SAS Award for Nature Index publication for Marcel Človečko

In the intimate environment of the Small Congress Center of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava, top scientists of the Slovak Academy of Sciences have been awarded this year. The awards of the Slovak Academy of Sciences are the highest award for the creative activity of its scientists. Strict pandemic measures divided the award ceremony into two days and individual science departments. The Awards were presented on Monday, June 28, and on Tuesday, June 29, by the President of the SAS, prof. RNDr. Pavol Šajgalík, DrSc., in the presence of the Speaker of the Assembly of the SAS RNDr. Katarína Gmucová, CSc., and vice-presidents of the SAS for individual science departments – Mgr. Martin Venhart, PhD., Prof. RNDr. Karol Marhold, DrSc., and RNDr. Miroslav Tibor Morovics, CSc.

Invitation to the ceremony was accepted by Ľudovít Paulis, State Secretary of the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic as well as Jozef Habánik, Deputy Chairman of the National Council of the Slovak Republic Committee for Education, Science, Youth and Sport. As stated by Ľudovít Paulis, the awarded scientists are just a sample of top SAS scientists who can compete with scientists abroad, and the SAS itself is an institution with high quality scientific potential.

The SAS Award for 2020 in the 1st Department of Physical, Space, Earth, and Engineering Sciences in the Nature Index category of the publications was also won by RNDr. Marcel Človečko, PhD. from the Center for Low Temperature Physics at Institute of Experimental Physics SAS for the paper: M. Človečko and P. Skyba, Quartz tuning fork – a potential low temperature thermometer in high magnetic fields, Applied Physics Letters 115, 193507 (2019); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5124736.

The awarded paper investigates accurate measurement of low temperatures (less than 1 Kelvin) in strong magnetic fields, which is still a challenging experimental challenge, because almost all measurable physical parameters are dependent on the magnetic field at low temperatures. The publication presents measurements of commercially available mechanical resonators based on quartz tuners with different resonant frequencies. Measurements were performed at temperatures below 1 Kelvin in magnetic fields up to 7.5 Tesla. The authors managed to prove that the normalized resonant frequency of the tuners shows a universal temperature dependence that is independent of the magnetic field. This feature makes quartz tuners a very promising candidate for a thermometer suitable for measuring low temperatures in strong magnetic fields.

More about SAS Awards for 2020 can be found HERE.