Experiments suggest evidence for novel patterns of electronic charge distribution in a kagome material whose handedness can be manipulated with a magnetic field. An international team led by researchers at Princeton University has uncovered a new pattern of ordering of electric charge in a novel superconducting material. The researchers discovered the new type of ordering in a material containing atoms arranged in a peculiar structure known as a kagome lattice. While researchers already understand how the electron’s spin can produce…
University of Rochester researchers describe first highly chirped pulses created by a using a spectral filter in a Kerr resonator. The 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics was shared by researchers who pioneered a technique to create ultrashort, yet extremely high-energy laser pulses at the University of Rochester. Now researchers at the University’s Institute of Optics have produced those same high-powered pulses–known as chirped pulses–in a way that works even with relatively low-quality, inexpensive equipment. The new work could pave the…
Light-driven molecular motors have been around for over twenty years. These motors typically take microseconds to nanoseconds for one revolution. Thomas Jansen, associate professor of physics at the University of Groningen, and Master’s student Atreya Majumdar have now designed an even faster molecular motor. The new design is driven by light only and can make a full turn in picoseconds, using the power of a single photon. Jansen: ‘We have developed a new out-of-the-box design for a motor molecule that…
Research team led by the University of Göttingen investigates surface magnetisation. The surface of a material often has properties that are very different from the properties within the material. For example, a non-conducting crystal, which actually exhibits no magnetism, can show magnetisation restricted to its surface because of the way the atoms are arranged there. These distinct properties at interfaces and surfaces of materials often play a key role in the development of new functional components such as optoelectronic chips…
Researchers identify exotic metals in unexpected quantum systems. Electrons are ubiquitous among atoms, subatomic tokens of energy that can independently change how a system behaves–but they also can change each other. An international research collaboration found that collectively measuring electrons revealed unique and unanticipated findings. The researchers published their results on May 17 in Physical Review Letters. “It is not feasible to obtain the solution just by tracing the behavior of each individual electron,” said paper author Myung Joon Han,…
Material could be used in future quantum computing applications. An international team of physicists led by the University of Minnesota has discovered that a unique superconducting metal is more resilient when used as a very thin layer. The research is the first step toward a larger goal of understanding unconventional superconducting states in materials, which could possibly be used in quantum computing in the future. The collaboration includes four faculty members in the University of Minnesota’s School of Physics and…
The long relationships between stars and the planets around them – including the Sun and the Earth – may be even more complex than previously thought. This is one conclusion of a new study involving thousands of stars using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. By conducting the largest survey ever of star-forming regions in X-rays, a team of researchers has helped outline the link between very powerful flares, or outbursts, from youthful stars, and the impact they could have on planets…
Photoemission is a property of metals and other materials that emit electrons when struck by light. Electron emission after light absorption was already explained by Albert Einstein. But since this effect is a highly complex process, scientists have still not been able to fully elucidate its details. Prof. Dr. Bernd von Issendorff and his team at the University of Freiburg’s Institute of Physics have now succeeded in detecting a previously unknown quantum effect in the angular distributions of photoelectrons from…
At a classical second-order phase transition, condensed matter systems acquire long-range order upon cooling below the transition temperature, and the properties near the transition are driven by thermal fluctuations. These behaviors have been long explained by the Landau theory of phase transitions, which leads to the notion of universality, whereby systems with very different microscopic constituents exhibit certain universal macroscopic behaviors close to a phase transition. Some condensed matter systems however can be tuned so that the phase transition is…
The cosmic mass monsters clear the way for the formation of new suns in satellite galaxies. Research combining systematic observations with cosmological simulations has found that, surprisingly, black holes can help certain galaxies form new stars. On scales of galaxies, the role of supermassive black holes for star formation had previously been seen as destructive – active black holes can strip galaxies of the gas that galaxies need to form new stars. The new results, published in the journal Nature,…
New physics revealed by UC Riverside-led research could improve understanding of moiré superlattices. When two similar atomic layers with mismatching lattice constants — the constant distance between a layer’s unit cells — and/or orientation are stacked together, the resulting bilayer can exhibit a moiré pattern and form a moiré superlattice. Moiré patterns are interference patterns that typically arise when one object with a repetitive pattern is placed over another with a similar pattern. Moiré superlattices, formed by atomic layers, can…
Physicists at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics (MPQ) and Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich (LMU) have used ultrashort laser pulses to probe the dynamics of photoelectron emission in tungsten crystals. When light impinges on matter, the electrons in the sample respond to the input of energy, and the interaction gives rise to what is known as the photoelectric effect. Light quanta (photons) are absorbed by the material and excite the bound electrons. Depending on the wavelength of the light…
Flexible control of the propagating direction of near-field light can be realized with hyperbolic metamaterials, using an all-electric metasource. Near-field light is invisible light at the subwavelength scale. Harnessed for a variety of practical applications, such as wireless power transfer, near-field light has an increasingly significant role in the development of miniature on-chip photonic devices. Controlling the direction of near-field light propagation has been an ongoing challenge that is of fundamental interest in photonics physics and can significantly advance a…
By mapping the motion of galaxies in huge filaments that connect the cosmic web, astronomers at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP), in collaboration with scientists in China and Estonia, have found that these long tendrils of galaxies spin on the scale of hundreds of millions of light years. A rotation on such enormous scales has never been seen before. The results published in Nature Astronomy signify that angular momentum can be generated on unprecedented scales. Cosmic filaments are…
Major advances in plasma modelling and simulation / Prediction instead of interpretation. A recent publication from Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) on the theoretical prediction of a novel transport barrier in a fusion plasma and its subsequent experimental confirmation (Physical Review Letters) exemplifies how dramatically the power of plasma simulations and modelling has grown in recent years. A Europe-wide project on plasma theory and simulation is to enhance this development. The aim is to create virtual plasma models…
Study could help engineers build more efficient magnetic materials for computers. A study led by University of Minnesota Twin Cities researchers uncovered a property of magnetic materials that will allow engineers to develop more efficient spintronic devices in the future. Spintronics focuses on using the magnetic “spin” property of electrons instead of their charge, which improves the speed and efficiency of devices used for computing and data storage. The research is published in Physical Review B, a peer-reviewed scientific journal…
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