Electronics, photonics and device physics articles within Nature Physics

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  • News & Views |

    Radiation pressure noise from squeezed light constrains the precision of sensing devices such as improved gravitational wave interferometers.

    • James S. Bennett
    •  & Warwick P. Bowen

  • News & Views |

    Coherent population trapping in 'dark states', a well-known and much-used phenomenon in atomic physics, can also be observed in a superconducting qubit and a single nuclear spin in diamond.

    • Yuimaru Kubo

  • Letter |

    When laser light is focused onto graphene devices in a magnetic field a long-range photo-Nernst effect causes photocurrents to be generated along the free edges.

    • Helin Cao
    • , Grant Aivazian
    •  & Xiaodong Xu

  • News & Views |

    Cooling the motion of mechanical resonators to the ground state and subsequent advances in cavity optomechanics have been made possible by resolved-sideband cooling — an atomic-physics-inspired technique — first demonstrated in a 2008 Nature Physics paper.

    • Ania Bleszynski Jayich

  • News & Views |

    A niobium titanite nitride-based superconducting nanodevice — a Cooper-pair transistor — has a remarkably long parity lifetime, exceeding one minute close to absolute zero.

    • Francesco Giazotto

  • Letter |

    One minute parity lifetimes are reported in a superconducting transistor made of niobium titanite nitride coupled to aluminium contacts even in the presence of small magnetic fields, enabling the braiding of Majorana bound states.

    • David J. van Woerkom
    • , Attila Geresdi
    •  & Leo P. Kouwenhoven

  • Article |

    The relaxation processes of light-emitting excited ions are tunable, but electrical control is challenging. It is now shown that graphene can be used to manipulate the optical emission and relaxation of erbium near-infrared emitters electrically.

    • K. J. Tielrooij
    • , L. Orona
    •  & F. H. L. Koppens

  • News & Views |

    Graphene is a candidate spintronics material, but its weak intrinsic spin–orbit coupling is problematic. Intercalating graphene on an iridium substrate with islands of lead is now shown to induce a strong, spatially varying spin–orbit coupling.

    • Marko Kralj

  • News & Views |

    Non-reciprocal components are useful in microwave engineering and photonics, but they are not without their drawbacks. A compact design now provides non-reciprocity without resorting to magnets or nonlinearity.

    • Ari Sihvola

  • Review Article |

    Exciton–polaritons, resulting from the light–matter coupling between an exciton and a photon in a cavity, form Bose–Einstein-like condensates above a critical density. Various aspects of the physics of exciton–polariton condensates are now reviewed.

    • Tim Byrnes
    • , Na Young Kim
    •  & Yoshihisa Yamamoto

  • News & Views |

    A microcavity device operating in the strong light–matter interaction regime can produce coherent perfect absorption of photons — providing a viable system for the perfect feeding of polaritons.

    • Cristiano Ciuti

  • News & Views |

    The electronic coupling between two stacked atomic layers is usually weak if their periodicities are incommensurate. Optical absorption experiments have now revealed unexpectedly strong interlayer coupling in incommensurate double-walled carbon nanotubes.

    • João Lopes dos Santos

  • Letter |

    Two concentric carbon nanotubes don’t need to have a common finite unit cell. Absorption spectra of such incommensurate double-walled carbon nanotubes reveal strong hybridization of the electron wavefunctions — unusual for van der Waals-coupled structures. The observations can be rationalized by zone folding the electronic structure of twisted-and-stretched graphene bilayers.

    • Kaihui Liu
    • , Chenhao Jin
    •  & Feng Wang

  • News & Views |

    Measurements of laser-induced magnetization dynamics suggest that spin currents can be generated on ultrafast timescales. Now it is shown that such currents may be capable of exerting ultrafast spin-transfer torques.

    • Karel Carva

  • Research Highlights |

    • Luke Fleet

  • News & Views |

    A tiny drum converts between infrared and microwave signals with record efficiency by keeping the beat of both.

    • Mankei Tsang

  • Article |

    An optomechanical system that converts microwaves to optical frequency light and vice versa is demonstrated. The technique achieves a conversion efficiency of approximately 10%. The results indicate that the device could work at the quantum level, up- and down-converting individual photons, if it were cooled to millikelvin temperatures. It could, therefore, form an integral part of quantum-processor networks.

    • R. W. Andrews
    • , R. W. Peterson
    •  & K. W. Lehnert

  • News & Views |

    Spin pumping and spin-to-charge conversion in hybrid metal–organic devices reveal the physical mechanisms at work in semiconducting polymers.

    • Bert Koopmans

  • Research Highlights |

    • Abigail Klopper

  • Article |

    A room-temperature motion sensor with record sensitivity is created using a levitating silica nanoparticle. Feedback cooling to reduce the noise arising from Brownian motion enables a detector that is perhaps even sensitive enough to detect non-Newtonian gravity-like forces.

    • Jan Gieseler
    • , Lukas Novotny
    •  & Romain Quidant

  • Letter |

    The intensity of optically-pumped fluorescence generated from a single atomic defect in diamond can be reduced by 80% in just 100 ns by applying infrared laser light. This result demonstrates the possibility of using these so-called nitrogen–vacancy centres to create optical switches that operate at room temperature.

    • Michael Geiselmann
    • , Renaud Marty
    •  & Romain Quidant

  • Letter |

    A nanomechanical interface between optical photons and microwave electrical signals is now demonstrated. Coherent transfer between microwave and optical fields is achieved by parametric electro-optical coupling in a piezoelectric optomechanical crystal, and this on-chip technology could form the basis of photonic networks of superconducting quantum bits.

    • Joerg Bochmann
    • , Amit Vainsencher
    •  & Andrew N. Cleland

  • Letter |

    Measurements of the spin heat accumulation at the ferromagnetic/non-magnetic interface in nanopillar spin valves show that spin-up and spin-down electrons have different temperatures. This observation is important for the design of magnetic thermal switches and the study of inelastic spin scattering.

    • F. K. Dejene
    • , J. Flipse
    •  & B. J. van Wees

  • Letter |

    The fluctuation relations are a central concept in thermodynamics at the microscopic scale. These relations are experimentally verified by measuring the entropy production in a single-electron box coupled to two heat baths.

    • J. V. Koski
    • , T. Sagawa
    •  & J. P. Pekola

  • News & Views |

    An electrically controllable spin–orbit interaction at the surface of transition-metal dichalcogenides highlights the wealth of unexpected physics that two-dimensional systems can offer.

    • Alberto F. Morpurgo

  • Article |

    A magnetic field can lift the spin degeneracy of electrons. This Zeeman effect is an important route to generating the spin polarization required for spintronics. It is now shown that such polarization can also be achieved without the need for magnetism. The unique crystal symmetry of tungsten selenide creates a Zeeman-like effect when a monolayer of the material is exposed to an external electric field.

    • Hongtao Yuan
    • , Mohammad Saeed Bahramy
    •  & Yoshihiro Iwasa

  • News & Views |

    Coupled nanomechanical oscillators can show similar dynamics to two-level systems, and may eventually be used as quantum bits.

    • Klemens Hammerer

  • Letter |

    Coherent control of two flexural modes of a nanoscale oscillator using radiofrequency signals is now demonstrated. This oscillator is analogous to quantum two-level systems such as superconducting circuits and quantum dots, and therefore this technique raises the possibility of information processing using nanomechanical resonators.

    • T. Faust
    • , J. Rieger
    •  & E. M. Weig

  • Letter |

    It is now shown that phonons can be coherently transferred between two nanomechanical resonators. The technique of controlling the coupling between nanoscale oscillators using a piezoelectric transducer is useful for manipulating classical oscillations, but if extended to the quantum regime it could also enable entanglement of macroscopic mechanical objects.

    • Hajime Okamoto
    • , Adrien Gourgout
    •  & Hiroshi Yamaguchi

  • Review Article |

    Surface-plasmon polaritons are hybrid particles that result from strong coupling between light and collective electron motion on the surface of a metal. This Review presents an overview of the quantum properties of surface plasmons, their role in controlling light–matter interactions at the quantum level and potential applications.

    • M. S. Tame
    • , K. R. McEnery
    •  & M. S. Kim

  • Research Highlights |

    • Abigail Klopper

  • Commentary |

    A class of two-terminal passive circuit elements that can also act as memories could be the building blocks of a form of massively parallel computation known as memcomputing.

    • Massimiliano Di Ventra
    •  & Yuriy V. Pershin

  • Letter |

    Graphene may be set to revolutionize electronics, but its small spin–orbit coupling limits its potential in spintronics. It is now shown, however, that adding hydrogen atoms can greatly enhance the magnetic properties of graphene. This then enabled the observation of the spin Hall effect, essential for controlling spin currents.

    • Jayakumar Balakrishnan
    • , Gavin Kok Wai Koon
    •  & Barbaros Özyilmaz

  • Article |

    The efficiency of carrier–carrier scattering in graphene is now experimentally demonstrated. The dominance of this mechanism over phonon-related scattering means that a single high-energy photon could create two or more electron–hole pairs in graphene; an effect useful for optoelectronic applications.

    • K. J. Tielrooij
    • , J. C. W. Song
    •  & F. H. L. Koppens

  • Letter |

    Electrons can travel though very pure materials without scattering from defects. In this ballistic regime, magnetic fields can manipulate the electron trajectory. Such magnetic electron focusing is now observed in graphene. Although the effect has previously been seen in metals and semiconductors, it is evident in graphene at much higher temperatures—including room temperature.

    • Thiti Taychatanapat
    • , Kenji Watanabe
    •  & Pablo Jarillo-Herrero

  • News & Views |

    In superconductors spin and charge can be completely decoupled leading to unusual transport phenomena, such as nearly chargeless spin flow.

    • Nadya Mason
    •  & Martin Stehno

  • Letter |

    Injection of spin-polarized electrons into a superconductor leads to both spin and charge imbalance. If charge relaxation occurs faster than spin relaxation, it is possible to observe excess spin at almost no extra charge.

    • C. H. L. Quay
    • , D. Chevallier
    •  & M. Aprili

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