A few more interesting tidbits from the concluding half-day of the DOE ECMP PI meeting: Dmitri Basov showed some of the remarkable experiments enabled by layers of MoOCl2, which in the IR is an intrinsically hyperbolic optical material.  This material has unusual plasmonic properties considering its high resistivity.  These include peculiar cavity effects such as modifying superfluid density of a proximally coupled superconductor. Leonid Butov explained some remarkable evidence for superfluidity of indirect excitons excited in the moire bilayer of MoSe2/WSe2.  Low temperature mean free paths of these objects can exceed hundreds of microns (!). Cui-Zu Chang showed evidence that truly stoichiometric FeTe is actually a superconductor with a critical temperature of about 13.5 K, rather than the usual thinking that it is an antiferromagnetic metal. Apparently an extra 2% of interstitial iron is enough to kill superconductivity and induce AFM order. James McIver presented an example of how nonlinear optical effects in an optically driven (Floquet) Weyl semimetal seem to vary linearly with driving field - anomalously strong. Dmytro Bozhko showed a really neat technique, using Brillouin light scattering to map out the dispersion of phonons and magnons in YIG, and to extend this approach with a special hollow-core optical fiber to low temperatures with the motivation of probing magnon superfluidity in a particular antiferromagnetic insulator. Ray Ashoori used his characteristically pretty quantum capacitance measurement technique to examine the density+displacement field+magnetic field phase diagram of 5-layer rhombohedral graphene, revealing some surprising fractional Chern insulator states. Claudia Ojeda-Aristizabal discussed some mesoscopic transport measurements in bilayer graphene, where an adsorbed layer of spin-containing CuPc molecules seems to affect both decoherence and the trigonal warping contribution to it (related to intervalley scattering).  Feng Wang and You Zhou both discussed recent measurements looking at Wigner crystals and their properties in 2D TMDs, through a variety of means. Liuyan Zhao showed some very rich physics obtained in studies that moiré stack bilayers of the van der Waals insulating magnet CrI3.   Unfortunately I missed the last talk because of the need to head to the airport.  Overall, the meeting was very good.  Program PI meetings can tend to become less about telling coherent scientific stories and more about trying to show everything someone has done in the last three years.  This meeting avoided that, with clear talks that generally focused on one main result, and that made it much more engaging.  As good as tools for virtual gatherings have become, there really is no substitute for an in-person event when you can just talk to someone by the coffee about some new idea.

It was another very full day.   I had to pop in and out to attend to some things so I didn't get everything, but here are some physics items I learned: Dillon Fong introduced me to a technique I didn't know about before, x-ray photon correlation spectroscopy (see this paper).  You can look at time correlations of x-ray speckle near a particular Bragg spot and learn about dynamics and kinetics of transitions and materials growth.  Very cute. Charles Ahn presented work on high magnetic field superconductivity in Nd(1-x)Eu(x)NiO2, and I learned about the Jaccarino-Peter effect, in which an external magnetic field can counter the interaction between magnetic dopants and the conduction electrons.  This leads to "reentrant" superconductivity at high magnetic fields.  Danny Phelan showed that you can have two different crystal structures for La3Ni2O7, one that is stacked bilayers ("2222"), and one that is stacked monolayer/trilayer ("1313").   Ian Fisher talked about using the elastocaloric effect (rapidly and therefore adiabatically stretch or compress a material, leading to a change in its temperature) to identify phase transitions, since the effect is proportional to \( (\partial S/\partial \epsilon)_{T}\), the change in entropy with strain. Dan Dessau presented an interesting analysis of data in cuprates suggesting a form for the electronic self-energy that is called a power law liquid, and that this analysis implies that there is not a quantum critical point under the middle of the superconducting dome. Jak Chakhalian showed that epitaxially growing an iridate Weyl semimetal directly on top of insulating Dy2Ti2O7 spin ice leads to a dramatic anisotropic magnetoresistance at high in-plane fields that identifies interesting previously unknown physics. Daniel Rhodes showed some pretty work on superconductivity in T_d-MoTe2.  This material is extremely air-sensitive, and all of the device fabrication has to be done with great care in a glovebox.  This led to the following exchange.  Audience question: "It is notoriously difficult to make electrical contact to this material.  How did you do this?"  Answer: "Through tears and blood."  This was followed by a serious answer that concluded "The glovebox is always the problem."

This week I am attending the every-two-years DOE Experimental Condensed Matter Physics PI meeting.  Previously I have written up highlights of these meetings (see here, here, here, here, here), though two years I was unable to do so because I was attending virtually.  I will do my best to hit some high points (though I will restrict myself to talking only about already published work, to avoid any issues of confidentiality).   In the meantime, here are a couple of topics of interest from the last couple of weeks.   I just learned about the existence of Mathos AI, an AI product that can function as a math solver and calculator, as well as a tutor for students.  It is pretty impressive. I liked this historical piece about Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (he of the “Chandrasekhar limit”, which describes the degeneracy physics + gravitation that limits the upper size of compact stellar objects like white dwarfs and neutron stars before they collapse into black holes) and his interactions with Stephen Hawking.  It's pretty humanizing to see an intellectual giant like Chandra sending a brief letter to Hawking in 1967 asking for advice on what to read so that Chandra can understand Hawking’s work on singularities in cosmology.  Hawking’s handwritten response is clear and direct. In an online discussion about what people will do if Google decides to stop supporting Google Scholar, I was introduced to OpenAlex.  This seems like an interesting, also-free alternative.  Certainly worth watching.  There is no obvious reason to think that Google Scholar is going away, but Alphabet has retired many free products, and it’s far from obvious how they are making any money on this.  Anyone from Google who reads the blog, please chime in.  (Note to self:  keep regularly backing up this blog, since blogger is also not guaranteed future existence.)

Back in the dawn of the 21st century, the American Chemical Society founded a new journal, Nano Letters, to feature letters-length papers about nanoscience and nanotechnology.  This was coincident with the launch of the National Nanotechnology Initiative, and it was back before several other publishers put out their own nano-focused journals.  For a couple of years now I've been an associate editor at NL, and it was a lot of fun to work with my fellow editors on putting together this roadmap, intended to give a snapshot of what we think the next quarter century might hold.  I think some of my readers will get a kick out of it.