Some alloys don't change size when heated, and we now know why

Nearly every material, whether it is solid, liquid, or gas, expands when its temperature goes up and contracts when its temperature goes down. This property, called thermal expansion, makes a hot air balloon float, and the ...

Vibrating atoms make robust qubits, physicists find

MIT physicists have discovered a new quantum bit, or "qubit," in the form of vibrating pairs of atoms known as fermions. They found that when pairs of fermions are chilled and trapped in an optical lattice, the particles ...

Spintronics: Improving electronics with finer spin control

Spintronics is an emerging technology for manufacturing electronic devices that take advantage of electron spin and its associated magnetic properties, instead of using the electrical charge of an electron, to carry information. ...

Vibrations on a chip feel a magnetic field

AMOLF physicists have made mechanical vibrations on a chip behave as if they were electrical currents flowing in a magnetic field. Because of their charge, electrons are influenced by magnetic fields, which curve their trajectories. ...

Light-driven atomic rotations excite magnetic waves

Controlling functional properties by light is one of the grand goals in modern condensed matter physics and materials science. A new study now demonstrates how the ultrafast light-induced modulation of the atomic positions ...

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