May and June’s LabTalks in JPCM

By Jade Holt on July 2, 2015

JPCM continues to publish high quality research in broad and diverse areas across condensed matter physics. These handpicked LabTalks are just a few published in May and June. You can find the full collection here.

Cooking Majorana’s in a microwave

Majorana states are an interesting area in physics and can be found as quantum states in nanowires and condensed matter. In this LabTalk and in their paper, 27 125302, Ruiz, Osca and Serra show how they classified a nanowire’s electromagnetic transitions to help detect and characterize Majorana modes in nanowires.

Based on: Ruiz et al J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 27 125302

The Casimir force becomes more mysterious

In this special issue article, Klimchitskaya et al look for the analytical behaviour of the Casimir free energy, pressure and entropy in magnetodielectric plates. They show that when dc conductivity of the plate is omitted from calculations, the Nernst heat theorem is satisfied, yet when the conductivity is included; the Nernst heat theorem is violated. This paper demonstrates a fundamental issue that deserves the future attention of researchers working in this area of physics. You can read the full paper and others in the special issue dedicated to Casimir Physics, here.

Based on: Klimchitskaya et al J. Phys,: Condens. Matter 27 214007

Significant drift and hot-electron effects due to weak electron-phonon interaction

Germanium is an excellent candidate for spintronic applications due to its electron spin dynamics. In their paper, Yu and Wu study the electron-phonon interaction in Ge and the effects of an applied external electrical field on the spin relaxation. Their results may explain the discrepancy between the experimental observations and the previous theoretical calculations.

Based on: Yu et al J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 27 255001

Piezoelectric properties of novel ScAlN alloys

The LED and microelectromechanical system industry is a million dollar industry and so the growth of high quality piezoelectric thin films is key in the development of a number of fields, such as energy harvesting, sensing and wireless communications. In this LabTalk and paper, 27 245901, Caro et al report on the spontaneous polarization of differing Sc content in ScAlN films and use their results to create a systematic approach to predicting and tailoring the piezoelectric properties of materials.

Based on: Caro et al J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 27 245901

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