Nanoscience and technology articles within Nature Physics

Featured

  • Letter |

    The efficient and robust manipulation of single spins is an essential requirement for successful quantum devices. The manipulation of a single nitrogen–vacancy spin centre is now demonstrated by means of a mechanical resonator approach.

    • A. Barfuss
    • , J. Teissier
    •  & P. Maletinsky

  • 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

  • Letter |

    The effect of electron–phonon interactions on transport properties of 2D materials is unclear. Transport measurements on atomically thin Nb3SiTe6 crystals now show that reduced dimensionality results in the suppression of electron–phonon coupling.

    • J. Hu
    • , X. Liu
    •  & D. Natelson

  • Article |

    Rogue waves in a sea of photons can localize light beyond the diffraction limit, but their rarity makes them difficult to study. These events can now be controllably triggered in a photonic crystal resonator.

    • C. Liu
    • , R. E. C. van der Wel
    •  & A. Fratalocchi

  • Letter |

    Josephson vortices are circulating supercurrents with an inner structure that is challenging to probe experimentally. Scanning tunnelling microscopy now shows that such vortices contain non-superconducting cores.

    • Dimitri Roditchev
    • , Christophe Brun
    •  & Tristan Cren

  • News & Views |

    Photonic crystals can control the flow of light but they are extremely sensitive to structural disorder. Although this often degrades performance, disorder can actually be used to enhance light collimation.

    • Jorge Bravo-Abad

  • 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

  • Article |

    Spin relaxation in graphene is much faster than theoretically expected. Now, a scenario based on a mixing of spin and pseudospin degrees of freedom and defect-induced spatial spin–orbit coupling variations predicts longer spin relaxation times.

    • Dinh Van Tuan
    • , Frank Ortmann
    •  & Stephan Roche

  • News & Views |

    A superconducting surface under a drop of ionic liquid, when divided into two banks by a strip of insulating material having a single quantum point contact, becomes a device for discovering quantum phenomena.

    • Isao H. Inoue

  • Letter |

    Nanoscale metallic tips are a useful source of electrons for material characterization. It is now shown how terahertz radiation can provide precision control and enhancement of photoelectron emission from these sources. The approach can shape the spectrum of the electron pulse, which could pave the way to improvements in ultrafast electron diffraction and transmission electron microscopy.

    • L. Wimmer
    • , G. Herink
    •  & C. Ropers

  • News & Views |

    The standard description of spin–orbit torques neglects geometric phase effects. But recent experiments suggest that the Berry curvature gives rise to an anti-damping torque in systems with broken inversion symmetry.

    • Aurelien Manchon

  • Article |

    When superconducting discs are deposited on graphene they induce local superconducting islands. The phase coupling between the islands can be controlled by a gate. Quantum phase fluctuations kill the superconductivity and lead to a metallic state, however, at higher magnetic fields superconductivity can return.

    • Zheng Han
    • , Adrien Allain
    •  & Vincent Bouchiat

  • News & Views |

    Comparisons between classically simulated models and the actual performance of a 100-qubit D-Wave processor stimulate, but do not settle, the debate about how quantum annealing really works.

    • Dan Browne

  • News & Views |

    A recent experiment shows that graphene nanoribbons can be grown to be perfect conductors where electrons travel long distances without coming across a single obstacle.

    • Juan José Palacios

  • News & Views |

    The back-action of a weak measurement on the electron spin of a nitrogen–vacancy centre in diamond can be used to steer the associated nuclear spin towards a desired state.

    • Victor M. Acosta

  • Research Highlights |

    • Iulia Georgescu

  • 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

  • Article |

    Ferroelectric domain switching on the surface of a lithium niobate thin film can be induced by the tip of a scanning probe microscope, and gives rise to both regular and chaotic spatiotemporal patterns. Moreover, the long-range interactions that govern these phenomena can be tuned by varying temperature, humidity, domain spacing and tip bias.

    • A. V. Ievlev
    • , S. Jesse
    •  & S. V. Kalinin

  • News & Views |

    Coupling a single electron level to dissipative leads allows the study of unusual behaviour near a quantum critical point, including the fractionalization of the resonant level into two Majorana fermions.

    • Lucas Peeters
    •  & David Goldhaber-Gordon

  • Article |

    Superparamagnetism (preferential alignment of spins along an easy axis) is a useful effect for spintronic applications as it prevents spin reversal. It is now shown that high-spin quantum dots can become magnetically anisotropic when coupled to nearby ferromagnets—‘artificial’ superparamagnets.

    • Maciej Misiorny
    • , Michael Hell
    •  & Maarten R. Wegewijs

  • News & Views |

    On cooling, transition metal oxides often undergo a phase change from an electrically conducting to an insulating state. Now it is shown that the metal–insulator transition temperature of vanadium dioxide thin films can be controlled by applying strain.

    • Takashi Mizokawa

  • 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

  • Article |

    When a domain wall of a given chirality is injected into a magnetic nanowire, its trajectory through a branched network of Y-shaped nanowire junctions—such as a honeycomb lattice, for instance—can be pre-determined. This property has implications for data storage and processing.

    • Aakash Pushp
    • , Timothy Phung
    •  & Stuart S. P. Parkin

  • 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

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