Category Archives: Quantum physics
Polariton anomalous Hall effect in transition-metal dichalcogenides
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 […]
The protective effect of symmetry in entangled photonic states
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 […]
Origin of the mysterious blue fluorescence of polymer carbon dots
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 […]
Nonequilibrium effects in hybrids of electron systems with spontaneously broken symmetries
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 […]
Unlocking graphene’s spintronic potential through spin-valley coupling
Author: José H. García is a postdoctoral researcher at the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2).
Few materials have drawn as much attention as graphene, it fascinating attributes such as one-atom thickness and relativistic electrons, and its technological properties […]
A route to the directional control of light–matter interactions at the nanoscale
Mobile phones and computers are currently responsible for up to 8% of the electricity use in the world. This figure has been doubling each past decade but nothing prevents it from skyrocketing in the future. Unless we find a way […]
Structurally well-defined boundaries in a fully accessible quantum spin Hall insulator
Imagine that we have a conductor or a semiconductor through which a current is flowing. Then we apply a strong transverse magnetic field. As a result, we can measure a potential difference at right angles to both the current and […]
Topology of disconnected elementary band representations
The revolutionary theory of topological quantum chemistry , a description of the universal global properties of all possible band structures and materials, diagnoses topological phases based on elementary band representations. A set of bands is topological if it lacks […]
Surface-Enhanced Molecular Electron Energy Loss Spectroscopy
Chemists have a range of different spectroscopic techniques to study organic molecules. All of these techniques are based on spectra generated by a range of electronic transitions and vibrations, key excitations in matter, the study of which provides information about […]
HOTI bismuth
The properties of bismuth have long defied classification, placing it in a category of its own. Now, as if it was not enough, it turns out its electronic structure has higher-order topology. This has been shown by an international team […]