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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.
Advanced time-resolved structural probes are enabling new views of rapid interactions and optical switching between symmetry-broken phases in quantum materials. Here, using relativistic ultrafast electron diffraction the authors investigate the dynamics of TaTe2 and chart the evolution of a distinct superstructure of trimer clusters which dissolve and form on picosecond time scales.
Analog Ising machines are promising fast computing schemes for some difficult optimization problems, yet their analog nature is known to cause errors and inhibit computational performance. Here, the authors investigate how the choice of nonlinear transfer functions partly suppresses errors caused by analog amplitude inhomogeneity, which leads to order-of-magnitude differences in the computation time.
While the Landau-Zener problem is conventionally used to describe defects formation in quantum systems, it cannot be applied to non-interacting Bose excitations as the adiabatic perturbation theory assumptions are violated by Bose statistics. Here, the author investigates adiabatic cycles across quantum critical points with harmonic Bose quasi-particles and shows that adiabaticity breakdown is a universal feature of these systems
Understanding and predicting fluctuations of the neutron population within a nuclear reactor is of fundamental importance for nuclear safety, especially in connection with reactor control at startup and shutdown. The study presents experiments and Monte Carlo simulations of persistent neutron fluctuations and correlations (stochastic noise and neutron clustering) in nuclear reactors which are interpreted by stochastic modelling based on branching random walks.
Atoms embedded in dense hot plasmas are affected by complex many-body interactions which challenges our capacity to model high energy density plasma. The authors propose a solution to the effects of many-body interactions on ions in dense plasmas, with a particular focus on the threebody interaction.
The electrical and optical properties of a material depend strongly on the details of its crystal structure. Here, the authors report a technique to mechanically deform the lattice of monolayer graphene with strain, and electrically detect the generation of a scalar potential that modifies the graphene work function.
Low-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides are an ideal platform to investigate strongly correlated phenomena with excitons. Here, the authors theoretically demonstrate that bilayer heterostructures of these materials can be used to realize the strongly correlated many-particle states of charged interlayer excitons that can be controlled by the interlayer separation adjustment and can be tuned by both electro- and magneto-static external fields.
Electronic devices operating at the nanoscale can exhibit unique electrical and thermal phenomena that can affect overall performance and so it is necessary to understand and control these types of fluctuations. Here, the authors theoretically and experimentally investigate quantum phase slips which can proliferate at low-temperatures in miniaturised superconducting devices and determine how this impacts on the resultant transport properties.
Floquet topological engineering describes the driving of a topologically trivial system into transitory non-trivial state and there are many open questions about the underlying mechanisms. Here, the authors theoretically investigate the time evolution of a topological mode when the bulk band structure is driven into a topologically trivial structure, and show that it can survive unexpectedly long in a "frozen” regime, before gradually disappearing in the "melting” regime.
The Chern number is a defining characteristic of a non-trivial topological system and is derived from another fundamental property termed the Berry curvature. Here, the authors theoretically propose the concept of fractional topology with a fractional Chern number using interacting spins on a Poincaré (Bloch) sphere under an applied magnetic field.
PdCoO2 belongs to a class of materials where both weakly and strongly correlated electrons co-exist side-by-side in different layers of the crystal structure. Here, the authors investigate PdCoO2 using standing wave photoemission spectroscopy and many-body calculations reporting layer-specific details about the electronic structure.
Pattern formation in complex systems has been studied from the angle of information processing, by trying to understand what is the input information that determines a certain final pattern and to what extent is the final pattern programmable by changing some input information. Here, the authors present a minimal model within which they can formulate and study the concept of programmable pattern formation, that is, whether an organizer cell can steer the system towards any target pattern starting from an arbitrary initial pattern.
Skyrmions are topological non-trivial vortex-like magnetic structures with potential applications in memory and logic devices. Here, the authors theoretically investigate the link between skyrmions and stripy magnetic textures, which occur in the vicinity of skyrmion crystals, demonstrating the latter is potentially a type of irregular skyrmion.
Unveiling the properties of edge harmonic oscillation is one of the major pursuits to understand complex systems in plasma physics. The authors present measurements at the JT-60U tokamak that show direct observations of peeling modes in quiescent high-confinement tokamak plasmas, offering insights into the “peeling nature” of both laboratory plasmas and astronomical plasmas.
Electron-positron pair generation from nonlinear quantum electrodynamics is predicted at high intensities that are, so far, beyond experimental capabilities. Here, simulations predict a high yield of positrons can be obtained from gamma-gamma photon collisions in the linear regime, using counter-propagating pulses and a microstructured target.
The ability to gather experimental access to the kinetics of charge carriers is central in semiconductor physics. The authors utilize hard x-ray radiation from a synchrotron source to probe the charge transfer dynamics in the attosecond regime in layered GeSe, thus providing crucial information for future photonic and optoelectronic devices.
Higher-order interactions intervene in a large variety of networked phenomena, from shared interests known to influence the creation of social ties, to co-location shaping networks embedded in space, like power grids. This work introduces a Bayesian framework to infer higher-order interactions hidden in network data.
The multifaceted nature of nonlinear multimode optical fibers has provided a fertile ground for observing novel physical effects otherwise impossible in single-mode setting. The authors present a theoretical and experimental study, providing a comprehensive theory capable of explaining the distinct nature of wideband Cherenkov radiation produced during multimode soliton fission events.
