Toward a more energy-efficient spintronics

EurekAlert  April 22, 2020 In order to generate and detect spin currents, spintronics traditionally uses ferromagnetic materials whose magnetization switching consume high amounts of energy. Researchers in France have demonstrated an alternative strategy to achieve low-power spin detection in a non-magnetic system by harnessing the electric-field-induced ferroelectric-like state of strontium titanate to manipulate the spin–orbit properties of a two-dimensional electron gas and efficiently convert spin currents into positive or negative charge currents, depending on the polarization direction. The research opens the way to the electric-field control of spin currents and to ultralow-power spintronics…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE 

Unprecedented 3D images of live cells plus details of molecules inside

Nanowerk  April 20, 2020 Label-free contrasts of Quantitative phase imaging (QPI) and molecular vibrational imaging (MVI) are inherently complementary and difficult to integrate due to their reliance on different light–matter interactions. Researchers in Japan present a unified imaging scheme with simultaneous and in situ acquisition of quantitative phase and molecular vibrational contrasts of single cells in the QPI framework using the mid-infrared photothermal effect. The research may enable new analyses, especially for studying complex and fragile biological phenomena such as drug delivery, cellular disease, and stem cell development…read more. Open Access TECHNICA L ARTICLE Concept of MV-QPI. (a) Principle of […]

Wiring the quantum computer of the future: A novel simple build with existing technology

Phys.org  April 23, 2020 A major hurdle for the scalability in quantum error-correction architecture using superconducting systems is the wiring problem, where qubits internal to a chipset become difficult to access by the external control/readout lines. An international team of researchers (Japan, Australia) carried out experiments to examine the feasibility of the new airbridge component whose measured quality factor of the airbridged resonator is below the simulated surface-code threshold required for a coupling resonator and not limit simulated gate fidelity. The measured crosstalk between crossed resonators is at most −49 dB in resonance. The spatial and frequency separation between the […]

Top 10 Science and Technology Inventions for the Week of April 17, 2020

01. A perovskite-based diode capable of both light emission and detection 02. Novel tin ‘bubbles’ spur advances in the development of integrated chips 03. Quickly-grown graphite film blocks electromagnetic radiation 04. Simple method for ceramic-based flexible electrolyte sheets for lithium metal batteries 05. Trapped ytterbium ions could form backbone of a quantum internet, say researchers 06. New textile could keep you cool in the heat, warm in the cold 07. Breaking the size and speed limit of modulators: The workhorses of the internet 08. Light from stretchable sheets of atoms for quantum technologies 09. New electronic cooling technology to enable […]

Breaking the size and speed limit of modulators: The workhorses of the internet

Science Daily  April 13, 2020 Reducing the size of electro-optical modulators allows increased packaging density, which is vital on a chip. By heterogeneously adding a thin material layer of indium tin oxide to the silicon photonic waveguide chip, a team of researchers in the US (George Washington University, UT Austin) has demonstrated an optical index change 1,000 times larger than silicon. Unlike many designs based on resonators this spectrally-broadband device is stable against temperature changes and allows a single fiber-optic cable to carry multiple wavelengths of light, increasing the amount of data that can move through a system…read more. TECHNICAL […]

Carbon nanostructure created that is stronger than diamonds

Science Daily  April 13, 2020 An international team of researchers (USA – UC Irvine, UC Santa Barbara, industry, Germany) has succeeded in conceptualizing and fabricating the material which consists of closely connected closed-cell plates instead of the cylindrical trusses common in such structures over the past few decades. They have shown that the design improves the average performance of cylindrical beam-based architectures by up to 639 percent in strength and 522 percent in rigidity. One of the group’s innovations was to include tiny holes in the plates that could be used to remove excess resin from the finished material…read more. […]

How lasers can help with nuclear nonproliferation monitoring

Phys.org  April 13, 2020 To study hydrodynamics and evolution of uranium (U) atomic and uranium oxide (UO) molecular emission in filament-produced U plasmas researchers in the US (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, industry, University of Arizona) performed two-dimensional plume and spectral imaging. The results highlight that filament ablation of U plasmas gives a cylindrical plume morphology with an appearance of plume splitting into slow- and fast-moving components at later times of its evolution. Emission from the slow-moving component shows no distinct spectral features (i.e. broadband-like) and is contributed in part by nanoparticles generated during ultrafast laser ablation. They found U atoms […]

Light from stretchable sheets of atoms for quantum technologies

EurekAlert  April 16, 2020 Unlike other nanomaterials used as quantum light sources, such as diamond, silicon carbide or gallium nitride hexagonal boron nitride is not brittle and comes with the unique stretchable mechanical properties of a van der Waals crystal. However, their spectral inhomogeneity currently limits their potential applications. Researchers in Australia applied tensile strain to quantum emitters embedded in few‐layer hBN films. They observed both red and blue spectral shifts with tuning magnitudes up to 65 meV. Rotation of the optical dipole in response to strain suggested the presence of a second excited state. They developed a theoretical model […]

New electronic cooling technology to enable miniaturization of quantum computers

Phys.org  April 14, 2020 The optimal operation of electrothermal elements relies on mastering two competing boundary conditions: the maximization of the electrothermal response and the blockade of lattice (phonon) thermal conduction. Researchers in Finland proposed and demonstrated that efficient electrothermal operation and phonon blocking can be achieved in solid-state thermionic junctions, paving the way for new phonon-engineered high-efficiency refrigerators and sensors. For demonstration they used semiconductor-superconductor (Sm-S) junctions where the electrothermal response arises from the superconducting energy gap and the phonon blocking results from the acoustic transmission bottleneck at the junction. They demonstrated a cooling platform where a silicon chip […]

New protocol identifies fascinating quantum states

Phys.org  April 10, 2020 An international team of researchers (Austria, USA – NIST, University of Maryland, Germany, France) proposed and analyzed a universal toolbox of measurement protocols to reveal many-body topological invariants of phases with global symmetries, which can be implemented in state-of-the-art experiments with synthetic quantum systems, such as Rydberg atoms, trapped ions, and superconducting circuits. The protocol is based on extracting the many-body topological invariants from statistical correlations of randomized measurements, implemented with local random unitary operations followed by site-resolved projective measurements. They illustrated the technique and its application in the context of the complete classification of bosonic […]