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Nanophysics

Microscopic friction emulators

Nature volume 526, pages 332–333 (2015)Cite this article

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Cold ions sliding across periodic energy-potential patterns formed by lasers have been used to elucidate the physics of dry friction between crystals. Experiments with no more than six ions suffice to explore a vast domain of frictional forces.

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Figure 1: Ion chain trapped in a lattice.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Davide Mandelli and Erio Tosatti are at the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA), 34136 Trieste, Italy.,

    Davide Mandelli & Erio Tosatti

  2. E.T. is also at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, and the Democritos National Laboratory, Istituto Officina dei Materiali, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Trieste.,

    Erio Tosatti

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  1. Davide Mandelli
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  2. Erio Tosatti
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Correspondence to Davide Mandelli or Erio Tosatti.

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Mandelli, D., Tosatti, E. Microscopic friction emulators. Nature 526, 332–333 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/526332a

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