Christian Schönenberger

Curriculum Vitae

Christian Schönenberger (CS) has always been engaged in a wide range of topics. He could enjoy the beauty of natural science the first time at the ETHZ where he was working as an electrical engineer, developing pulsed lasers for molecular spectroscopy. This motivated him to study a second time, after electrical engineering, physics. He did his PhD in experimental physics at the IBM Zurich research lab in the early time of scanning-probe microscopy. He demonstrated the first magnetic force microscope that could image magnetism and topography simultaneously.

He then moved to Philips Research (NL) where he later became a senior staff member. At Philips he developed, among other things, a low-temperature scanning tunneling microscope which allowed for the first time to probe electron correlations in devices at the single-electron level. He was then appointed full professor at the Univ. of Basel in 1995 where he established the nanoelectronics group. Low temperature physics and micro- and nanofabrication was all build up by CS at Basel from scratch. This initiative established the grounds for nanoelectronics in Basel and helped nanoscience to become a major focus at the Department of Physics. This led to a series of appointments in nano- and quantum science, experimental and theoretical.

As the most important recognition, the Department of Physics became the Swiss leading house in nanoscience in 2001. CS was a co-founder, later the co-director and since 2006 he is the director of this centre. Under his initative, the scope of the centre was further extended to applied sciences, leading to the foundation of the Swiss Nanoscience Institute in 2006. CS is also a co-founder and an active participant within QC2, which is the Basel Center of Excellence in Quantum Computing and Quantum Coherence. Though having remained a small Department, the visibility could substantially be raised over the last 15 years. Today, the Department of Physics at the University of Basel is a leading institution in the field of solid-state nanoscience.

Interests

Nano electronics, charge- and spin-transport in low-dimensional systems, quantum phenomena, spintronics, nanowire and quantum-dot physics, carbon nanotubes and graphene, shot-noise and charge-fluctuation phenomena, quantum correlations and many-body physics in low-dimensional tunable model systems

Address

Nanoelectronics group at the Department of Physics of the University of Basel
Swiss Nanoscience Institute, University of Basel
University of Basel, Klingelbergstrasse 82, CH-4056 Basel, Switzerland
christian.schoenenberger@unibas.ch , www.nanoelectronics.ch

Education

1976-1979	Electrical Engineer of Applied Sciences
1982-1986	Physics at the ETH-Zürich
1986-1990	Ph.D. thesis at the IBM Research Laboratory at Rüschlikon, Switzerland on Magnetic Force Microscopy

Career

1979-1980	Molecular Spectroscopy Group of Prof. K. Dressler at Physical Chemistry at ETH-Zürich
1986-1990	IBM Research Rüschlikon
1990-1992	Postdoctoral Fellow at Philips Research in Eindhoven
1993-1995	Permanent Research Staff Member at Philips Research
1995-	Full Chair in Experimental Physics at the Univ. of Basel
2006-	Director of the Swiss Nanoscience Institute at Basel

Memberships

Member of APS, DPG, SPG, SSOM, SATW

Awards

1990	PhD medal ETHZ
1991	Swiss Physical Society Price
1994	Profil-II award of the Swiss National Science Foundation
2010	Life-time member of the Swiss Academy of Technical Sciences
2012	Fellow of the American Physical Society
2012	ERC advanced researcher grant

Impact

>200 publications, H-index = 51 (Sept. 2016) with 50 citations per publication on average. > 150 invited lectures at international conferences and workshops. Supervisor of > 20 PhD theses, (co) organizer of 13 schools, 7 international and 8 national conferences.

List of Selected Publications

1. The Fermionic Hanbury-Brown and Twiss Experiment, Henny, S. Oberholzer, C. Strunk, T. Heinzel, K. Ensslin, M. Holland, and C. Schönenberger, Science 284 (1999) 296.
2. Aharonov-Bohm Oscillations in Carbon Nanotubes, A. Bachtold, C. Strunk, J.-P. Salvetat, J.-M. Bonard, L. Forro, T. Nussbaumer, and C. Schönenberger, Nature 397, 673 (1999).
3. The Fermionic Hanbury-Brown and Twiss Experiment, M. Henny, S. Oberholzer, C. Strunk, T. Heinzel, K. Ensslin, M. Holland, and C. Schönenberger, Science 284, 296 (2000).
4. A quantum dot in the Kondo regime coupled to superconductors, M. R. Buitelaar, T. Nussbaumer, and C. Schönenberger, Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 256801 (2002).
5. Quantum Shot Noise, C. Beenakker and C. Schönenberger, Physics Today 56 (5), 37-42 (2003).
6. Electric field control of spin transport, S. Sahoo, T. Kontos, J. Furer, C. Hoffmann, M. Gräber, A. Cottet, and C. Schönenberger, Nature Physics 1, 99-102 (2005).
7. Even-odd effect in Andreev Transport through a Carbon Nanotube Quantum Dot, A. Eichler, M. Weiss, S. Oberholzer, and C. Schönenberger, A. Levy Yeyati, J. C. Cuevas, and A. Martin-Rodero, Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 126602 (2007).
8. Cooper-pair splitter realized in a two-quantum-dot Y-junction, L. Hofstetter, C. Csonka, J. Nygard and C. Schönenberger, Nature 461, 960 (2009).
9. Hybrid superconductor – quantum dot devices, S. De Franceschi, L. Kouwenhoven, C. Schönenbergeer and W. Wernsdorfer, Nature Nanotechnology 5, 703 (2010).
10. Spontaneously Gapped Ground State in Suspended Bilayer Graphene, F. Freitag, J. Trbovic, M. Weiss, and C. Schönenberger, Phys. Rev. Lett., 108, 76602 (2012).
11. Near-Unity Cooper Pair Splitting Efficiency, J. Schindele, A. Baumgartner, and C. Schönenberger, Phys. Rev. Lett., 109, 157002 (2012).
12. Nonlocal spectroscopy of Andreev bound states, J. Schindele, A. Baumgartner, R. Maurand, M. Weiss, and C. Schönenberger, Phys. Rev. B, 89, 45422 (2014).
13. Snake trajectories in ultraclean graphene p–n junctions, P. Rickhaus, P. Makk, Ming-Hao Liu, E. Tovari, M. Weiss, R. Maurand, and C. Schönenberger, Nature Comm., 6, 6470 (2015).
14. Clean carbon nanotubes coupled to superconducting impedance-matching circuits, V. Ranjan, G. Puebla-Hellmann, M. Jung, T. Hasler, A. Nunnenkamp, M. Muoth, C. Hierold, A. Wallraff, and C. Schönenberger, Nature Comm., 6, 7165 (2015).
15. Resonant and Inelastic Andreev Tunneling Observed on a Carbon Nanotube Quantum Dot, J. Gramich, A. Baumgartner, and C. Schönenberger, Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 216801 (2015).
16. Giant Valley-Isospin Conductance Oscillations in Ballistic Graphene, C. Handschin, P.Makk, P. Rickhaus, R. Maurand, K. Watanabe, T. Taniguchi, K. Richter, Ming-Hao Liu, and C. Schönenberger, Nano Letters, 17, 5389-5393 (2017).
17. Measuring a Quantum Dot with an Impedance-Matching On-Chip Superconducting LC Resonator at Gigahertz Frequencies, M. -C. Harabula, T. Hasler, G. Fülöp, M. Jung, V. Ranjan, and C. Schönenberger, Phys. Rev. Appl., 8, 54006 (2017).