Ing. Richard Korytár, Ph.D.

Expertise

• Physicist and Ph.D. in theoretical condensed matter physics with 15 years of experience as an independent researcher, communicator of science, teacher and team leader
• Combining ab-initio techniques with methods for correlated systems to investigate spinful molecules and atomic chains in contact with electron reservoirs
• 23 publications, >800 citations

Experience

Assistant Professor, Charles University

January 2017 - Present

• In an international collaboration, I drew a roadmap of an emergent new research discipline (Molecular electronics), published in Reviews of Modern Physics
• Discovered interference effect in atomic spin chains on a metallic surface - “Kondo chains” - using many-body perturbation theory for a multi-impurity Anderson model
• I supervised application of a Numerical Renormalization Group to a molecular Kondo problem
• Supervising a PhD thesis on the application of qp-GW to quantum transport
• Teaching, organization (committee work) & collaboration with international groups (Oxford, Columbia U, Kolkata, Regensburg, Delft, Leiden, San Sebastian)
• Communication: designing personal web-page to communicate with students and managing the News section of the department web-page
• Proposal writing: Attracted 615 000 € from public funding agencies (2 grants)

Assistant Professor, University of Regensburg

September 2014 - July 2016

• Discovered a surprising trend in excitation energies of linear molecules combining ab-initio DFT with a lattice model (DMRG, with P. Schmitteckert)
• Coding: My code (FORTRAN2003, using math kernel libraries) was published as a part of the SIESTA computer package, used by thousands of researchers
• Communication: publication of research in high-impact scientific journals (e.g. Nature Publishing Group)
• Techniques: DFT on a supercomputer architecture
• Teaching: undergraduate physics courses, designing problem classes, lecturing

Postdoctoral Researcher, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)

October 2011 - September 2014

• Institute for Nanotechnology (INT KIT)
• Density-functional theory for the non-equilibrium electron transport through molecular junctions in an emerging research field: Molecular Electronics
• Communication: aim of the research projects was to combine experimental data and my own theoretical models to formulate a concise story, presented at international conferences and in high-impact research journals
• Mentoring undergraduate students

Graduate Scholar, Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology

OCTOBER 2007 - JUNE 2011

• Ph.D. thesis “Molecular Kondo problem: First-principles approach for scanning-tunneling microscope studies”
• Timely experimental Kondo signals could not be captured by state-of-the-art ab-initio simulations. I developed a technique that merged DFT and many-body techniques. The procedure involved
• Mapping of DFT on the Anderson impurity model (downfolding) via Wannier orbitals
• Self-consistent diagrammatic perturbation theory for the Anderson model
• Won a competitive 4-year scholarship

Education

Universidad Autònoma de Barcelona

Ph.D. in physics, cum laude

2007 - 2011

Slovak University of Technology (FEI STU)

Master of electric engineering (materials science)

2001 - 2007

Awards & Fellowships 

• 2017 PRIMUS award of the Charles University
• 2008 CSIC predoctoral fellowship of the Spanish Research Council
• Pre-doctoral awards: Dean’s awards and Erasmus fellowship

3 representative publications

• Advances and challenges in single-molecule electron transport
  F. Evers, R. Korytár, S. Tewari, J.M. van Ruitenbeek, Reviews of Modern Physics (2020)
  • We drew a roadmap of an emergent field of Molecular Electronics. The theoretical part emphasizes both mean-field and many-body approaches, e.g. lattice models, non-equilibrium, DFT, GW
• Real space manifestations of coherent screening in atomic scale Kondo lattices
  M. Moro-Lagares, R. Korytár, M. Piantek et al. Nature Communications (2019)
  • The experimentalists built an atomic Kondo lattice and I explained why the Kondo peaks enhance at the edges of the chain
  • I designed and solved many-body perturbation theory for the multi-impurity Anderson model
• Signature of the Dirac cone in the properties of linear oligoacenes
  R. Korytár, D. Xenioti, P. Schmitteckert et al. Nature Communications (2014)
  • When oligoacenes increase their length, I found that their excitation gaps oscillate
  • My band-structure calculations were complemented by GW and DMRG
• See my google-scholar profile for a complete list
  https://scholar.google.cz/citations?user=kAjhBHsAAAAJ&hl=en

Research grants 

Languages

• English (fluent)
• Spanish (fluent)
• German (conversational)
• Slovak (native)
• Czech (second native)
• Japanese (beginner)