Campus Directory

Division Physical & Biological Sciences Division

Department/College/Unit Physics Department

Title Adjunct Professor

Affiliation Faculty

Faculty Type Adjunct Faculty

Web Site

Primary Office Location Remote work location
256 ISB

Additional Location(s) Physics, rm 256

Office Hours TBA

Mail Stop Physics Department

Biography, Education and Training

I studied physics at the TU Munich/Germany and received my Dr.rer.nat (PhD) for my thesis “X-ray magnetic circular dichroism at the L2,3 edges of 4f-elements” in 1993. In 2000 I received my habilitiation (venia legendi) from the U Wuerzburg in Germany based on my pioneering work on magnetic soft X-ray microscopy. From 2001-2004 I was group leader at the Max-Planck-Institute for Metals Research in Stuttgart/Germany and lecturer for experimental physics at the U Stuttgart/Germany. In 2004 I joined the Materials Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory as Staff Scientist and Principal Investigator. I was promoted to Senior Scientist in 2016. In 2014 I was appointed as Adjunct Professor in Physics at UC Santa Cruz. Since 2015 I have been serving  the Materials Sciences Division at Berkeley Lab as Deputy Division Director, being Interim Division Director from 2016-2017, and since 2023.

Summary of Expertise

My scientific expertise is in characterizing magnetic materials with polarized x-rays. I am primarily using x-ray spectromicroscopies, which allow me in a unique way to image with almost nanometer spatial and better than 100 ps temporal resolution spin textures and their fast dynamics with elemental and magnetic sensitivity. I am also strongly engaged in developing novel  x-ray instrumentation such as magnetic x-ray tomography.

Research Interests

• magnetism on the nano- and mesoscale
• magnetic x-ray microscopy and spectroscopy
• (ultra-)fast spin dynamics
• soft x-ray tomography of condensed matter
• x-ray optics

Awards, Honors and Grants

2014 APS Fellow
2014 IEEE Fellow
2013 Zhongshan Distinguished Lecturer, Nanjing, China
2011 IEEE Magnetics Society Distinguished Lecturer
2010 Klaus-Halbach-Award, ALS Berkeley CA

Selected Publications

• P. Fischer, H. Ohldag, X-rays and magnetism, Report on Progress in Physics 78 094501 (2015)
• N. Kent, N. Reynolds, D. Raftrey, I.T.G. Campbell, S. Virasawmy, S. Dhuey, R.V. Chopdekar, A. Hierro-Rodriguez, A. Sorrentino, E. Pereiro, S. Ferrer, F. Hellman, P. Sutcliffe, P. Fischer, Creation and Observation of Hopfions in Magnetic Multilayer Systems, Nature Communications 12 1562 (2021)
• D. Raftrey, P. Fischer, Field-driven dynamics of magnetic Hopfions, Phys Rev Lett 127 257201 (2021)
• S. Kasai, P. Fischer, M-Y. Im, K. Yamada, Y. Nakatani, K. Kobayashi, H. Kohno, and T. Ono, Real-time X-ray imaging of current-induced resonant motion of a vortex core in a ferromagnetic disk, Phys Rev Lett 101, 237203 (2008)
• G. Meier, M. Bolte, R. Eiselt, B. Krueger, D.-H. Kim, P. Fischer, Direct imaging of current driven stochastic domain-wall motion and deformation, Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 187202 (2007)
• A. Fernández-Pacheco, R. Streubel, O. Fruchart, R. Hertel, P. Fischer, R. P. Cowburn, Three-dimensional nanomagnetism, Nature Comm 8:15756 (2017)
• S. Woo, K. Litzius, B. Krüger, M.-Y. Im, L. Caretta, K. Ritchter, M. Mann, A. Krone, R. Reeve, M. Weigand, P. Agrawal, P. Fischer, M. Kläui, G.S.D. Beach, Observation of room temperature magnetic skyrmions and their current-driven dynamics in ultrathin Co films, Nature Materials 15 501 (2016)
• P. Fischer, Imaging techniques: X-rays used to watch spins in 3D, Nature 547 290 (2017)
• M. H. Seaberg, B. Holladay, J. C. T. Lee, M. Sikorski, A. H. Reid, S. A. Montoya, G. L. Dakovski, J. D. Koralek, G. Coslovich, S. Moeller, W. F. Schlotter, R. Streubel, S. D. Kevan, P. Fischer, E. E. Fullerton, J. L. Turner, F.-J. Decker, S. K. Sinha, S. Roy, J. J. Turner, Nanosecond X-ray Photon Correlation Spectroscopy on Magnetic Skyrmions Phys Rev Lett 119 067403 (2017)
• X. Liu, N. Kent, A. Ceballos, R. Streubel, Y. Jiang, Y. Chai, J. Forth, F. Hellman, S. Shi, D. Wang, B.A. Helms,  P.D. Ashby, P. Fischer, T.P. Russell, Reconfigurable Ferromagnetic Liquid Droplets, Science 365 (6450) 264 (2019)
  

Advisees, Grad Students & Researchers Raftrey, David (draftrey)

Courses 291B