Phys.org December 29, 2022 The conditions for the emergence of a leading regional scientific environment are poorly understood. The existence of a critical mass of scientists is often assumed. An international team of researchers (Austria, the Netherlands, South Africa, USA – Santa Fe Institute) used a unique dataset of global scientific activity and researcher mobility over several decades to show empirical evidence in three scientific areas (semiconductor research, embryonic stem cells, and Internet research) that the process of scientific knowledge accumulation was remarkably general and applied to practically all regions. Scale-free growth patterns suggested that regions that move early into […]
Study explores topological beaming of light
Phys.org December 30, 2022 Nanophotonic light emitters are key components in numerous application areas because of their compactness and versatility. An international team of researchers (South Korea, UK, USA – Pennsylvania State University, University of Pittsburg, Singapore) has proposed a topological beam emitter structure that takes advantage of submicrometer footprint size, small divergence angle, high efficiency, and adaptable beam shaping capability. The proposed structure consists of a topological junction of two guided-mode resonance gratings inducing a leaky Jackiw-Rebbi state resonance which leads to in-plane optical confinement with funnel-like energy flow and enhanced emission probability, resulting in highly efficient optical beam […]
Top 10 Science and Technology Inventions for the Week of December 30, 2022
01. Researchers show a new way to induce useful defects using invisible material properties 02. Deep learning can predict tsunami impacts in less than a second 03. The discovery of interfacial ferromagnetism in 2D antiferromagnet heterostructures 04. Electrons on the run: On chirality, tunneling and light fields 05. Meta-optics: The disruptive technology you didn’t see coming 06. Nanostructure strengthens, de-ices, and monitors aircraft wings, wind turbine blades, and bridges 07. New technique reveals changing shapes of magnetic noise in space and time 08. Photonic chip with record-breaking radio frequency dynamic range 09. At the edge of graphene-based electronics 10. Software […]
The Nature Podcast’s highlights of 2022
Nature December 28, 2022 The 50 minutes long podcast covers the following episodes: How virtual meetings can limit creative ideas; How the Black Death got its start; Research Highlights; Higgs boson turns ten; The open-science plan to unseat big Pharma and tackle vaccine inequity; Missing foot reveals world’s oldest amputation…read more.
At the edge of graphene-based electronics
Nanowerk December 22, 2022 An international team of researchers (USA – Georgia Institute of Technology, National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, France) has demonstrated that the annealed edges in conventionally patterned graphene epitaxially grown on a silicon carbide substrate (epigraphene) are stabilized by the substrate and support a protected edge state. The edge state has a mean free path that is greater than 50 microns, 5000 times greater than the bulk states and involves a theoretically unexpected Majorana-like zero-energy non-degenerate quasiparticle that does not produce a Hall voltage. In seamless integrated structures, the edge state formed a zero-energy one-dimensional ballistic network […]
Deep learning can predict tsunami impacts in less than a second
Phys.org December 27, 2022 An international team of researchers (Japan, New Zealand) leveraged the world’s largest and densest tsunami observing system to develop a method for a real-time tsunami inundation prediction based on machine learning. Their method utilizes 150 offshore stations encompassing the Japan Trench to simultaneously predict tsunami inundation at seven coastal cities stretching ~100 km along the southern Sanriku coast. They trained the model using 3093 hypothetical tsunami scenarios from the megathrust (Mw 8.0–9.1) and nearby outer-rise (Mw 7.0–8.7) earthquakes. Then, the model was tested against 480 unseen scenarios and three near-field historical tsunami events. The proposed model can […]
The discovery of interfacial ferromagnetism in 2D antiferromagnet heterostructures
Nanowerk December 27, 2022 Combining two different magnetic orders and investigating the magnetic proximity at the interface remains largely unexplored. An international team of researchers (Japan, USA – Purdue University, research org, Pennsylvania State University, Denmark, China) studied the heterostructures of layered antiferromagnets, CrI3 and CrCl3 to characterize the magnetic behaviors down to a few atomic layers. They observed an emergent interfacial ferromagnetism when bringing these two antiferromagnets together, with an even higher critical temperature than both the constituent materials. They demonstrated that an out-of-plane magnetic order was established in the CrCl3 layer proximal to CrI3. The interfacial magnetism showed […]
Electrons on the run: On chirality, tunneling and light fields
Phys.org December 23, 2022 Tunnel ionization is of paramount importance in strong-field physics and attoscience. However, the tunneling dynamics and properties of the outgoing electronic wave packets often remain hidden beneath the influence of the subsequent scattering of the released electron onto the ionic potential. An international team of researchers (France, Israel) has characterized the influence of sub-barrier dynamics on the amplitude and phase of the wave packets emerging from the tunnel using chiral molecules, whose photoionization by circularly polarized light produces forward-backward asymmetric electron distributions with respect to the light propagation direction. The asymmetric patterns provided a background-free signature […]
Energy crisis: The five challenges for 2023
Phys.org December 22, 2022 Nature commissioned an international team of researchers (Italy, Germany) to outline some possible energy scenarios for 2023. How will the map of global energy change? Will sky-high energy prices boost renewables? How will the industrial landscape shift? What will the lasting economic impacts be? How will the energy crisis affect climate action? are the five crucial questions that researchers around the world will be asked to focus on in 2023. It will be up to them to find adequate answers to support government action in the coming months to deal with the emergency…read more.
Meta-optics: The disruptive technology you didn’t see coming
Phys.org December 22, 2022 Optical metasurfaces interact strongly with light. The field has been driven by the key advantages of this concept, including the ultimate miniaturization of optical elements, empowering novel functionalities that process hidden modalities of light, and the opportunity to tune their properties on demand. Many applications with a focus on smart vision have emerged, foreseeing a meta-optical device under the hood of any robotic system. Nowadays the field is experiencing a solid industry pull that defines the challenges and research directions. In this review researchers in Australia have provided an overview of the applications of the field […]