Closing in on superconductivity 1993 S/D Microwave penetration depths S/D Photoemission D wave SQUIOD Interferometry 1994 D-w SQUID Interferometry S Tricrystal ring magnetometry S Grain boundary tunneling S C-axis tunneling 1996 D Tricrystal ring magnetometry /*---------------------------------------------------------------------*/ Blue Laser Race Turns Red-Hot In the race to make the first blue light semiconductor lasers, the lead horse has come up slightly lame. chip based lasers ... Zinc-selenide (ZnSe) A robust semicondutor alloy known as gallium nitride (GaN) report sent a ripple of excitement. The whole world has been trying to make a GaN laser diode. It can be done. GaN is already used to make other light emitters, (LEDs). This will push a GaN Laser to the head of the field. Quadrupling the storage capacity of devices that currently use longer wavelength red lasers. Such as optical computer discs and audio compact discs. /*---------------------------------------------------------------------*/ Interfering with atoms to clear a path for lasers Laser passing through transparent medium such as air. Weak lasers slip through without difficulty, but more intense beams run into trouble. Use the second laser beam to put a kind of EM lock on the atoms of the medium so that their optical properties can't change. Self focusing psrings . phenomenon EM induced transparency. Allows a lser beam to pass undimmed through an otherwise opaque medium. Each atom has an electron that oscillates from its ground state to a higher energy state, known as the resonant energy, when it feels the laser's oscillating electric field. An atom see 1 electron moving back and forth periodically at the frequency of the light. In an opaque medium these electrons oscillate out of phase with the light. And the beam quickly loses energy and is absorbed. A second laser quantum mechanically freeze the electrons by setting up two possible routes of excitation to the higher energy state. /*---------------------------------------------------------------------*/ Microscopic Tunneling Sectroscopy on High Temperature Superconductors Tunneling spectroscopy crucial to BCS mechanism in superconductors Cryogenic scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) local tunneling spectroscopy to discriminate among the relative contributions to superconductivity from each of the atomic positions in the superconducting crystal structure. /*---------------------------------------------------------------------*/ Cellular Microbiology Emerging Yersinia Helicobacter Pylori VacA Toxin Trypanosoma Salmonella Membrane Ruffling Filopodia ActA CAAX Mycobacterium tuberculosis Listeria Monocytogenes Clostridial Toxins Neurotoxins /*---------------------------------------------------------------------*/ Pairing Symmetry in Single Layer tetragonal Tl2Ba2CuO6+/\ A high resolution scaning superconducting quantum interference device microscopy study of tetragonal single layer Tl2Ba2CuO6 films, deposited on tricrystal SrTiO3 substrates, demonstrates the effect of spontaneously generated half flux quanta. This observation shows that in addition to YBa2Cu3O7 the order parameter symmetry in Tl2Ba2CuO6 is consistent with that of a dx2-y2 pair state. This result also reuls out ay bilayer of twinning effects and any pairing that is incompatible with the fourfold rotational symmetry as in the Tl2Ba2CuO6 superconducting system. /*---------------------------------------------------------------------*/ Chaos and shapes of Elliptical Galaxies Hubble space telescope observations reveal that the density of stars in most elliptical galaxies rises toward the center in a power-law cusp. Many of these galaxies also contain central dark objects, possibly supermassive black holes. The gravitational force from a steep cusp or black hole will destroy most of the box orbits that constitute the "backbone" of a triaxial stellar system. Detailed modeling demonstrates that the resulting chaos can preclude a self-consistent, strongly triaxial equilibrium. Most elliptical galaxies may therefore be nearly axisymmetric, either oblate or prolate. --fin