Browse Articles

The distortion of photons propagation in a curved spacetime geometry poses a challenge for communication for Earth-to-satellite communication. Here, the distortion of localized information carriers, arising from curved spacetime geometry, as they are freely transported along a general geodesic is reported.

Extracting quasiparticle dispersion from photoemission data is challenging and often results in confusion when investigating low-energy excitations. As a solution the authors demonstrate a technique, which applies Bayesian analysis to extract the quasiparticle dynamics of a topological insulator from angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) data, and could be applied to other quantum materials.

Thermoelectric materials convert heat into electricity and their performance is determined by their figure of merit ZT, which is generally too small in many materials for practical applications. Here, the authors demonstrate that a reduction in grain size for nanocrystalline Si can reduce thermal conductivity and potentially be used as a method to engineer greater ZT in Si for thermoelectric applications.

The quantum interface to generate entanglement between a flying photonic qubit and a stationary qubit is a key functionality for the quantum internet. The authors demonstrate a multiplexed quantum interface that stores three long-lived spin-wave qubits. A significant improvement in the rate of generating spin-photon entanglement has been achieved, opening a promising route toward large-scale, long-haul quantum networks.

Emergency action in response to the COVID-19 pandemic led to the removal of financial and regulatory barriers to developing medical technologies. But, as Andrea Armani and Eric Diebold explain, a broader cultural shift in academia can expedite their translation from laboratory benches to real-world use.

Non-Hermitian physics, an active topic in photonics, is also being increasingly extended to investigate the band topologies of condensed-matter systems. Here, the authors report a 2D non-Hermitian model exhibiting exceptional rings and topological boundary modes in the spectral degeneracy, they propose how to realise these features using topolectrical circuits.

Implementing large-scale quantum networks is one of the challenges at the core of quantum communication. Here, the authors present NetSquid, a quantum network simulator that allows studying how such networks can be built, including physical hardware modelling, modularity, scalability, and examples.

Understanding the coupling between spin-polarised topological surface states and the bulk provides insight into ultrafast spin dynamics. Here, this coupling is shown to be accompanied by a large mass enhancement in the Sb(111) surface electronic structure, leading to unusual dynamics.

Unusual optical phenomena arise when light interacts with time-varying dielectric media. Here, relativistic propagation of a photoconductivity front in silicon is exploited to temporally stretch and time-reverse terahertz pulses.

The kagome lattice is an ideal platform for studying the effects of frustration in spin systems. Here, the authors investigate a half-integer spin chain placed on a one-dimensional kagome system finding a rich phase diagram that presents a gapless spin-liquid phase and supports their results through a resonating dimer–monomer model

Majorana fermions are elusive particles which have proven extremely tricky to observe experimentally, with current efforts focused on hybrid superconducting devices. Here, the authors theoretically propose a set up combining a Josephson junction and a skyrmion crystal to create and control the Majorana bound states.

Light-matter interaction is not only used to melt electronic orders, but also carry the potential as a non-thermal tuning knob to enhance emergent orders. Here the authors demonstrate a light-induced transient enhancement of superconductivity in an iron chalcogenide superconductor via terahertz optical conductivity and terahertz third-harmonic generation by the injection of photo-carriers.

Dissipative Kerr solitons are the key phenomenon underpinning the generation of broad and coherent frequency combs on a photonic chip. This work extends the notion of dissipative Kerr solitons to the case of two coupled resonators possessing an exceptional point.

Drawing around 60 attendees and 20 presenters to a virtual lecture room, April’s CHI-2 Photonics in Microresonators and Beyond conference explored recent progress in the use of microresonators and integrated photonic devices exhibiting second-order nonlinearity for optical frequency conversion.

Subject to a periodic drive, quantum materials can develop nontrivial bulk topological state, termed a Floquet topological insulator, which differs from its static counterpart due to the nontrivial role played by the time dimension. Here, the authors theoretically demonstrate that such dynamic topology can be probed by bulk dislocation lattice defects, realizable in state-of-the-art experiments in quantum crystals, cold atomic systems and various metamaterials.

The inherently broad bandwidth of attosecond pulses conflicts with the coherence requirements of lensless imaging. Here, broadband holography-assisted coherent imaging is demonstrated with a resolution of less than 35 nm.

This perspective presents current and future possibilities offered by space technology for testing quantum mechanics, with a focus on mesoscopic superposition of nanoparticles and the potential of interferometric and non-interferometric experiments in space.

Managing heat dissipation in nanoscale electronic devices and understanding the underlying mechanisms complicated due to the reduced scale at the interface between the various materials. Here, the authors detect an extremely small interface thermal resistance is in amorphous-(a-) GeS/epitaxial-(e-) PbTe superlattice and perform calculations showing that heat conduction in nanoscale systems with high density interfaces might be controlled by phonon density of states and group velocity similarities.