Gonçalo Catarina obtained his PhD in Physics from the University of Minho, Portugal in February 2023. His work was carried out at the Theory of Quantum Nanostructures Group, International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory, Portugal and the Departamento de Física Aplicada, Universidad de Alicante, Spain, under the supervision of Prof. Joaquín Fernández-Rossier and Prof. Nuno Peres. During his PhD, Gonçalo focused on low-dimensional materials where electronic correlations play a critical role, modelling electronic and optical properties and connecting with state-of-the-art experiments.

Gonçalo joined the Atomistic Simulations group of the nanotech@surfaces Laboratory at Empa in April 2023 and is currently studying mechanisms to control exchange couplings in carbon-based magnetic nanostructures.

Carbon-based magnetism, engineering properties at the atomic scale, density-matrix renormalization group

S. Mishra, G. Catarina, F. Wu, R. Ortiz, D. Jacob, K. Eimre, J. Ma, C. A. Pignedoli, X. Feng, P. Ruffieux,  J. Fernández-Rossier, R. Fasel, Observation of fractional edge excitations in nanographene spin chains. Nature 598 (7880), 287-292 (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03842-3

G. Catarina, J. Fernández-Rossier, Hubbard model for spin-1 Haldane chains. Phys. Rev. B, 105 (8) L081116, (2022). DOI:10.1103/PhysRevB.105.L081116

G. Catarina, N. M.Peres, J. Fernández-Rossier, Magneto-optical Kerr effect in spin split two-dimensional massive Dirac materials. 2D Materials, 7(2), 025011 (2020). DOI: 10.1088/2053-1583/ab6781

R. Ortiz, G. Catarina, J. Fernández-Rossier, Theory of triangulene two-dimensional crystals. 2D Materials, 10 (1), 015015 (2022). DOI:10.1088/2053-1583/aca4e2