Frontiers in Quantum Materials and Devices 2016 - day 1

There were a number of really interesting talks at the Harvard/MIT sponsored, RIKEN-co-sponsored FQMD workshop this week.   I'm very grateful for the invitation to come and present.  It was a very dense two days!  I have to be a bit careful in what I write, given that some of the work is not yet published.  Here are some highlights.  I'll try to use links to the arxiv versions of the papers so that people without paid access can see them.

• Ania Bleszynski-Jayich of UCSB spoke about her group's impressive nanoscale magnetic imaging using single nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond AFM tips.   The N-V centers are defects in the diamond lattice, where a N atom is substituted for a C atom, directly adjacent to a C-atom vacancy.  These defects play host to a single unpaired electronic spin and can be probed through optically detected magnetic resonance.  Brendan Shields at Basel gave a talk later in the day on this technique as well - impressive imaging of domains in antiferromagnetic (!) structures.
• Naoto Nagaosa of RIKEN gave an overview of his group's work on nonlinear and nonreciprocal electronic and optical responses in special (topological) materials - see here, here, and here for examples.  The last of these is an example where because of funky topological band structure, you can have a material that is rectifying (resistance \( R(I) \neq R(-I)\) ) where the rectification is controlled by a magnetic field.
• Dylan Maher of Bristol, most recently in the spotlight for cool quantum optics work with Aephraim Steinberg, gave a great overview of the impressive integrated photonics capabilities at Bristol - see here, here, and here. 
• Satoshi Iwamoto of Tokyo showed some neat results involving 3d chiral photonic materials (that is, materials with optical helicity built into their structure).  The wild thing here is that these materials in particular are constructed by manually stacking (!) individual nanoscale-thickness layers, using manipulation within an electron microscope - see here for an example.
• Jason Petta from Princeton presented some really technically beautiful work involving SiGe quantum dots coupled to (and via) superconducting resonators.  These are gate-defined dots, where metal electrodes are used as capacitor electrodes to "suck in" and confine electrons.  It's hard to explain to a non-expert just how technically impressive the multiple gate structures are that they've developed.  See here.   Figure 1 just doesn't do it justice.
• Makoto Kohda of Tohoku spoke very clearly about spin-orbit effects in GaAs 2d electron gas and in the layered semiconductor GaSe.  He showed very cool stuff - this paper showing coherent motion and precession of spin over long distances, and gate-controlled switching between weak localization and weak antilocalization in tape-exfoliated GaSe.
• Bill Wilson, executive director of Harvard's CNS, gave an overview of their nanofab facility.  Truly, it is amazing how much internal investment Harvard has made in that facility, and I'm not even talking about the construction of the building itself.  It's very hard not to be jealous.  As often comes up when talking about Harvard, we again see that having a $40B endowment simply makes many problems faced by mere mortals simply evaporate.