)
Stuart Parkin (IBM)
Jason Petta (Harvard)
William Rippard (NIST Boulder)
Dan Rugar (IBM)
Peter Schiffer (Penn State)
Christian Schonenberger (Basel)
Vanessa Sih (UC - Santa Barbara)
John Sipe (Toronto)
Jo Stohr (Stanford)
Stephan von Molnar (Florida State)
Steven Watts (University of Groningen)