The interaction between microwave photons and magnons is well understood and originates from the Zeeman coupling between spins and a magnetic field. Interestingly, the magnon-photon interaction is accompanied by a phase factor, which can usually be neglected. However, under the rotating wave approximation, if two magnon modes simultaneously couple with two cavity resonances, this phase cannot be ignored as it changes the physics of the system. We consider two such systems, each differing by the sign of one of the magnon-photon coupling strengths. This simple difference, originating from the various coupling phases in the system, is shown to preserve, or destroy, two potential applications of hybrid photon-magnon systems, namely dark-mode memories and cavity-mediated coupling. The observable consequences of the coupling phase in this system is akin to the manifestation of a discrete Pancharatnam-Berry phase, which may be useful for quantum information processing and the creation of nonreciprocal devices using proper cavity engineering.

Exotic optoelectronic and transport properties of two-dimensional (2D) materials have made them the focus of several application-oriented studies. This work is a feasibility study of such 2D structures based on group-V elements as passivating/transparent conducting interlayers in photovoltaic applications. We present a detailed first-principles study of the optoelectronic and carrier-transport properties of the two most stable and experimentally synthesized allotropes ($\alpha$ and $\beta$) of $\mathrm{As}$, $\mathrm{Sb}$, and $\mathrm{Bi}$. Monolayers of both allotropes exhibit a band gap for all three elements, which decreases and eventually disappears beyond a critical number of layers (thickness). Interestingly, this transition from semiconducting to metallic behavior is found to be very different for $\mathrm{As}$ as compared with $\mathrm{Sb}$ and $\mathrm{Bi}$. $\alpha$-Arsenene remains semiconducting until the pentalayered structure, while $\beta$-arsenene becomes metallic beyond the bilayered structure. All other allotropes of $\mathrm{Sb}$ and $\mathrm{Bi}$ are semiconducting only for a monolayer. The in-plane conductivity of the monolayered structures lies in the range from ${10}^4$ to ${10}^5\mathrm{S}{\mathrm{m}}^{-1}$, and increases with increasing layer thickness. On the other hand, the monolayers exhibit the lowest reflectivity ($5\mathrm{\%}$ or less), which increases to more than 25%, 50%, and 40% in the visible region for pentalayers of $\alpha$- and $\beta$-arsenene, antimonene, and bismuthene, respectively. Trilayered $\alpha$-arsenene, with a figure of merit ($T^{10}/R_{\mathrm{sh}}$) of approximately $0.15\mathrm{mS}$, is a promising candidate as a transparent conducting layer in solar-cell applications. Such combined evaluation of 2D materials based on their optoelectronic and transport properties is quite useful for future experimental investigations.

Planar heterojunction-based organic light-emitting diodes (PHJ OLEDs) usually have simultaneous exciton and exciplex emissions and understanding their evolution processes is crucial for designing high-performance white OLEDs, but relevant evolution mechanisms are still unclear. Here, unreported competitions between exciton and exciplex emissions and an undiscovered energy-transfer channel from triplet exciton to triplet exciplex states in PHJ OLEDs with different hole-injection abilities are investigated by separately measuring their current-dependent electroluminescence (EL) spectra and magneto-EL (MEL) traces at different temperatures. Interestingly, the ratio of emission intensity between exciton and exciplex states ($R=I_{\mathrm{exciton}}/I_{\mathrm{exciplex}}$) from the device with a good hole-injection ability rises with increasing bias current at each temperature, whereas that from the device with a poor hole-injection ability hardly changes. In addition, R from the devices with good and poor hole-injection abilities show nonmonotonic variation and monotonic reduction with decreasing operational temperature at each bias current, respectively. These various current- and temperature-dependent competitions between exciton and exciplex emissions are attributed to distinct current- and temperature-dependent electron-tunneling effects occurring at organic heterojunction interfaces of devices with different hole-injection abilities. More intriguingly, using MEL as a fingerprint detection tool, we find there is a Dexter energy-transfer (DET) channel from the triplet exciton to triplet exciplex ($T_1\to {\mathrm{EX}}_3$) state and the DET can enhance the reverse intersystem crossing (RISC) process from triplet to singlet exciplexes (${\mathrm{EX}}_3\to {\mathrm{EX}}_1$), which cannot be found using the conventional probing tool, EL spectra. Because the numbers of $T_1$ excitons in these devices have different current and temperature dependencies, various current- and temperature-dependent DET and RISC processes happen, which cause abundant MEL behaviors. Obviously, this work deepens the physical understanding of the competition and DET processes between exciton and exciplex states in PHJ OLEDs.

Large-bandwidth x-ray free-electron-laser (XFEL) facilities are desirable scientific tools in various fields, such as molecular structural dynamics and spectroscopy diagnosis. Various methods are proposed to broaden the FEL spectra. Here, a method is proposed to generate high-power XFEL radiation of tunable spectral bandwidth using plasma wakefield acceleration. An ultrabroad bandwidth is achieved by chirping the electron beam in a hollow-channel plasma without noticeable slice-beam-quality degradation. A dedicated beamline can match the beams with a large energy chirp in the undulators almost without beam loss. Numerical simulations demonstrate that a relative spectral bandwidth (full width) of up to 24% can be obtained with optimized beam and plasma parameters.

Coding metasurfaces bring photonic design into a new era for their convenience in manipulating electromagnetic waves in a programmable way. Different coding patterns can be further convoluted to give rise to nontrivial effects such as multiple beam steering, simultaneous control of surface and space waves, and the integration of multiple functionalities. However, previous experimental works have been limited to low frequencies. Extending convoluted coding metasurfaces to optical frequency can significantly reduce the size of structures, and therefore facilitate their applications in optical circuits. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a Pancharatnam-Berry metasurface designed by convoluting two distinct coding patterns. Such a metasurface exhibits integrated functionalities: the optical spin Hall effect and spin to orbital angular momentum conversion, which are robust over a broad visible band and a wide range of incident angles. Our work represents an important step towards multifunctional coding metasurfaces at optical frequency based on convolution operation.

Remanent polarization is a key parameter of a ferroelectric material. A large remanent polarization is favorable for various ferroelectric applications. Here, we report a large remanent polarization of 116.8 μC ${\mathrm{cm}}^{-2}$ observed in ${\mathrm{Bi}\mathrm{Mg}}_{2/3}{\mathrm{Nb}}_{1/3}{\mathrm{O}}_3$ (BMN)-modified ${\mathrm{Bi}\mathrm{Fe}\mathrm{O}}_3$ (BFO) thin films, epitaxially deposited on (001)-oriented ${\mathrm{Sr}\mathrm{Ti}\mathrm{O}}_3$ substrates buffered with ${\mathrm{La}}_{2/3}{\mathrm{Sr}}_{1/3}{\mathrm{Mn}\mathrm{O}}_3$ electrodes. Combined experimental analyses and first-principles calculations reveal that the incorporation of 10 mol % BMN into BFO increases both the intrinsic and extrinsic contributions, resulting in doubled polarization. The intrinsic polarization calculated for BFO-BMN is larger than that of BFO due to enhanced ionic displacements. Compared with epitaxial BFO films in a rhombohedral structure with an interaxial angle of α = 89.72° and quasitetragonal c/a = 1.018, the epitaxial BFO-BMN films become more tetragonal-like, with α = 89.91° and c/a = 1.037. Moreover, a unique rotated twinning-domain structure is developed in the BFO-BMN thin films, further increasing the out-of-plane polarization by rotating the [111] direction toward the film’s normal. These results provide additional opportunities to increase ferroelectric polarization through composition engineering.

We propose a quantum repeater architecture that can operate without cryogenics. Each node in our architecture builds on a cell of hot alkali atoms and noble-gas spins that offer an hours-long storage time. Such a cell of hybrid gases is placed in a ring cavity, which allows us to suppress the detrimental four-wave-mixing noise in the system. We investigate the protocol based on a single-photon source made of an ensemble of the same hot alkali atoms. A single photon emitted from the source is either stored in the memory or transmitted to the central station to be detected. We quantify the fidelity and success probability of generating entanglement between two remote ensembles of noble-gas spins by taking into account finite memory efficiency, channel loss, and dark counts in detectors. We describe how the entanglement can be extended to long distances via entanglement swapping operations by retrieving the stored signal. Moreover, we quantify the performance of this proposed repeater architecture in terms of repeater rates and overall entanglement fidelities and compare it to another recently proposed noncryogenic quantum repeater architecture based on nitrogen-vacancy (N-V) centers and optomechanical spin-photon interfaces. As the system requires a relatively simple setup, it is easier to perform multiplexing, which enables achieving rates comparable to the rates of repeaters with N-V centers and optomechanics, while the overall entanglement fidelities of the present scheme are higher than the fidelities of the previous scheme. Our work shows that a scalable long-distance quantum network made of hot hybrid atomic gases is within reach of current technological capabilities.

Electron tomography offers useful three-dimensional (3D) structural information, which cannot be observed by two-dimensional imaging. By combining annular dark-field scanning transmission electron microscopy (ADF STEM) with aberration correction, the resolution of electron tomography has reached atomic resolution. However, tomography based on ADF STEM inherently suffers from several issues, including a high electron-dose requirement, poor contrast for light elements, and artifacts from image-contrast nonlinearity. Here, we develop an alternative method called multislice electron tomography (MSET) based on four-dimensional STEM tilt series. Our simulations show that multislice-based 3D reconstruction can effectively reduce undesirable reconstruction artifacts from the nonlinear contrast, allowing precise determination of atomic structures with improved sensitivity for low-Z elements, at considerably low electron-dose conditions. We expect that the MSET method can be applied to a wide variety of materials, including radiation-sensitive samples and materials containing light elements whose 3D atomic structures have never been fully elucidated due to electron-dose limitations or nonlinear imaging contrast.

A ferroelectric field-effect transistor (FEFET) with a cylindrical ferroelectric (FE) nanopillar embedded in the gate oxide stack is proposed and investigated. The device utilizes the multiple polar topological states, which can be stabilized in a nanoscale regime. To correctly simulate the proposed FEFET, a full three-dimensional phase-field-based quantum transport model is developed where nonequilibrium Green’s function, Poisson, and time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau equations are self-consistently solved. Using the in-house tool, we theoretically demonstrate that the nanopillar FEFET exhibits multibit operation of six-level states with a reasonable memory window (MW) and sufficiently large difference in the current between the states. We also investigate the short-channel effect on the proposed FEFET and assess its scalability. MW linearly increases as the gate length decreases, because the polarization bound charges of the FE nanopillar induce the quasi-bound-states on the channel region and thus degrade the gate controllability.

High-dimensional quantum key distribution (HD-QKD) possesses a higher noise-tolerance ability and secure key rate. In the work presented here, by developing a mapping method for multiple degrees of freedom (DOFs), we propose and implement a HD-QKD system with a quantum bit error rate as low as 0.57%. Our HD-QKD system can stably achieve high secure key rates and is composable, allowing one to build HD quantum networks compatible with multiple DOFs. The results indicate that the proposed scheme could bridge HD and two-dimensional terminals encoded in different DOFs and could support large-scale deployment of quantum networks with high performance. Our work significantly enhances the performance of HD-QKD and strengthens the practical applications of large-scale quantum networks in a hybrid way.

The interaction between light and an atom causes perturbations in the atom’s energy levels, known as the light shift. These light shifts are a key source of inaccuracy in atomic clocks, and can also deteriorate their precision. We present a study of light shifts and associated dynamic polarizabilities for a two-photon atomic clock based on the $5S_{1/2}$–$5D_{5/2}$ transition in rubidium-87 over the range 770–800 nm. We determine experimental and theoretical values for a magic wavelength in this range and the electric dipole (E1) matrix element for the $5P_{3/2}$–$5D_{5/2}$ transition. We find a magic wavelength of 776.179(5) nm (experimental) and 776.21 nm (theoretical) in the vicinity of the $5P_{3/2}$–$5D_{5/2}$ resonance, and the corresponding reduced E1 matrix element $1.80(6)e{a}_0$ (experimental) and $1.96(15)e{a}_0$ (theoretical). These values resolve a previous discrepancy between theory and experiment.

Designing the giant-performance explosive energy conversion of lead-free ferroelectrics attracts increasing attention from the medical, energy, defense, and mining industries, whereas the underlying physics mechanism remains ambiguous. Here, chemical modification and pressure engineering are utilized to induce a structural competition between polar and nonpolar structures to achieve a superior explosive energy conversion ($34.57\mathrm{J}/{\mathrm{cm}}^3$) from lead-free (${\mathrm{Ag}}_{0.935}{\mathrm{K}}_{0.065}){\mathrm{Nb}\mathrm{O}}_3$ ceramics, enabling a sharp mechanical-stimulating pulse current within microseconds and having excellent thermal stability of phase structure. We reveal that these merits are related to a local structural heterogeneity on the atomic length scale. Pressure-regulating ferroelectric-antiferroelectric order is responsible for its explosive energy conversion, in which the evolution of oxygen octahedron distortion and electronic transition dynamics under the stress field have been specified. This work reveals the physical origin of the excellent energy-conversion performance of $(\mathrm{Ag},\mathrm{K}){\mathrm{Nb}\mathrm{O}}_3$, and draws a clear scenario for developing the advanced lead-free ferroelectrics device with high-performance energy conversion.

Using pulsed acoustic waves could provide a superior selectivity for microscale acoustic tweezers. However, the theory for the radiation force of pulsed acoustic waves has only been recently derived and no numerical implementations are available. In this paper, we present a finite-element implementation of this model to simulate the transient acoustic radiation force on small spheres. We use the model to simulate laser-guided acoustic tweezers and optimize their performance. By enabling numerical simulations of the transient radiation force, this work may accelerate the rational design of pulse-based high-selectivity acoustic tweezer devices.

We experimentally demonstrate a transverse magnetic (TM) mode laser in a photonic crystal (PhC) slab structure at room temperature. This study proposes a PhC nanobeam (NB) cavity to support a high-quality-factor ($Q$-factor) TM mode. For a large and complete photonic band gap, the PhC NB structures consist of large air holes in a thick dielectric slab. The PhC NB cavity is optimized numerically for a high-$Q$-factor TM mode of over 1 000 000 by reducing the radii of the air holes quadratically from the center to the edge of the PhC NB. A single-TM-mode lasing action is observed in an In-Ga-As-P quantum well (QW)-embedded optimized PhC NB cavity structure at room temperature via optical pulse pumping, where the QW layer is lightly etched. We believe that the TM mode lasers in PhC NB cavities with a lightly etched QW can be good candidates for a surface plasmon excitation source or a highly sensitive optical sensor.

We study spin-current-induced magnetodynamics in a planar nanogap spin Hall nano-oscillator (SHNO) based on $\mathrm{Pt}/[\mathrm{Co}/\mathrm{Ni}{]}_4$ with a large perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) at in-plane field geometry. Two distinct dynamic modes are observed in the spin-torque ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) and the generated microwave spectra. The primary mode has a frequency above the FMR frequency and a significant blueshift of the frequency with the increasing current $I$, consistent with the propagating spin-wave mode. The secondary higher-frequency mode with a much weaker power intensity, discrete frequency jump, and a slight redshift of frequency is only observed at low fields below the saturation field of 2 kOe, suggesting that it is likely related to the emerged domain region with in-plane magnetization due to grain-boundary defects, which is further supported by the frequency enhancement with reducing temperature. The primary propagating mode decreases its frequency and broadens its minimum linewidth by reducing the temperature, indicating that the frequency-drift instability dominates its dynamical decoherence due to the boundary-pinning effect. Furthermore, the micromagnetic simulation reproduces the experimentally observed propagating spin-wave and in-plane domain modes, and provides their spatial characteristics. Our demonstrated propagating spin waves in a SHNO with an out-of-plane magnetization extended bilayer can facilitate long-distance mutual synchronization in the SHNO network arrays for enhancing coherence and power as spin-wave sources in magnon-based devices or spin-based neuromorphic computing.