NEWSROOM

Researchers at Tohoku University and NIMS have overcome a long-standing barrier to fast charge detection in high-resistance 2D-material quantum devices. By integrating a strontium titanate variable capacitor into a high-frequency resonant circuit, the team achieved near-perfect impedance matching, clearly resolving Coulomb oscillations from individual electrons and remaining stable under the perpendicular magnetic fields needed for spin-valley qubits.

Physicists at Auburn University used laser pulses to bring order to polar nanoregions in a modified strontium titanate crystal, resolving a decades-old debate over whether these charged islands pre-exist or form as atoms shift together. Sensitive optical measurements show the regions are already present before aligning on cooling. Brief light pulses aligned them for about a picosecond, showing light can both create and read the pattern.