Tiny charged electrons and protons which can damage satellites and alter the ozone have revealed some of their mysteries to University of Otago scientists.
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IMAGE: A Rice University-led study finds a unique form of tunable and ultrastrong spin-spin interactions in orthoferrites under a strong magnetic field. The discovery has implications for quantum simulation and sensing.. view more
Credit: Illustration by Motoaki Bamba/Kyoto University
HOUSTON - (May 25, 2021) - Sometimes things are a little out of whack, and it turns out to be exactly what you need.
That was the case when orthoferrite crystals turned up at a Rice University laboratory slightly misaligned. Those crystals inadvertently became the basis of a discovery that should resonate with researchers studying spintronics-based quantum technology.
Rice physicist Junichiro Kono, alumnus Takuma Makihara and their collaborators found an orthoferrite material, in this case yttrium iron oxide, placed in a high magnetic field showed uniquely tunable, ultrastrong interactions between magnons in the crystal.
Scientists at Empa and EPFL have identified a new type of defect as the most common source of disorder in on-surface synthesized graphene nanoribbons, a novel class of carbon-based materials that may prove extremely useful in next-generation electronic devices. The researchers identified the atomic structure of these so-called bite defects and investigated their effect on quantum electronic transport. These kinds of defective zigzag-edged nanoribbons may provide suitable platforms for certain applications in spintronics.
Researchers from University Jena, the University of California Berkeley and the Institut Polytechnique de Paris use intense laser light in the XUV spectrum to generate second harmonics on a laboratory scale. As the team writes in Science Advances, they were able to achieve this effect for the first time with a laser source on a laboratory scale and thus investigate the surface of a titanium sample down to the atomic level.
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IMAGE: Artistic imagery about the famous Bell experiments, with ballet dancers personifying experimental arrangements in space-time separated labs. The strings of ones and zeros allude to the violation of free choice. view more
Credit: Source: IFJ PAN / Iwona Michniewska
Do we have free choice or are our decisions predetermined? Is physical reality local, or does what we do here and now have an immediate influence on events elsewhere? The answers to these questions are sought by physicists in the Bell inequalities. It turns out that free choice and local realism can be skilfully measured and compared. The results obtained reveal surprising relationships of a fundamental and universal nature, going far beyond quantum mechanics itself.