Ing. Richard Korytár, Ph.D.

Department
Department of Condensed Matter Physics
Phone
+420 95155 1391
E-mail
richard.korytar@matfyz.cuni.cz
Home page
http://ctcm.kfkl.cz
Links
Teaching
Schedule
Exams
Supervised theses
Assigned theses
Room / building
F 053, ground floor, Ke Karlovu 5, Ke Karlovu 2026/5, Praha 2

 

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 

Grant title

Funding agency

Funds

Duration

Role

Molecular spintronics

PRIMUS award of the Charles University

€ 118 000/year

01/2017 — 12/2019

Principal Investigator

Molecular spintronics: control of spin-orbit fields 

Czech Science Foundation

€ 87 000/year

01/2022 − 12/2024

Principal Investigator

 

Languages

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

Charles University, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics
Ke Karlovu 3, 121 16 Praha 2, Czech Republic
VAT ID: CZ00216208

HR Award at Charles University

4EU+ Alliance