news 2020

By Birgit Baustädter Power cuts have a wide variety of causes. Mostly we think of damaged power lines due to wind and weather or unplanned power surges that overload the grid. But solar storms can also lead to them. Electricity is omnipresent in our lives. So omnipresent that we no longer even consciously perceive it.

Pseudospin in antiferromagnets: new perspectives for information technologies Elementary particles carry an intrinsic angular momentum known as their spin. For an electron, the spin can take only two particular values relative to a quantization axis, letting us denote them as spin-up and spin-down electrons.

The experimental Photoacoustic Airborne Sonar System setup in the lab (left). A Stanford "S" submerged beneath the water (middle) is reconstructed in 3D using reflected ultrasound waves (right). (Image credit: Aidan Fitzpatrick) The "Photoacoustic Airborne Sonar System" could be installed beneath drones to enable aerial underwater surveys and high-resolution mapping of the deep ocean.

By Susanne Eigner The Christian Doppler Laboratory for Technology-Guided Electronic Component Design and Characterization investigates ways to better control electromagnetic interactions in smart networked devices, especially in the 5G frequency range. In smartphones and many other complex, wirelessly networked devices, sophisticated technologies are used to integrate the individual electronic components into the housing.

Using modern nanotechnology, it is possible nowadays to produce structures which have a feature sizes of just a few nanometres. This world of the most minute particles - also known as quantum systems - makes possible a wide range of technological applications, in fields which include magnetic field sensing, information processing, secure communication or ultra-precise time keeping.

Bristol researchers have developed a tiny device that paves the way for higher performance quantum computers and quantum communications, making them significantly faster than the current state-of-the-art. Researchers from the University of Bristol's Quantum Engineering Technology Labs (QET Labs) and Université Côte d'Azur have made a new miniaturized light detector to measure quantum features of light in more detail than ever before.

Using a unique material, EPFL scientists have been able to design and study an unusual state of matter, the Quantum Spin Liquid. The work has significant implications for future technologies, from quantum computing to superconductivity and spintronics. In 1973, physicist and later Nobel laureate Philip W. Anderson proposed a bizarre state of matter: the quantum spin liquid (QSL).

A microscope image of the structures used to initiate the magnetization switching. (Image by K. Jhuria) Spintronic devices are attractive alternatives to conventional computer chips, providing digital information storage that is highly energy efficient and also relatively easy to manufacture on a large scale.

Nanophotonics researchers demonstrate ultrafast polarization switching U.S. and Italian engineers have demonstrated the first nanophotonic platform capable of manipulating polarized light 1 trillion times per second. "Polarized light can be used to encode bits of information, and we've shown it's possible to modulate such light at terahertz frequencies,” said Rice University's Alessandro Alabastri , co-corresponding author of a study published this week.

Researchers have developed a new approach to printed electronics which allows ultra-low power electronic devices that could recharge from ambient light or radiofrequency noise. The approach paves the way for low-cost printed electronics that could be seamlessly embedded in everyday objects and environments.

In a publication in the Journal of Cleaner Production, Prof. Bob van der Zwaan of the Van 't Hoff Institute of Molecular Sciences presents the first example of a learning curve for microwave ovens, which follows a learning rate of around 20%. The paper discusses opportunities for possible microwave heating applications in households and industry, that can contribute to sustainable development.

From capturing your breath to guiding biological cell movements, 3D printing of tiny, transparent conducting fibres could be used to make devices which can 'smell, hear and touch' - making it particularly useful for health monitoring, Internet of Things and biosensing applications.

Researchers at ETH Zurich - in collaboration with colleagues from EPFL in Lausanne and Harvard Medical School - have developed a system that allows them to optically stimulate individual nerve fibres in living mice. Through this process, they have demonstrated that the nervous system has a direct influence on the immune system.

If the spins of phosphorus atoms in silicon are cleverly excited with microwave pulses, a so-called spin echo signal can be detected after a certain time. Surprisingly, this spin echo does not occur only once, but a whole series of echoes can be detected.

Scientists on an experiment at the Large Hadron Collider see massive W particles emerging from collisions with electromagnetic fields. How can this happen? The ATLAS detector at CERN's Large Hadron Collider. (Credit: CERN) Note: This article was originally published by Symmetry magazine. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) plays with Albert Einstein's famous equation, E = mc², to transform matter into energy and then back into different forms of matter.

Scientists have gained a fundamental understanding of a highly promising material that could be suited to future data storage applications. Their experiments with strontium-iridium oxide, Sr2IrO 4 , investigated both the magnetic and electronic properties of the material as a thin film. They also analysed how these properties can be systematically controlled by manipulating the films.

In a very unusual way, the electrical and magnetic properties of a particular crystal are linked together - the phenomenon was discovered and explained at TU Wien (Vienna). Electricity and magnetism are closely related: Power lines generate a magnetic field, rotating magnets in a generator produce electricity.

Researchers have created a single chip that combines a transistor and micro-fluidic cooling system. Managing the heat generated in electronics is a huge problem, especially with the constant push to reduce the size and pack as many transistors as possible in the same chip. The whole problem is how to manage such high heat fluxes efficiently.

Physicists at the University of Basel have developed a minuscule instrument able to detect extremely faint magnetic fields. At the heart of the superconducting quantum interference device are two atomically thin layers of graphene, which the researchers combined with boron nitride. Instruments like this one have applications in areas such as medicine, besides being used to research new materials.

Researchers from EPFL's Photonics Systems Lab have come up with a way of reconfiguring microwave photonic filters without the need for an external device. This paves the way for more compact, environmentally friendly filters that will be more practical and cheaper to use. Potential applications include detection and communications systems.