Les Houches – WE Heraeus Summer School
“Frontiers of Condensed Matter” is a series of doctoral training sessions organized since 2010 by a number of European partners. It aims at offering final year Master students and junior PhD-students (1st/2nd year) a high-level training program in the general area of condensed matter physics. The program is not focused on a specific subfield. Instead it tries to give a broad introduction to important concepts in condensed matter physics. Topics include, e.g., quantum transport, quantum materials, superconductivity, topological phases, cQED, open quantum systems, and quantum device physics. Pedagogical seminars complement the main lectures to illustrate current research activities in relation with the general topics. In contrast to the majority of other schools, we give priority to the most junior candidates to help them enter the research field and create networks early on in their careers.
The next session will take place in Les Houches from September 28, 2026 to October 9, 2026.
Main lectures:
• Quantum transport and spintronics – Thomas Ihn (Zürich Switzerland)
• Topological phases of matter – Piet Brouwer (Berlin, Germany)
• Superconducting circuits – Nicolas Roch (Grenoble, France)
• Quantum materials & unconventional superconductivity – Elena Gati (Dresden, Germany)
• 2D van der Waals heterostructures – Talieh Ghiasi (Delft, The Netherlands)
• Spin and orbital magnetism – Rafael Fernandes (Minneapolis, United States)
Seminar speakers:
Anne Anthore (Paris, France), Elena Hassinger (Dresden, Germany), Andrea Hoffman (Basel, Switzerland), Romain Maurand (Grenoble, France), Frank Pollmann (Munich, Germany), Hugues Pothier (Paris, France), Ivo Souza (San Sebastian, Spain)
Registration will open in March/April 2026.
The 2026 session is co-organized by the Ecole Doctorale de Physique (Grenoble, France), the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience Delft (Delft, The Netherlands), the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Karlsruhe, Germany), the Materials Physics Center (San Sebastian, Spain), and the National Center on Spin Qubits (Basel, Switzerland).