/ en-us Â鶹ÒùÔº internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Â鶹ÒùÔºics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. Ferroelectrics are a class of materials that exhibit so-called spontaneous electric polarization, which is the separation of electric charges that can be reversed when an external electric field is applied to them. The dipole moments (i.e., pairs of equal and opposite charges) in these materials can sometimes be arranged in complex configurations known as topological textures. /news/2025-05-ferroelectric-topology-nanomembranes-enables-field.html Nanophysics Fri, 09 May 2025 10:30:02 EDT news666004601 An international research team led by QuTech has realized a three-site Kitaev chain using semiconducting quantum dots coupled by superconducting segments in a hybrid InSb/Al nanowire. When comparing two-and three-site chains within the same device, they observed that extending the chain to three sites increased the stability of the zero-energy modes. This work demonstrates the scalability of quantum-dot-based Kitaev chains and their potential to host stable Majorana zero modes. The researchers published their results in Nature Nanotechnology. /news/2025-03-site-kitaev-chain-stability-majorana.html Nanophysics Mon, 31 Mar 2025 13:45:03 EDT news662647501 Â鶹ÒùÔºicists have observed a novel quantum effect termed "hybrid topology" in a crystalline material. This finding opens up a new range of possibilities for the development of efficient materials and technologies for next-generation quantum science and engineering. /news/2024-04-physicists-quantum-state-elemental-solid.html Condensed Matter Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Wed, 10 Apr 2024 11:36:06 EDT news631967762 Exploring cavity quantum electrodynamics (cQED) is pivotal for advancing quantum technology and unraveling the fundamental intricacies of light-matter interactions. A prevalent strategy involves integrating a single quantum emitter into photonic microcavities boasting high-quality (Q) factors or small mode volumes. The strength of the coupling in cQED is often assessed using the Purcell factor, a vital parameter. /news/2024-04-photon-emitter-deterministically-coupled-topological.html Optics & Photonics Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Tue, 02 Apr 2024 14:07:03 EDT news631285622 In a novel experiment, physicists have observed long range quantum coherence effects due to Aharonov-Bohm interference in a topological insulator-based device. This finding opens up a new realm of possibilities for the future development of topological quantum physics and engineering. /news/2024-02-scientists-exotic-quantum-effect-topological.html Condensed Matter Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Thu, 22 Feb 2024 08:44:06 EST news627813842 As we transition to a new era in computing, there is a need for new devices that integrate electronic and photonic functionalities at the nanoscale while enhancing the interaction between photons and electrons. In an important step toward fulfilling this need, researchers have developed a new III-V semiconductor nanocavity that confines light at levels below the so-called diffraction limit. /news/2024-01-wavelength-confinement-indium-phosphide-nanocavity.html Nanophysics Nanomaterials Wed, 24 Jan 2024 12:11:15 EST news625320671 Recently, Associate Professor Yong-Chun Liu of the Department of Â鶹ÒùÔºics and others have found the hybrid skin-topological effect induced by gain and loss and the parity-time phase transition between skin-topological modes. The research results were published in Â鶹ÒùÔºical Review Letters under the title of "Gain-loss-induced hybrid skin-topological effect." /news/2022-06-hybrid-skin-topological-effect-gain-loss.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Thu, 23 Jun 2022 12:31:19 EDT news575206275 Scientists on the hunt for an unconventional kind of superconductor have produced the most compelling evidence to date that they've found one. In a pair of papers, researchers at the University of Maryland's (UMD) Quantum Materials Center (QMC) and colleagues have shown that uranium ditelluride (or UTe2 for short) displays many of the hallmarks of a topological superconductor—a material that may unlock new ways to build quantum computers and other futuristic devices. /news/2021-07-unconventional-superconductor-quantum-platform.html Superconductivity Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Fri, 16 Jul 2021 03:30:13 EDT news545624993 In particle physics, a Majorana fermion is charge neutral and its antiparticle is just itself. In condensed matter physics, a Majorana zero mode (MZM) is a quasi-particle excitation that appears in the surfaces or edges of topological superconductors. Unlike the ordinary particles or quasi-particles that obey boson or fermion statistics, MZM obeys non-abelian statistics, a key property that makes MZM the building block for realizing topological quantum computation. /news/2021-07-higher-order-topological-superconductivity-monolayer-iron-based.html Superconductivity Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Wed, 14 Jul 2021 08:19:46 EDT news545469583 In 2013, François Englert and Peter Higgs won the Nobel Prize in Â鶹ÒùÔºics for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, which was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle by the A Toroidal LHC Apparatus (ATLAS) and the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiments at The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)'s Large Hadron Collider in 2012. The Higgs mode or the Anderson-Higgs mechanism (named after another Nobel Laureate Philip W Anderson), has widespread influence in our current understanding of the physical law for mass ranging from particle physics—the elusive "God particle" Higgs boson discovered in 2012 to the more familiar and important phenomena of superconductors and magnets in condensed matter physics and quantum material research. /news/2021-06-phd-student-higgs-mode-dimensional.html Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Mon, 21 Jun 2021 09:34:25 EDT news543486861 High-speed atomic force microscopy (HS-AFM) is an imaging technique that can be used for visualizing biological processes, for example the activity of proteins. Nowadays, typical HS-AFM frame rates are as high as 12 frames per second. In order to improve the capabilities of the method, so that it can be applied to an ever expanding range of biological samples, better video rates are needed, though. Moreover, faster recording times imply less interaction between the sample and the probe—a tip scanning the sample's surface—making the imaging procedure less invasive. Now, Shingo Fukuda and Toshio Ando from Nano Life Science Institute (WPI-NanoLSI), Kanazawa University have developed an alternative HS-AFM approach to increase the frame rate up to 30 frames per second. /news/2021-03-faster-less-invasive-atomic-microscopy-visualizing.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 29 Mar 2021 10:28:41 EDT news536232519 NUS physicists have discovered a theoretical behavior known as the "critical skin effect" influencing how changes between different phases of matter occur. /news/2020-12-lesson-phase-transitions-criticality.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Tue, 01 Dec 2020 09:52:59 EST news526038776 Conjugated polymers are organic macromolecules that are characterized by a backbone chain of alternating double and single bonds. Their overlapping p-orbitals create a cloud of delocalised Ï€-electrons, which can result in useful optical and electronic properties. The design of Ï€-conjugated polymers is highly desirable for technological applications such as tailor-made components for nanoelectronics. /news/2020-10-exploiting-molecular-vibrations-polymers.html Polymers Materials Science Mon, 05 Oct 2020 07:33:31 EDT news521102009 Light can partake in peculiar phenomena at the nanoscale. Exploring these phenomena can unlock sophisticated applications and provide useful insights into the interactions between light waves and other materials. /news/2020-08-interface-atomically-thin-nanomaterials.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 20 Aug 2020 14:45:12 EDT news517153504 Topological insulators have been an exciting field of research with fundamental interest as well as practical applications such as robust transport of electrons and light, and topological quantum computing. The hallmark of such conventional topological insulators is the presence of conducting boundary modes which have one dimension lower than the insulating bulk system that hosts them—for example a one-dimensional edge mode at the boundary of a two-dimensional system, or a two-dimensional surface state at the boundary of a three-dimensional system. In 2017, scientists generalized this concept to predict a new phase of matter called higher-order topological insulators (HOTIs), which support 'corner modes'—e.g. a zero-dimensional mode in a two-dimensional system. Since then, there have been several experimental demonstrations of this new HOTI phase, most of which involve complicated geometries. Moreover, these previous systems are fixed—i.e. one cannot dynamically switch or tune their higher-order topological behavior once they are fabricated. /news/2020-07-synthetic-dimensions-enable-higher-order-topological.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 21 Jul 2020 13:41:24 EDT news514557678 In physics, they are currently the subject of intensive research; in electronics, they could enable completely new functions. So-called topological materials are characterized by special electronic properties, which are also very robust against external perturbations. This material group also includes tungsten ditelluride. In this material, such a topologically protected state can be "broken up" using special laser pulses within a few trillionths of a second ("picoseconds") and thus change its properties. This could be a key requirement for realizing extremely fast, optoelectronic switches. /news/2020-07-robust-materials.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Tue, 07 Jul 2020 10:32:30 EDT news513336744 The applications of topological photonics have been intensively investigated, including one-way waveguide and topological lasers. The topological lasers especially have attracted broad attention in recent years, which have been proposed and demonstrated in various systems, including 1-D edge states in 2-D systems, 0-D boundary states in 1-D lattice, and topological bulk state around band edges. Most of them are at microscale. The topological nanolaser with a small footprint, low threshold and high energy-efficiency has yet to be explored. Recently, a new type of higher-order topological insulators which have lower dimensional boundary states has been proposed and demonstrated in many systems, including 2-D photonic crystal. In the second-order 2-D topological photonic crystal slab, there exist the gapped 1-D edge states and mid-gap 0-D corner state. This localized corner state provides a new platform to realize topological nanolasers. /news/2020-07-low-threshold-topological-nanolasers-based-second-order.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 06 Jul 2020 12:40:10 EDT news513258008 Topological insulators (TIs) have an insulating interior and support conducting surface states with additional interfacing properties. The exotic metallic states on their surfaces can provide new routes to generate new phases and particles with potential applications in quantum computing and spintronics. Researchers have developed a theoretical framework to help identify and characterize such exotic states using new topological markers such as fractional charge density to detect topological states of matter. The resulting agreement between experimental work and theory has encouraged applications across topological platforms. In this work, Christopher W. Peterson and a team of scientists in electrical and computer engineering, physics, and mechanical science at the University of Illinois and the Pennsylvania State University in the U.S. discuss this new topological indicator introduced to identify higher-order topology and demonstrate the associated higher-order bulk-boundary correspondence. The work is now published on Science. /news/2020-06-fractional-corner-anomaly-reveals-higher-order.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Tue, 16 Jun 2020 09:30:02 EDT news511424541 Scientists at Ames Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and the University of Alabama Birmingham have discovered a light-induced switching mechanism in a Dirac semimetal. The mechanism establishes a new way to control the topological material, driven by back-and-forth motion of atoms and electrons, which will enable topological transistor and quantum computation using light waves. /news/2020-04-discovery-gap-optically-controlled-quantum.html Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Mon, 20 Apr 2020 13:06:47 EDT news506606798 The all-optical switch is a kind of device that controls light with light, which is the fundamental building block of modern optical communications and information processing. Creating an efficient, ultrafast, and compact all-optical switch has been recognized as the key step for the developments of next-generation optical and quantum computing. In principle, photons don't interact with one another directly in the low power linear regime, and a cavity is usually needed to resonantly enhance the field of control light and increase the interaction. In early work, the performance of all-optical switches has been improved rapidly by optimizing resonators such as microrings or photonic crystals. For further improvements, the research area reaches the limit—the trade-off between ultralow energy consumption and ultrashort switching time. /news/2020-02-mechanism-ultrafast-microlasers.html Optics & Photonics Fri, 28 Feb 2020 13:17:20 EST news502118225 A team of scientists working at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has confirmed a special property known as "chirality—which potentially could be exploited to transmit and store data in a new way—in nanometers-thick samples of multilayer materials that have a disordered structure. /news/2018-06-scientists-magnetic-patterns-disordered-material.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Fri, 08 Jun 2018 12:09:50 EDT news447678578 In the original Maxwell's demon thought experiment, a demon makes continuous measurements on a system of hot and cold reservoirs, building up a thermal gradient that can later be used to perform work. As the demon's measurements do not consume energy, it appears that the demon violates the second law of thermodynamics, although this paradox can be resolved by considering that the demon uses information to perform its sorting tasks. /news/2018-03-maxwell-demon-quantum-zeno-regime.html Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Wed, 07 Mar 2018 09:30:01 EST news439617502 ETH physicists have developed a silicon wafer that behaves like a topological insulator when stimulated using ultrasound. They have thereby succeeded in turning an abstract theoretical concept into a macroscopic product. /news/2018-01-quantum-physics-tangible-reality.html Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Tue, 16 Jan 2018 06:56:21 EST news435308166 (Â鶹ÒùÔº)—Brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) are basically gimmicks. The reason you don't hear so much about them these days is because, in the fullness of time, significant tangible benefit to a user has flat out failed to materialize. Simply stated, neither prickly microelectrode arrays, harrowing optogenetic reworks to our physiology, nor tattooing our brains with toxic fluorescents WILL ever give us what we need. On the other hand, if you can watch native spikes bubble unmolested through axon tracts from afar, sans any of the aforementioned hazards, you might be onto something. /news/2017-08-pure-optical-spikes-ultimate-brain.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 15 Aug 2017 09:20:02 EDT news421991909 (Â鶹ÒùÔº)—Two independent teams working on research aimed at improving optical sensing have used techniques that involve coupling two or more modes of light such that their modes and their corresponding frequencies coalesce, resulting in more sensitivity. In the first effort, a team from Washington University in St. Lois and Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, in Germany, connected three traditional sensors for more precise tuning. In the second effort, a team from the University of Central Florida and Michigan Technological University used just one resonator but coupled light traveling in both directions around it. Both teams have published papers describing their efforts and results in the journal Nature. Mikael Rechtsman with the Pennsylvania State University offers a News & Views piece outlining optical sensing techniques and the work done by the two teams in the same journal issue. /news/2017-08-ways-optical-resonator-techniques.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 10 Aug 2017 09:11:18 EDT news421575063 Photonic crystal fibres (PCF) are strands of glass, not much thicker than a human hair, with a lattice of hollow channels running along the fibre. If they are continuously twisted in their production, they resemble a multi-helix. Twisted PCFs show some amazing features, from circular birefringence to conservation of the angular momentum. The biggest surprise, however, is the robust light guidance itself, with no visible fibre core. The basis for this are forces which, like gravitation, are based on the curvature of space. /news/2017-07-helically-photonic-crystal-fibres.html Optics & Photonics Fri, 07 Jul 2017 08:06:42 EDT news418633582 Using an atomic quantum simulator, scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have achieved the first-ever direct observation of chiral currents in the model topological insulator, the 2-D integer quantum Hall system. /news/2017-04-first-ever-chiral-currents-quantum-hall.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Mon, 24 Apr 2017 12:22:22 EDT news412255330 Quantum technology has the potential to revolutionize computation, cryptography, and simulation of quantum systems. However, quantum physics places a new demand on information processing hardware: quantum states are fragile, and so must be controlled without being measured. Researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute have now demonstrated a key property of Majorana zero modes that protects them from decoherence. The result lends positive support to the existence of Majorana modes, and goes further by showing that they are protected, as predicted theoretically. The results have been published in the prestigious scientific magazine, Nature. /news/2016-03-majorana-states-quantum.html Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Wed, 09 Mar 2016 13:00:08 EST news376734675 Researchers at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and Universiti Malaysia Perlis are the first to have developed a fully textile waveguide antenna using a metamaterial inspired unit cell that is also used in composite right/left-handed transmission lines. The antenna is compact, robust and can be used for 2.45 and 5.4 GHz dual-band WLAN applications. /news/2014-03-fully-textile-waveguide-antenna-metamaterial-inspired.html Engineering Mon, 17 Mar 2014 07:50:02 EDT news314259438