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    Category Technology/Electronics

    Magnetic Vortices as Data Storage Media of the future: Controlled movement of Skyrmions

    March 8, 2016, Categories  Technology/Electronics, Physics

    The magnetic structure of a skyrmion is symmetrical around its core; arrows indicate the direction of spin. Credit: Ill./©: Benjamin Krüger

    The magnetic structure of a skyrmion is symmetrical around its core; arrows indicate the direction of spin. Credit: Ill./©: Benjamin Krüger

    JGU and MIT joint teams have for the first time achieved targeted shifting of individual skyrmions at room temperature using electrical impulses. The idea is that electronic storage units (bits) will not be stored on rotating hard disks as is currently standard practice but on a nanowire in the form of magnetic vortex structures, ie skyrmions, using a process similar to that of a shift register. The magnetic skyrmion bits would be rapidly accessible, while storage density would be high and there would be improved energy efficiency.

    Magnetic skyrmions are special spin configurations that can occur in materials especially in thin layer structures when ...

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    Ultra-Bright light: A New Source of Quantum Light

    March 8, 2016, Categories  Physics, Technology/Electronics

    3 sources of single photons: represented by a red dot at the center of the cavity, the semiconductor quantum dots (of nanometric size) is inserted in the center of the cavity, which consists of a 3 µm pillar connected to a circular frame by guides that are 1.3 µm wide. By applying electrical voltage to the cavity, the wavelength of the emitted photons can be tuned and the charge noise totally eliminated. Credit: © Niccolo Somaschi – Laboratoire de photonique et de nanostructures (CNRS)

    3 sources of single photons: represented by a red dot at the center of the cavity, the semiconductor quantum dots (of nanometric size) is inserted in the center of the cavity, which consists of a 3 µm pillar connected to a circular frame by guides that are 1.3 µm wide. By applying electrical voltage to the cavity, the wavelength of the emitted photons can be tuned and the charge noise totally eliminated. Credit: © Niccolo Somaschi – Laboratoire de photonique et de nanostructures (CNRS)

    A new ultra-bright source of single photons – 15X brighter than commonly used sources and emitting photons that are 99.5% indistinguishable from one another – has been developed by researchers from the CNRS, Université Paris Diderot, and Université Paris-Sud...

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    Reaching out to Stars beyond our Galaxy

    March 8, 2016, Categories  Physics, Technology/Electronics

    Scientists stand on a platform at the world's largest underground neutrino detector Super Kamiokande located 1km underneath the mountain in central Japan. Credit: Copyright : Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe

    Scientists stand on a platform at the world’s largest underground neutrino detector Super Kamiokande located 1km underneath the mountain in central Japan. Credit: Copyright : Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe

    An international team in Japan is getting ready to power up a 50,000-ton neutrino detector by adding a single metal, which will turn it into the world’s first detector capable of analysing exploding stars beyond the immediate neighbourhood of the Milky Way. Neutrinos are relics from supernovae,. They are so tiny and interact so weakly that every second, trillions of them manage to pass through human bodies without anyone noticing. Studying them can reveal details about how stars in the universe, like our sun, work.

    The problem is that all supernova neutri...

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    Nanoscale Mirrored Cavities Amplify, Connect Quantum Memories

    March 6, 2016, Categories  Physics, Technology/Electronics

    Nanoscale mirrored cavities amplify, connect quantum memories

    Building quantum memories on a chip: Diamond photonic crystal cavities (ladder-like structures) are integrated on a silicon substrate. Green laser light (green arrow) excites electrons on impurity atoms trapped within the cavities, picking up information about their spin states, which can then be read out as red light (red arrow) emitted by photoluminescence from the cavity. The inset shows the nitrogen-vacancy (NV)-nanocavity system, where a nitrogen atom (N) is substituted into the diamond crystal lattice in place of a carbon atom (gray balls) adjacent to a vacancy (V). Layers of diamond and air keep light trapped within these cavities long enough to interact with the nitrogen atom’s spin state and transfer that information via the emitted light. Credit: MIT

    The idea of computing systems...

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