Scope of the workshop

The next generation of quantum technologies will exploit microscopic degrees of freedom without classical counterparts. These are often encoded in the phase of the quantum-mechanical wave function, whose local (geometry) and global (topology) properties unify seemingly disparate physical phenomena such as noncollinear magnetism and superconductivity. The complex arrangements of magnetic moments in noncollinear magnets create the Berry-phase-driven emergent electromagnetic fields that drive novel transport effects now starting to be exploited for spintronics, while the macroscopic phase coherence in superconductors leads to dissipationless supercurrents and to working qubit implementations found in quantum computers. There is by now ample theoretical and experimental evidence that combining magnetic and superconducting materials can lead to the formation of exotic quantum-mechanical entities such as Majorana quasiparticles, of interest to topological quantum computing, and to novel device prototypes in the field of superconducting magnetic spintronics.

In our view, the major challenge in this expanding field of superconducting magnetic spintronics is to leverage the state-of-the-art in high-performance computing and data science to move the theory and simulation of such hybrid magnetic-superconducting structures from the model to the atomistic level, in order to enable high-throughput simulations of real materials and device prototypes. Here, first-principles methods based on Green functions such as the Korringa-Kohn-Rostoker (KKR) and the linearized muffin-tin orbital (LMTO) methods are uniquely placed to achieve this goal. They have been successfully developed to describe noncollinear magnetism and spintronics, from the quantification of magnetic interactions to the electronic structure of magnetic skyrmions to the manifold transport phenomena in epitaxial or van der Waals spintronic heterostructures. Notably, these methods have demonstrated the ability to simulate the properties of material systems with coexisting magnetic and superconducting orders by solving the self-consistent Bogoliubov - de Gennes equations in a density functional theory framework. In addition, Green function methods are an ideal tool for the description of impurity atoms in superconductors and on their surfaces, enabling the computational, material-specific calculation of magnetically functionalized superconductors and promoting the study of topological superconductivity.

After years in which the covid pandemic prevented the first-principles Green function community from meeting face-to-face, the time is now ripe for hosting a new forum where the fundamental, methodological and algorithmic aspects enabling the atomistic simulation of superconducting magnetic spintronic properties are discussed and the way forward is paved. The aim is to bring together not only the established experts in the field but also students and early-career researchers, exchanging complementary expertise and establishing new collaborations bridging spinorbitronics and superconductivity in an open-minded workshop setting.