Filming the thermal death of electrons in matter

It is well known that an electric current increases the temperature of the material through which it is conducted due to the so-called Joule effect. This effect, which is used daily in domestic and industrial heaters, hair ...

Ultracold transistors serve as their own memory devices

Digital transistors—assembled by the billions in today's computer chips—act as near-perfect electronic switches. In the "on" position, achieved when an above-threshold voltage is applied to the device, the transistor ...

Igniting plasmas in liquids

Physicists of Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) have taken spectacular pictures that allow the ignition process of plasma under water to be viewed and tracked in real time. Dr. Katharina Grosse has provided the first data sets ...

A material keyboard made of graphene

Researchers at ETH Zurich have succeeded in turning specially prepared graphene flakes either into insulators or into superconductors by applying an electric voltage. This technique even works locally, meaning that in the ...

Counting single photons at unprecedented rates

In high-end 21st century communications, information travels in the form of a stream of light pulses typically traveling through fiber optic cables. Each pulse can be as faint as a single photon, the smallest possible unit ...

page 7 from 34