Spintronics articles within Nature

Featured

  • News |

    Quantum bit based on electron spin offers advantages for electronics and optical devices.

    • Jon Cartwright

  • Letter |

    Motion of electrons can influence their spins through a fundamental effect called the spin–orbit interaction. Here, a spin–orbit quantum bit (qubit) is implemented in an indium arsenide nanowire, which should offer significant advantages for quantum computing. The spin–orbit qubit is electrically controllable, and information can be stored in the spin. Moreover, nanowires can serve as one dimensional templates for scalable qubit registers, and are suited for both electronic and optical devices.

    • S. Nadj-Perge
    • , S. M. Frolov
    •  & L. P. Kouwenhoven

  • Letter |

    Isolated magnetic atoms doped into a semiconductor represent an interesting system for spintronics applications and a possible means of constructing quantum bits. So far, however, it has not been possible to study the correlation between the local atomic structure and the dopant's magnetic properties. Here, sensitive scanning probe techniques have been developed that allow the spin excitations of individual magnetic dopants within a two-dimensional semiconductor system to be measured.

    • Alexander A. Khajetoorians
    • , Bruno Chilian
    •  & Roland Wiesendanger

  • News & Views |

    Interfaces can have quite different properties from those of their constituent materials. But it's surprising that the adsorption of a single organic molecule onto a magnetic surface can drastically modify that surface's magnetism.

    • Stefano Sanvito

  • Letter |

    Electron spins generated by phosphorus dopant atoms buried in silicon represent well-isolated quantum bits with long coherence times, but so far the control of such single electrons has been insufficient to use them in this way. These authors report single-shot, time-resolved readout of electron spins in silicon, achieved by coupling the donor atoms to a charge-sensing device called a single-electron transistor. This opens a path to the development of a new generation of quantum computing and spintronic devices in silicon.

    • Andrea Morello
    • , Jarryd J. Pla
    •  & Andrew S. Dzurak

  • Letter |

    Ferroelectric ferromagnets — materials that are both ferroelectric and ferromagnetic — are of significant technological interest. But they are rare, and those that do exist have weak ferroelectric and ferromagnetic properties. Recently a new way of fabricating such materials was proposed, involving strain from the underlying substrate. This route has now been realized experimentally for EuTiO3. The work shows that a single experimental parameter, strain, can simultaneously control multiple order parameters.

    • June Hyuk Lee
    • , Lei Fang
    •  & Darrell G. Schlom

  • Letter |

    Quantum entanglement is widely used in fundamental tests of quantum mechanics and applications such as quantum cryptography. Previous experiments have demonstrated entanglement of optical photons with trapped atoms, ions and atomic ensembles. These authors realize quantum entanglement between the polarization of a single optical photon and a solid-state qubit associated with a single electronic spin. This may provide a key building block for the solid-state realization of quantum optical networks.

    • E. Togan
    • , Y. Chu
    •  & M. D. Lukin

  • Letter |

    Attosecond technology (1 as = 10−18 S) promises the tools needed to directly probe electron motion in real time. These authors report attosecond pump–probe measurements that track the movement of valence electrons in krypton ions. This first proof-of-principle demonstration uses a simple system, but the expectation is that attosecond transient absorption spectroscopy will ultimately also reveal the elementary electron motions that underlie the properties of molecules and solid-state materials.

    • Eleftherios Goulielmakis
    • , Zhi-Heng Loh
    •  & Ferenc Krausz

  • News & Views |

    According to theory, electrons on the surface of a topological insulator are not allowed to make U-turns. This notion, and some of its main consequences, has now been tested experimentally.

    • Marcel Franz

  • Article |

    With the start-up of the first X-ray free-electron laser, a new era has begun in dynamical studies of atoms. Here the facility is used to study the fundamental nature of the electronic response in free neon atoms. During a single X-ray pulse, they sequentially eject all their ten electrons to produce fully stripped neon. The authors explain this electron-stripping in a straightforward model, auguring favourably for further studies of interactions of X-rays with more complex systems.

    • L. Young
    • , E. P. Kanter
    •  & M. Messerschmidt

  • Letter |

    An insulator does not conduct electricity, and so cannot in general be used to transmit an electrical signal. But an insulator's electrons possess spin in addition to charge, and so can transmit a signal in the form of a spin wave. Here a hybrid metal–insulator–metal structure is reported, in which an electrical signal in one metal layer is directly converted to a spin wave in the insulating layer; this wave is then transmitted to the second metal layer, where the signal can be directly recovered as an electrical voltage.

    • Y. Kajiwara
    • , K. Harii
    •  & E. Saitoh

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