Centre of Low Temperature Physics (CLTP), a joint low temperature laboratory of the Institute of Experimental Physics, SAS and the Faculty of Sciences of the P.J. Šafárik University at Košice, from 8.9.2019 to 18.9.2019, had organized an European workshop on low temperature physics and cryogenic techniques – the CryoCourse 2019. This workshop is a first cryo-course school being organized in the framework of the European Microkelvin Platfom (EMP) H2020 project number 824109 supported by EU (www.emplatform.eu). All together 44 young scientists, PhD students and postdocs participated on the Cryocourse 2019 workshop. Participants came from EU and to EU associated countries: Austria (1), Czech republic (2), Finland (3), France (3), Germany (6), Hungary (2), Israel (1), Italy (3), Norway (1), Polish (6), Slovakia (4), Spain (1), Great Britain (5) and Ukraine (6). From 44 attendees, eight of them were women.
Programme of the Cryocourse 2019 was split into two parts – theoretical part and practical part. The theoretical part of the Cryocourse 2019 was held near „the Slovak sea“ Zemplínska šírava in the congress hotel Thermal Šírava (around 70 km far-away from Košice city). During the theoretical part of the CryoCourse, internationally well-respected experts in the field provided tutorial lectures on topics such as thermodynamics and heat transfer, cooling and measurement techniques, low-temperature detectors, SQUIDs and parametric amplifiers, superconductivity and superfluidity including nano-fluidics, physics of strongly correlated electron systems and 2-D electron systems, and on quantum fluctuations and quantum phase transitions. Participants were also introduced to the latest developments in the field of low temperature engineering for quantum nano-technology and quantum information. All together 24 tutorial lectures have been held from Sep 9th to Sep 15th. In addition, poster sessions were held in the evening of the first three days to give the participants the opportunity to present and discuss results of their own research work, compare the methods they use with similar research efforts and to establish and enlarge their professional network.
Experimental exercises i.e. the practical part of the Cryocourse, started on Monday, Sep 16th in the CLTP. Participants of the workshop were split into five groups with less than 10 participants each. We prepared five excersises: (i) fundamentals of vacuum and cryogenics techniques, leak detectors and leak check, soft and hard soldering, (ii) dry dilution refrigerator, noise thermometry, superconducting magnets and mechanical resonators, (iii) high pressure experiments in diamond anvil and piston cylinder cells, (iv) STM spectroscopy and (v) thermodynamic measurements at low temperatures: AC calorimetry and Hall probe magnetometry. In addition to this hands-on-exercises, participants visited the air separation unit of the low temperature facilities of the U.S. Seel company in Košice in the morning of Sep 17th. This allowed us to present efforts on industrial scale level in the liquefaction and production of air, nitrogen, oxygen and argon. The practical part of the Cryocourse 2019 finished on Wednesday, 18 September 2019, and the Cryocourse 2019 ended on Thursday morning, 19 September 2019 by departure of the participants.