Tag Archives: zahid hussain

Natural 3D Counterpart to Graphene Discovered

Researchers at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source Find New Form of Quantum Matter

The discovery of what is essentially a 3D version of graphene – the 2D sheets of carbon through which electrons race at many times the speed at which they move through silicon – promises exciting new things to come for the high-tech industry, including much faster transistors and far more compact hard drives. A collaboration of researchers at the U.S Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has discovered that sodium bismuthide can exist as a form of quantum matter called a three-dimensional topological Dirac semi-metal (3DTDS). This is the first experimental confirmation of 3D Dirac fermions in the interior or bulk of a material, a novel state that was only recently proposed by theorists. (more…)

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A Superconductor-Surrogate Earns Its Stripes

Berkeley Lab Study Reveals Origins of an Exotic Phase of Matter

Understanding superconductivity – whereby certain materials can conduct electricity without any loss of energy – has proved to be one of the most persistent problems in modern physics. Scientists have struggled for decades to develop a cohesive theory of superconductivity, largely spurred by the game-changing prospect of creating a superconductor that works at room temperature, but it has proved to be a tremendous tangle of complex physics.

Now scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have teased out another important tangle from this giant ball of string, bringing us a significant step closer to understanding how high- temperature superconductors work their magic. Working with a model compound, the team illuminated the origins of the so-called “stripe phase” in which electrons become concentrated in stripes throughout a material, and which appears to be linked to superconductivity. (more…)

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Surprising Control over Photoelectrons from a Topological Insulator

Berkeley Lab scientists discover how a photon beam can flip the spin polarization of electrons emitted from an exciting new material

Plain-looking but inherently strange crystalline materials called 3D topological insulators (TIs) are all the rage in materials science. Even at room temperature, a single chunk of TI is a good insulator in the bulk, yet behaves like a metal on its surface.

Researchers find TIs exciting partly because the electrons that flow swiftly across their surfaces are “spin polarized”: the electron’s spin is locked to its momentum, perpendicular to the direction of travel. These interesting electronic states promise many uses – some exotic, like observing never-before-seen fundamental particles, but many practical, including building more versatile and efficient high-tech gadgets, or, further into the future, platforms for quantum computing. (more…)

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