Phys.org December 21, 2020 Materials hosting magnetic skyrmions at room temperature could enable compact and energetically efficient storage such as racetrack memories. However, avoiding modifications of the inter-skyrmion distances remains challenging. An international team of researchers (Switzerland, Greece, Austria, Italy) has demonstrated that a hybrid ferro/ferri/ferromagnetic multilayer system can host two distinct skyrmion phases at room temperature, namely tubular and partial skyrmions. Furthermore, the tubular skyrmion can be converted into a partial skyrmion. Such systems may serve as a platform for designing memory applications using distinct skyrmion types…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Author Archives: Hema Viswanath
When light and atoms share a common vibe
Phy.org December 18, 2020 An international team of researchers (Switzerland, USA- MIT) entangled the photon and the phonon produced in the fission of an incoming laser photon inside the crystal by designing an experiment in which the photon-phonon pair could be created at two different instants. Classically, it would result in a situation where the pair is created at time t1 with 50% probability, or later t2 with 50% probability. They measured the decay of these hybrid photon-phonon Bell correlations with sub-picosecond time resolution and found that they survive over several hundred oscillations at ambient conditions. Their method offers a […]
Top 10 Science and Technology Inventions for the Week of December 18, 2020
01. Physics breakthrough of the year 02. Physics discovery leads to ballistic optical materials 03. Quantum insulators create multilane highways for electrons 04. Researchers create entangled photons 100 times more efficiently than previously possible 05. Toward imperceptible electronics that you cannot see or feel 06. Ultra-thin designer materials unlock quantum phenomena 07. UMBC team reveals possibilities of new one-atom-thick materials 08. Bacterial nanopores open the future of data storage 09. High-brightness source of coherent light spanning from the UV to THz 10. World’s First Successful Transmission of 1 Petabit per Second Using a Single-core Multimode Optical Fiber And others… Acoustic […]
Acoustic plasmons found in hole-doped cuprate superconductors
Phys.org December 14, 2020 An international team of researchers (France, USA – University of Illinois, Stanford University, Binghamton University, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, University of Maryland, Italy, UK, Argentina, Japan) has confirmed the presence of acoustic plasmons in p-type cuprate superconductors and that they are primarily associated with the oxygen atoms. It seems that the collective charge excitations have strong preference in space, despite the fact that the charges associated with Cu and O atoms are strongly hybridized with each other. Understanding this may help us to clarify the ground state of the cuprate superconductors. This opens new opportunities to […]
Bacterial nanopores open the future of data storage
Nanowerk December 14, 2020 The recent development of polymers that can store information at the molecular level has opened new opportunities for ultrahigh density data storage, long-term archival, anticounterfeiting systems, and molecular cryptography. However, synthetic informational polymers are so far only deciphered by tandem mass spectrometry. In comparison, nanopore technology can be faster, cheaper, nondestructive and provide detection at the single-molecule level; moreover, it can be massively parallelized and miniaturized in portable devices. An international team of researchers (Switzerland, France, Brazil) has demonstrated the ability of engineered aerolysin nanopores to accurately read, with single-bit resolution, the digital information encoded in […]
Change in global precipitation patterns as a result of climate change
Science Daily December 17, 2020 An international team of researchers (Germany, Ireland, Brazil, Mexico) demonstrated that regional hydroclimates controlled by the Northern Hemisphere mid-latitude storm tracks and the African and South American Monsoons changed synchronously during the last 10,000 years. They argue that these regional hydroclimate variations are connected and reflect the adjustment of the atmospheric poleward energy transport to the evolving differential heating of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. These results indicate that changes in latitudinal insolation gradients and associated variations in latitudinal temperature gradients exert important control on atmospheric circulation and regional hydroclimates. Since the current episode of […]
High-brightness source of coherent light spanning from the UV to THz
Phys.org December 14, 2020 Hyperspectral spectroscopy and imaging techniques have proven to be very useful in applications related to food inspection, biochemical sensing or even in cultural heritage, to investigate the structure of the materials used for ancient objects, paintings, or sculptures. A standing challenge has been the absence of compact sources that cover such large spectral range with sufficient brightness. An international team of researchers (Spain, Germany, Russia) has developed a compact high-brightness mid-IR-driven source combining a gas-filled anti-resonant-ring photonic crystal fiber with a novel nonlinear-crystal. The tabletop source provides a seven-octave coherent spectrum from 340 nm to 40,000 […]
High-tech fixes for the food system could have unintended consequences
EurekAlert December 11, 2020 Food system innovations will be instrumental to achieving multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). According to an international team of researchers (Australis, Kenya, Germany, Denmark, UK, USA – Johns Hopkins, Stanford University, Cornell University, Colombia, Switzerland, France, Austria, the Netherlands, University of Minnesota) major innovation breakthroughs can trigger profound and disruptive changes, leading to simultaneous and interlinked reconfigurations of multiple parts of the global food system. The emergence of new technologies or social solutions, therefore, have very different impact profiles, with favorable consequences for some SDGs and unintended adverse side-effects for others. Stand-alone innovations seldom achieve positive […]
An LED that can be integrated directly into computer chips
MIT News December 14, 2020 LEDs can be used as proximity sensors in smartphones, distance measurement in autofocus cameras, and gesture recognizers. As they are difficult to make from silicon, the LED sensors must be manufactured separately from their device’s silicon-based processing chip making them prohibitively expensive. Researchers at MIT have designed a silicon-based LED with specially engineered junctions to enhance brightness. The LED operates at low voltage, but it still produces enough light to transmit a signal through 5 meters of fiber optic cable. They envision a day when LED technology can be built right onto a device’s silicon […]
Physics breakthrough of the year
EurekAlert December 17, 2020 Silicon crystallized in the usual cubic (diamond) lattice structure has dominated the electronics industry for more than half a century. However, cubic silicon, germanium and SiGe alloys are all indirect-bandgap semiconductors that cannot emit light efficiently. An international team of researchers (Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria) has demonstrated efficient light emission from direct-bandgap hexagonal Ge and SiGe alloys. They measured a sub-nanosecond, temperature-insensitive radiative recombination lifetime and observed an emission yield similar to that of direct-bandgap group-III–V semiconductors. They demonstrated that, by controlling the composition of the hexagonal SiGe alloy, the emission wavelength can be continuously […]