Paving the way to extremely fast, compact computer memory

24-Jul-2024 - For decades, scientists have been studying a group of unusual materials called multiferroics that could be useful for a range of applications including computer memory, chemical sensors and quantum computers. In a study published in Nature, researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and ...

Intense lasers shine new light on the electron dynamics of liquids

A new spectroscopical tool to study liquids

02-Oct-2023 - The behavior of electrons in liquids determines a vast range of chemical processes and thus essential processes in organisms and the world as a whole. But electron movements are extremely hard to capture because they take place within attoseconds: the realm of quintillionths of a second. Since ...

Molecular movie shows displaced electrons drive gold nanoparticle oscillations

Result defies established models of nanoparticle behaviour

03-Aug-2023 - Photocatalysis, sensors, solar cells: nanoparticles that are excited by light promise a variety of applications, if the processes behind their behaviour can be controlled. One such process is a type of collective electron motions. These movements lead to energy exchange in the nanoparticle that ...

When electrons dress up in light

Light - the fifth element of materials science?

17-Apr-2023 - New material properties, at lightning speed and on demand – this vision moves a step closer thanks to recent findings from a pan-European physics research group. The team uses ultrashort and strong light fields to directly observe how exotic energetic states, known as Floquet bands, emerge in a ...

Researchers cast new light on magnons to verify topological phases in magnetic materials

“Raman scattering is a standard experimental technique available in many labs, which is one of the strengths of this proposal”

19-Jan-2023 - Much recent research has focused on ‘topological’ materials – an intriguing type of solids which fall outside the standard classification into insulators and conductors. While their bulk is insulating, these phases are characterized by electrically conducting channels which appear at their edges. ...

Why optical cavities curb the rate of chemical reactions

“This works puts the controversial field of polaritonic chemistry onto a different level”

23-Dec-2022 - Chemical processes are all around us. From novel materials to more effective medicines or plastic products – chemical reactions play a key role in the design of the things we use every day. Scientists constantly search for better ways to control these reactions, for example to develop new ...

Changing direction: Research team discovers switchable electronic chirality in an achiral Kagome superconductor

14-Oct-2022 - An international research team led by the Department of Microstructured Quantum Matter at the MPSD reports the first observation of switchable chiral transport in a structurally achiral crystal, the Kagome superconductor CsV₃Sb₅. Its work has been published in Nature. Whether or not an object is ...

Terahertz light from superconducting stripes

Scientists discover anomalous emission of terahertz radiation from copper oxides in which superconductivity coexists with charge-stripe order

27-Sep-2022 - Why do some materials carry electrical currents without any resistance only when cooled to near absolute zero while others do so at comparatively high temperatures? This key question continues to vex scientists studying the phenomenon of superconductivity. Now a team of researchers from Andrea ...

High harmonics illuminate the movement of atoms and electrons

Detailed new insights into atomic motions

07-Jul-2022 - Laser light can radically change the properties of solid materials, making them superconducting or magnetic within millionths of a billionth of a second. The intense light causes fundamental, immediate changes in a solid by ‘shaking’ its atomic lattice structure and moving electrons about. But ...

New class of excitons with hybrid dimensionality in layered silicon diphosphide

24-Jun-2022 - Researchers from Nanjing University and Beihang University in China and the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) in Hamburg, Germany, have produced a new class of exciton with hybrid dimensionality by engineering the properties of layered silicon diphosphide ...