Category archives: Condensed matter

You can read this article because I have used photonics in order to make it possible. It may sound futuristic, but photonics is a technology we use, one way or the other, on a daily basis. Photonic devices are analogous to those used in electronics, but with the electrons replaced by photons. Thus, photonics is […]

Some metals, alloys and transition-element salts exhibit a form of magnetism called antiferromagnetism. This occurs below a certain temperature, named after Louis Néel, when an ordered array of atomic magnetic moments spontaneously forms in which alternate moments have opposite directions. There is therefore no net resultant magnetic moment in the absence of an applied field […]

Two-dimensional materials, such as transition-metal dichalcogenides embedded in optical cavities, stand out as an excellent platform where strong light-matter interactions can be studied. Moreover, their band structures bring about nontrivial topological features, including the possibility of inducing some really interesting ones, like the polariton anomalous Hall effect. But, before getting into that let’s go through […]

One of the most mysterious features of quantum mechanics is that if two particles (or photons) interact at some point in time then the properties of these particles will remain connected at future times. A consequence of this is that determining the quantum state of one of the particles simultaneously determines the quantum state of […]

A catalyst is a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without itself undergoing any permanent chemical change. As the catalyst itself takes part in the reaction it may undergo a physical change. Hence, if catalysts take the form of nanoparticles, any physical feature of the nanoparticle interacting with the reacting molecules may […]

A quantum dot is a nanometric crystalline structure of semiconductor materials. In a quatum dot electrons are confined in a region of space, thus creating a well defined structure of energy levels that depends very much on the size and shape of the quantum dot. This structure resembles that of atoms, that is why sometimes […]

Imagine a military regiment in formation. That we will call symmetry. Now imagine the same regiment when it is dismissed by the commanding officer: at once the soldiers disperse and tend to form domains (groups) or pairs. Hence, we can say that the symmetry is spontaneously broken. Both superconductors and ferromagnets are examples of electron […]

Endohedral fullerenes, also called endofullerenes, are fullerenes that have additional atoms, ions, or clusters enclosed within their inner spheres. The first lanthanum C60 complex was synthesized in 1985 and called La@C60. The @ (at sign) in the name reflects the notion of a small molecule trapped inside a shell. The chemistry of endohedral fullerenes is […]

Few materials have drawn as much attention as graphene, it fascinating attributes such as one-atom thickness and relativistic electrons, and its technological properties like transparency, large mechanical strength, and ultra-high electron’s mobility, position it as one of the more promising materials in the present. Recently, simultaneous experimental and theoretical studies have confirmed that combining graphene […]

Common glass, used in windows or bottles, for example, is made by heating a mixture of calcium oxide (lime), sodium carbonate (soda), and silicon (IV) oxide (sand), resulting in a calcium silicate. This silicate is not a crystal but a solid in which atoms are positioned at random and have no long-range ordered pattern. These […]