Previous criteria for the feasibility of reconstructing phase information from intensity measurements, both in x-ray crystallography and more recently in coherent x-ray imaging, have been based on the Maxwell constraint counting principle. We propose a new criterion, based on Shannon's utual information, that is better suited for noisy data or contrast that has strong priors not well modeled by continuous variables.

Mechanical dissipation poses a ubiquitous challenge to the performance of nanomechanical devices. Here we analyze the support-induced dissipation of high-stress nanomechanical resonators. We develop a model for this loss mechanism and test it on Si3N4 membranes with circular and square geometries. The measured Q values of different harmonics present a nonmonotonic behavior which is successfully explained.

Significant excitonic effects were observed in graphene by measuring its optical conductivity in a broad spectral range including the two-dimensional π-band saddle-point singularities in the electronic structure. The strong electron-hole interactions manifest themselves in an asymmetric resonance peaked at 4.62 eV, which is redshifted by nearly 600 meV from the value predicted by ab initio GW calculations for the band-to-band transitions.

Mesoporous silica with cubic symmetry has attracted interest from researchers for some time. Here, we present the room temperature synthesis of mesoporous silica nanoparticles possessing cubic Pm3?n symmetry with very high molar ratios (>50%) of 3-aminopropyl triethoxysilane. The synthesis is robust allowing, for example, co-condensation of organic dyes without loss of structure. By means of pore expander molecules, the pore size can be enlarged from 2.7 to 5 nm, while particle size decreases.

We demonstrate terahertz (THz) imaging and spectroscopy of a 15 × 15-mm2 single-layer graphene film on Si using broadband THz pulses. The THz images clearly map out the THz carrier dynamics of the grapheneon-Si sample, allowing us to measure sheet conductivity with sub-mm resolution without fabricating electrodes. The THz carrier dynamics are dominated by intraband transitions and the THz-induced electron motion is characterized by a flat spectral response.

The properties of polycrystalline materials are often dominated by the size of their grains and by the atomic structure of their grain boundaries. These effects should be especially pronounced in two-dimensional materials, where even a line defect can divide and disrupt a crystal. These issues take on practical significance in graphene, which is a hexagonal, two-dimensional crystal of carbon atoms. Single-atom-thick graphene sheets can now be produced by chemical vapour deposition on scales of up to metres, making their polycrystallinity almost unavoidable.

The Macromolecular Diffraction Facility at the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (MacCHESS) is a national research resource supported by the National Center for Research Resources of the US National Institutes of Health. MacCHESS is pursuing several research initiatives designed to benefit both CHESS users and the wider structural biology community.

We study, using simulated experiments inspired by thin-film magnetic domain patterns, the feasibility of phase retrieval in x-ray diffractive imaging in the presence of intrinsic charge scattering given only photon-shot-noise limited diffraction data. We detail a reconstruction algorithm to recover the sample's magnetization distribution under such conditions and compare its performance with that of Fourier transform holography.

We study a theoretical model of virtual scanning tunneling microscopy (VSTM): a proposed application of interlayer tunneling in a bilayer system to locally probe a two-dimensional electron system (2DES) in a semiconductor heterostructure. We consider tunneling for the case where transport in the 2DESs is ballistic and show that the zero-bias anomaly is suppressed by extremely efficient screening. Since such an anomaly would complicate the interpretation of data from VSTM, this result is encouraging for efforts to implement such a microscopy technique.

Rare earth doping is the key strategy to increase the Curie temperature (TC) of the ferromagnetic semiconductor EuO. The interplay between doping and charge carrier density (n), and the limit of the TC increase, however, are yet to be understood. We report measurements of n and TC of Gd-doped EuO over a wide range of doping levels. The results show a direct correlation between n and TC, with both exhibiting a maximum at high doping. On average, less than 35% of the dopants act as donors, raising the question about the limit to increasing TC. © 2010 The American Physical Society.