As semiconductor devices become ever smaller, researchers are exploring two-dimensional (2D) materials for potential applications in transistors and optoelectronics. Controlling the flow of electricity and heat through these materials is key to their functionality, but first we need to understand the details of those behaviors at atomic scales.

Now, researchers have discovered that electrons play a surprising role in how energy is transferred between layers of 2D semiconductor m...

Quasi-periodic pulsations (QPPs; also known as quasi-periodic oscillations, i.e., QPOs) are electromagnetic emission phenomena that vary quasi-periodically with time. They appear in celestial transient events with different temporal/spatial scales, such as stellar flares, gamma ray bursts and fast radio bursts.

The sun, an ordinary star closest to us, is a place where flares with QPPs appear frequently...

A new method can produce a hundredfold increase in light emissions from a type of electron-photon coupling, which is key to electron microscopes and other technologies.

Researchers have found a way to create much stronger interactions between photons and electrons, in the process producing a hundredfold increase in the emission of light from a phenomenon called Smith-Purcell radiation. The finding has potential implications for both commercial applications and fundamental scientific research.

The way electrons interact w...