Jun 2019, Volume 14 Issue 3
    

Cover illustration

  • Borophene, the lightest two-dimensional material, shows highly anisotropic atomic structures, electronic properties, thermal conductivity, optical, and surface ion transport properties. Both the free-standing and metal substrate supported borophenes have high structural diversity. Furthermore, the distinction between borophene crystal and boron vacancy defect is blurry, due to the ultralow boron vacancy defect formation energy. This phenomenon is completely different from oth [Detail] ...


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  • Research article
    Jia-Meng Zhang, Xue Li, Yong Zou, Shu-Guang Guan

    We study synchronization in a system of Stuart–Landau oscillators with frequency-weighted coupling. For three typical unimodal frequency distributions, namely, the Lorentzian, the triangle, and the uniform, we found that the first-order transition occurs when the frequency distribution is relatively compact, while the synchronization transition is continuous when it is relatively wide. In both cases, there is a regime of Bellerophon state between the incoherent state and the synchronized state. Remarkably, we revealed novel transition behavior for such coupled oscillators with amplitudes, i.e., the regime of Bellerophon state actually contains two stages. In the first stage, the oscillators achieve chaotic phase synchronization; while in the second stage, oscillators form periodical phase synchronization. Our results suggest that Bellerophon state also exists in coupled oscillators with amplitude dynamics.

  • Review article
    Hai-Peng Sun, Hai-Zhou Lu

    We review our recent works on the quantum transport, mainly in topological semimetals and also in topological insulators, organized according to the strength of the magnetic field. At weak magnetic fields, we explain the negative magnetoresistance in topological semimetals and topological insulators by using the semiclassical equations of motion with the nontrivial Berry curvature. We show that the negative magnetoresistance can exist without the chiral anomaly. At strong magnetic fields, we establish theories for the quantum oscillations in topological Weyl, Dirac, and nodal-line semimetals. We propose a new mechanism of 3D quantum Hall effect, via the “wormhole” tunneling through the Weyl orbit formed by the Fermi arcs and Weyl nodes in topological semimetals. In the quantum limit at extremely strong magnetic fields, we find that an unexpected Hall resistance reversal can be understood in terms of the Weyl fermion annihilation. Additionally, in parallel magnetic fields, longitudinal resistance dips in the quantum limit can serve as signatures for topological insulators.

  • REVIEW ARTICLE
    Yang Gao

    Electron conductivity is an important material property that can provide a wealth of information about the underlying system. Especially, the response of the conductivity with respect to electromagnetic fields corresponds to various nonlinear charge currents, which have distinct symmetry requirements and hence can be used as efficient probes of different systems. To help the band-structure engineering of such nonlinear currents, a universal treatment of electron dynamics up to second order expressed in the basis of the unperturbed states are highly useful. In this work, we review the general semiclassical framework of the nonlinear charge currents.

  • Zhi-Qiang Wang, Tie-Yu Lü, Hui-Qiong Wang, Yuan Ping Feng, Jin-Cheng Zheng

    Since two-dimensional boron sheet (borophene) synthesized on Ag substrates in 2015, research on borophene has grown fast in the fields of condensed matter physics, chemistry, material science, and nanotechnology. Due to the unique physical and chemical properties, borophene has various potential applications. In this review, we summarize the progress on borophene with a particular emphasis on the recent advances. First, we introduce the phases of borophene by experimental synthesis and theoretical predictions. Then, the physical and chemical properties, such as mechanical, thermal, electronic, optical and superconducting properties are summarized. We also discuss in detail the utilization of the borophene for wide ranges of potential application among the alkali metal ion batteries, Li-S batteries, hydrogen storage, supercapacitor, sensor and catalytic in hydrogen evolution, oxygen reduction, oxygen evolution, and CO2 electroreduction reaction. Finally, the challenges and outlooks in this promising field are featured on the basis of its current development.

  • Review article
    Zhi-Ming Yu, Ying Liu, Shengyuan A. Yang

    The anomalous spatial shifts at interface scattering, first studied in geometric optics, recently found their counterparts in the electronic context. It was shown that both longitudinal and transverse shifts, analogous to the Goos–Hänchen and Imbert–Fedorov effects in optics, can exist when electrons are scattered at a junction interface. More interestingly, the shifts are also discovered in the process of Andreev reflection at a normal/superconductor interface. Particularly, for the case with unconventional superconductors, it was discovered that the transverse shift can arise solely from the superconducting pair potential and exhibit characteristic features depending on the pairing. Here, we briefly review the recent works in this field, with an emphasis on the physical picture and theoretical understanding.

  • REVIEW ARTICLE
    Sabir Hussain, Kunqi Xu, Shili Ye, Le Lei, Xinmeng Liu, Rui Xu, Liming Xie, Zhihai Cheng

    Research about two-dimensional (2D) materials is growing exponentially across various scientific and engineering disciplines due to the wealth of unusual physical phenomena that occur when charge transport is confined to a plane. The applications of 2D materials are highly affected by the electrical properties of these materials, including current distribution, surface potential, dielectric response, conductivity, permittivity, and piezoelectric response. Hence, it is very crucial to characterize these properties at the nanoscale. The Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM)-based techniques are powerful tools that can simultaneously characterize morphology and electrical properties of 2D materials with high spatial resolution, thus being more and more extensively used in this research field. Here, the principles of these AFM techniques are reviewed in detail. After that, their representative applications are further demonstrated in the local characterization of various 2D materials’ electrical properties.

  • Research article
    Xiao-Tao Mo, Zheng-Yuan Xue

    Green–Horne–Zeilinger states are a typical type of multipartite entangled states, which plays a central role in quantum information processing. For the generation of multipartite entangled states, the singlestep method is more preferable as the needed time will not increase with the increasing of the qubit number. However, this scenario has a strict requirement that all two-qubit interaction strengths should be the same, or the generated state will be of low quality. Here, we propose a scheme for generating multipartite entangled states of superconducting qubits, from a coupled circuit cavities scenario, where we rigorously achieve the requirement via adding an extra z-direction ac classical field for each qubit, leading the individual qubit-cavity coupling strength to be tunable in a wide range, and thus can be tuned to the same value. Meanwhile, in order to obtain our wanted multi-qubits interaction, xdirection ac classical field for each qubit is also introduced. By selecting the appropriate parameters, we numerically shown that high-fidelity multi-qubit GHZ states can be generated. In addition, we also show that the coupled cavities scenario is better than a single cavity case. Therefore, our proposal represents a promising alternative for multipartite entangled states generation.

  • RESEARCH ARTICLE
    Ying-Yue Yang, Wen-Yang Sun, Wei-Nan Shi, Fei Ming, Dong Wang, Liu Ye

    The dynamics of measurement’s uncertainty via entropy for a one-dimensional Heisenberg XY Z mode is examined in the presence of an inhomogeneous magnetic field and Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya (DM) interaction. It shows that the uncertainty of interest is intensively in connection with the filed’s temperature, the direction-oriented coupling strengths and the magnetic field. It turns out that the stronger coupling strengths and the smaller magnetic field would induce the smaller measurement’s uncertainty of interest within the current spin model. Interestingly, we reveal that the evolution of the uncertainty exhibits quite different dynamical behaviors in antiferromagnetic (Ji>0) and ferromagnetic (Ji<0) frames. Besides, an analytical solution related to the systematic entanglement (i.e., concurrence) is also derived in such a scenario. Furthermore, it is found that the DM-interaction is desirably working to diminish the magnitude of the measurement’s uncertainty in the region of high-temperature. Finally, we remarkably offer a resultful strategy to govern the entropy-based uncertainty through utilizing quantum weak measurements, being of fundamentally importance to quantum measurement estimation in the context of solid-state-based quantum information processing and computation.