Spontaneously broken symmetries are at the heart of many phenomena of quantum matter and physics more generally. However, determining the exact symmetries that are broken can be challenging due to imperfections such as strain, in particular when multiple electronic orders are competing. This is exemplified by charge order in some kagome systems, where evidence of […]
Whenever an electric current flows a magnetic field is produced; as the orbital motion and the spin of atomic electrons are equivalent to tiny current loops, individual atoms create magnetic fields around them, when their orbital electrons have a net magnetic moment as a result of their angular momentum. The magnetic moment of an atom […]
Twisted bilayer and multilayer systems represent two-dimensional materials, where atom-thick layers of the same or different materials are superimposed and rotated by an arbitrary twist angle. Twisted bilayer graphene (TBG) represents arguably the most prominent physical system of this kind, the bilayers of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMD) the other. The effect of twisting two periodic […]
CFM • DIPC • DIPC Photonics
Modern technologies enable the design and nanofabrication of photonic devices for manipulation of optical fields on spatial scales much smaller than the wavelength of light. In particular, the resonant coupling of photons with collective electronic excitations in metals and two-dimensional materials, i.e., plasmons, can be used to engineer strongly enhanced near fields confined to the […]
Progress in particle physics has traditionally been achieved by a symbiosis of experiments at the energy and intensity frontiers and model-building. This has led to the current situation of the Standard Model (SM) representing our best knowledge of particle physics, but which leaves a number of open questions to be resolved. These include the composition […]
Global energy demand is expected to rise around 30% by 2040 according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Hydrogen (H2) produced by the electrolysis of water, using renewable electricity, the so-called green hydrogen, has emerged as a promising energy vector to respond to this increasing energy demand with the potential to decarbonize transportation, heating, and […]
The way a particular reaction proceeds, described in terms of the steps involved, is called mechanism. The study of organic chemistry is, to a great extent, the study of reaction mechanisms and textbooks content both their description and their applications. But something has come to revolutionize the world of mechanisms: surface chemistry. On-surface synthesis is […]
CFM • DIPC • DIPC Photonics
As the top atomic monolayer lifts a few Å off the underlying bulk Au (111), ab initio electronic structure calculations show that for gaps >1.5 Å, visible light squeezes inside the empty slot underneath, giving optical field distributions 2 Å thick, less than the atomic diameter. Considerable attention has been paid in the past decades […]
Magnetic two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors have attracted a lot of attention because modern preparation techniques are capable of providing single crystal films of these materials with precise control of thickness down to the single-layer limit. It opens up a way to study a rich variety of electronic and magnetic phenomena with promising routes towards potential applications […]
Deep below the Spanish side of the Pyrenees, we find the LSC (Laboratorio Subterráneo de Canfranc – Canfranc Underground Laboratory), where the NEXT experiment is taking place. Its goal is one of the remaining holy grails of particle physics: the proof that the neutrino is its own antiparticle, a result with profound meaning not only […]