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Engineered defects in the diamond lattice hold promise for the storage and manipulation of quantum information. Entanglement between the electron and nuclear spins of two such defects is demonstrated at room temperature.
A matter-wave interferometer is ‘universal’ if it can be applied to any atom or molecule irrespective of its internal state. This removes the need to prepare a spatially coherent incident beam. Such a system is now realized using three separate optical ionization gratings, and interference of molecular clusters with a de Broglie wavelength as small as 275 fm is demonstrated.
A magnetometer focused on nitrogen-vacancy centres in diamond can image the magnetic dipole field of a single target electron spin at room temperature and ambient pressure.
Electric fields can break the structural inversion symmetry in bilayer 2D materials, providing a way of tuning the magnetic moment and Berry curvature. This effect can be probed directly in bilayer MoS2 using optical measurements.
An all-optical method to measure the space–time characteristics of an isolated attosecond pulse, without temporal and spatial averaging, is now demonstrated. The approach will provide further insight into the generation of ultrafast light, and may possibly be used to finely control the pulse characteristics.
A quantum phase transition from an antiferromagnetic to a ferromagnetic state is now measured in graphene bilayers. This observation supports the idea that bilayer graphene can sustain counter-propagating spin-polarized edge modes in analogy to the quantum spin Hall effect seen in topological insulators.
Injection of spin-polarized electrons into a superconductor leads to both spin and charge imbalance. If charge relaxation occurs faster than spin relaxation, it is possible to observe excess spin at almost no extra charge.
Linear-stability measures for assessing the state of a dynamical system are inherently local, and thus insufficient to quantify stability against substantial perturbations. The volume of a state’s basin of attraction offers a powerful alternative—and points towards a plausible explanation for regularity in real-world networks.
