Hayato Muto, a postdoctoral researcher funded by the Czech Science Foundation (GACR) project Quasiparticles in van der Waals magnets: Q-MAG at the Department of Condensed Matter Physics, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University, received a Poster Award at SCES 2026 for his contribution “Orbital Magnetism in van der Waals Antiferromagnet VBr3”. The study combines soft X-ray linear dichroism (XLD) with hard X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) measurements in magnetic fields up to 17 T. It reveals a nonzero, unquenched orbital moment on vanadium and strong magnetic polarization of the bromine sites, which also produces an XMCD signal at the Br K edge. The work, now prepared for publication, results from international collaboration between Charles University and its MGML infrastructure, the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in France, and the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Switzerland, with substantial theoretical contributions from the Department of Condensed Matter Physics. We thank Hayato’s co-authors—Ondřej Michal, Nikola Macháčová, Dávid Hovančík, Fabrice Wilhelm, Andrei Rogalev, Cinthia Piamonteze, Karel Carva, Vladimír Sechovský, and Jiří Pospíšil—for their contributions and gratefully acknowledge support from GACR under project No. 25-15448S. Congratulations to Hayato, and thank you for an excellent presentation of our joint research!
