C2N – News

Entropy reduces the lifetime of magnetic bits

Sept. 9, 2020 - Joo-Von Kim

Retaining stored information in magnetic materials relies on making energy barriers difficult to overcome. In a theoretical study, two researchers at C2N show that the resulting entropy can have the opposite effect. Their results challenge ...

Scientists use photons as threads to weave novel forms of matter

Aug. 18, 2020 - Raffaele Colombelli

Positive and negative electric charges attract each other, forming atoms, molecules, and all that we usually refer as matter. Negative charges instead repel each other, and in order to form atom-like bound objects some extra glue is needed, in ...

Silicon-germanium photo-receiver for mainstream telecom-waveband networks on a chip

July 8, 2020 - Daniel Benedikovic et Laurent Vivien

Researchers at C2N, in co-operation with CEA LETI and STMicroelectronics, have demonstrated a power-efficient and high-speed silicon-germanium avalanche photo-receiver. The device is fully compatible with accessible semiconductor technology and fiber-optic links operated at telecom waveband standard. Owing to ...

Mesoscopic limit cycles in coupled nanolasers under strong fluctuations

June 15, 2020 - Alejandro Giacomotti

Using two coupled nanolasers, researchers have demonstrated the existence of limit cycles with only a thousand photons in the cavities, in spite of the strong spontaneous emission quantum noise influencing the system dynamics. Any freely decaying dissipative dynamical ...

The cascade to criticality

June 9, 2020 - Jacqueline Bloch

Researchers at C2N (CNRS/Université Paris-Saclay), PhLAM laboratory (CNRS/Univ. de Lille) and ETH Zurich have unveiled a novel mechanism describing how criticality - a phase in which waves are neither extended nor localized but in a so-called “critical state” - ...