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Since 2018, the German Physical Society’s (DPG) working group on equal opportunities has been at the forefront of the “Physikerin der Woche” initiative, which features an inspiring female physicist and her re­search area every week. The initiative, showcased on the DPG website as well as on the “Physikerinnen” and “DPG” social media channels, highlights both physicists based in Germany and German scientists working abroad. By presenting diverse career paths and achievements, it challenges traditional gender stereotypes, promotes a more inclusive image of physics, and reinforces that a career in this field is accessible and promising for women at every stage.

We are delighted to announce that this week's featured physicist is Friederike Ihssen, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Theo­re­ti­cal Physics in Hei­del­berg within the STRUC­TURES Cluster of Excellence. Her re­search focuses on the description of emergent macroscopic phenomena and phase transitions in quan­tum field theory, such as the process of dynamical chiral symmetry breaking in the theory of strong interactions, which is known to generate over 99% of mass in nucleons. 

'The whole is greater than the sum of the parts' certainly holds true in strongly correlated systems: Here, microscopic constituents, for example quarks, form macroscopic structures, such as pions and nucleons, whose properties are not only defined by the quan­tum numbers of its parts, but also by fluctuation physics. These systems are often not accessible using standard perturbative calculations. In her work, Friederike develops the conceptional mathematical and numerical tools to perform non-perturbative calculations in quan­tum field theory. Her focus lies in particular on the functional renormalization group, which allows to quantify the behaviour of theories with changing scales.

Further information:

• DPG Initiative Physikerin der Woche
• German Physical Society (DPG)