Considerable progress in the fabrication of quasicrystals demonstrates that they can be realized in a broad range of materials. However, the development of chemistries enabling direct experimental observation of early quasicrystal growth pathways remains challenging. Here, we report the synthesis of four surfactant-directed mesoporous silica nanoparticle structures, including dodecagonal quasicrystalline nanoparticles, as a function of micelle pore expander concentration or stirring rate.

We propose a two-step experimental protocol to directly engineer Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) states in a cold two-component Fermi gas loaded into a quasi-one-dimensional trap. First, one uses phase imprinting to create a train of domain walls in a superfluid with equal number of ↑- and ↓-spins. Second, one applies a radio-frequency sweep to selectively break Cooper pairs near the domain walls and transfer the ↑-spins to a third spin state, which does not interact with the ↑- and ↓-spins.

We demonstrate that the differential conductance, dI/dV, measured via spectroscopic imaging scanning tunneling microscopy in the doped iron chalcogenide FeSe0.45Te0.55, possesses a series of characteristic features that allow one to extract the orbital structure of the superconducting gaps. This yields nearly isotropic superconducting gaps on the two holelike Fermi surfaces, and a strongly anisotropic gap on the electronlike Fermi surface.

Coulomb interaction between two closely spaced parallel layers of conductors can generate the frictional drag effect by interlayer Coulomb scattering. Employing graphene double layers separated by few‐layer hexagonal boron nitride, we investigate density tunable magneto- and Hall drag under strong magnetic fields. The observed large magnetodrag and Hall-drag signals can be related with Laudau level filling status of the drive and drag layers.

Electronic nematic materials are characterized by a lowered symmetry of the electronic system compared to the underlying lattice, in analogy to the directional alignment without translational order in nematic liquid crystals. Such nematic phases appear in the copper-A nd iron-based high-temperature superconductors, and their role in establishing superconductivity remains an open question. Nematicity may take an active part, cooperating or competing with superconductivity, or may appear accidentally in such systems.

Recently, there has been a growing interest in adapting serial microcrystallography (SMX) experiments to existing storage ring (SR) sources. For very small crystals, however, radiation damage occurs before sufficient numbers of photons are diffracted to determine the orientation of the crystal. The challenge is to merge data from a large number of such 'sparse' frames in order to measure the full reciprocal space intensity. To simulate sparse frames, a dataset was collected from a large lysozyme crystal illuminated by a dim X-ray source.

The complex antiferromagnetic orders observed in the honeycomb iridates are a double-edged sword in the search for a quantum spin-liquid: both attesting that the magnetic interactions provide many of the necessary ingredients, while simultaneously impeding access. Focus has naturally been drawn to the unusual magnetic orders that hint at the underlying spin correlations. However, the study of any particular broken symmetry state generally provides little clue about the possibility of other nearby ground states.

We investigate the excitonic dephasing of transition metal dichalcogenides, namely MoS2, MoSe2 and WSe2 atomic monolayer thick and bulk crystals, in order to understand the factors that determine the optical coherence in these materials. Coherent nonlinear optical spectroscopy, temperature dependent absorption combined with theoretical calculations of the phonon spectra, reveal the important role electron-phonon interactions plat in dephasing process.

A series of experiments was carried out to explore the conditions under which ZnSnN2 would form by vapor–liquid–solid synthesis from a Zn–Sn melt exposed to a nitrogen plasma. ZnSnN2 precipitated at melt temperatures between 455 and 560 °C for melt compositions between 1.5 and 15 at.% Zn. Sn3N4 formed for temperatures between 440 and 560 °C for melt compositions below 1 at.% Zn. Zn3N2 apparently grew only in the vapor phase, and only at melt temperatures between 409 and 463 °C. Each of the materials was identified by its characteristic Raman spectrum and by Auger chemical analysis.

In the context of the relaxation time approximation to Boltzmann transport theory, we examine the behavior of the Hall number nH of a metal in the neighborhood of a Lifshitz transition from a closed Fermi surface to open sheets. We find a universal nonanalytic dependence of nH on the electron density in the high-field limit, but a nonsingular dependence at low fields. The existence of an assumed nematic transition produces a doping dependent nH similar to that observed in recent experiments in the high-temperature superconductor YBa2Cu3O7-x. © 2017 American Physical Society.