Conveners
Solid State Physics
- Karl Johnston (CERN)
Color centers in diamond are systems with appealing photo-physical properties for the development of quantum technologies. The ever-growing interest in these systems is motivated by their operation at room temperature, together with an ease of access and manipulation in a solid state system characterized by high transparency and structural stability, with applications as bright and stable...
Point defects in diamond are being intensively investigated for their applications in processing and communication of quantum information, as well as for metrology. So far, the negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy center (NV−) has been the most studied defect [1]. Thanks to its efficient optical spin polarization and spin-state dependent fluorescence, it is being exploited, for example, in the...
Naturally layered perovskites (NLP) such as the Ruddlesden-Popper (R.P.) phases ($\text{Ca}_{\text{n+1}}\text{Mn}_{\text{n}}\text{O}_{\text{3n+1}}$) have appeared as a fascinating route to achieve nonexpensive room temperature multiferroic materials. In these NLP, specifically in the $\text{Ca}_{\text{3}}\text{Mn}_{\text{2}}\text{O}_{\text{7}}$ compound, distortions of the lattice such...
The $^{229}$Th nucleus can be excited to a nuclear isomer state with an extremely low excitation energy of $8.28\pm 0.17$ eV. This excited state is within range of current laser technologies, making it an ideal candidate for optical nuclear clock applications. However, the production of such a nuclear clock is hindered by that same low excitation energy, which is of the order of typical...
