2022 Annual Report of the IUCr Commission on Magnetic Structures
Preparations for the 2023 IUCr Congress in Melbourne
The IUCr Commission on Magnetic Structures has contributed actively to the organization of the 2023 IUCr Congress in Melbourne, Australia, in sponsoring or co-sponsoring ten microsymposia and one keynote address (Oksana Zaharko, Switzerland), where topics will include methods of magnetic structure determination, magnetic symmetry, topological magnetic materials, functional magnetic materials, molecular magnets, geometrically-frustrated magnets, magnetic diffuse scattering and short-range magnetic order, aperiodic magnetic structures, and Van der Waals magnetism. We have also identified and advertised for six additional session with magnetism-centric themes. Capable session chairs have secured outstanding invited speakers for each session and put together an impressive program. Commission members invested considerable time and effort during the year to advertise the congress program widely amongst magnetic-structure researchers around the world, with particular effort being devoted to reaching out to scientists in parts of the world with less IUCr representation. We particularly thank Maxim Avdeev (ANSTO, Australia) for the extensive effort and patience required to represent the commission on the congress International Planning Committee.
Standard and data development
The commission has continued to discuss a number of high-priority projects, which include the following: (1) Update of the magCIF standard to accommodate the new system of Unified (UNI) magnetic-space group symbols and associated magnetic superspace-group symbols [Acta Crystallogr. A 78, 99-106 (2022)] and other recent developments. (2) Establish a minimal unambiguous description for a magnetic structure. (3) Develop a CIF standard for the symmetry-mode description of a magnetic structure. (4) Expand, complete, and maintain the MAGNDATA database of magnetic structures. (5) Promote the use of a variety new infrastructure for presenting magnetic structures, including the magCIF standard itself, new symmetry data and descriptors, and software tools and databases that employ them correctly.
Meetings
A combination of scientific meetings, schools, and workshops supported by the commission and its members include the following:
- HERCULES School, 28 Feb-1 Apr 2022, Grenoble, France (Tutorials on the use of JANA2020 for crystal and magnetic structures, lecturers: Vaclav Petricek and Margarida Henriques).
- JANA Workshop on Magnetic Structures, 25-28 Apr 2022, Praha, Czech Republic (hybrid format (organizers/lecturers: Vaclav Petricek and Margarida Henriques, lecturers: Manuel Perez-Mato and Branton Campbell).
- American Crystallographic Association Meeting, 29 Jul to 03 Aug 2022, Portland, USA, “A unified (UNI) system of magnetic space-group symbols”, (presenter: Branton Campbell, coauthors: J. Manuel Perez-Mato and Juan Rodríguez-Carvajal).
- EPDIC17, 31 May to 3 June 2022, Šibenik, Croatia, microsymposium on “Magnetic structures and neutron scattering” (organizer/chair: Maria Teresa Fernandez-Diaz).
- Workshop on Magnetic Structure Determination from Neutron Diffraction Data (MagStr), 3-7 Oct 2022, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA, (organizer/lecturer: Ovidiu Garlea, lecturers: Juan Rodriguez-Carvajal, Manuel Perez-Mato, Margarida Henriques, Vaclav Petricek, Branton Campbell).
- Workshop on Topology in Magnetic Materials, 22–24 Nov 2022, Herzberg, Switzerland, “Magnetic symmetry for multi-k structure models” (lecturer: Vladimir Pomjakushin).
Branton J. Campbell (Commission Chair)
J. Manuel Perez-Mato (Commission Secretary)
