A variety of different graphene plasmonic structures and devices have been proposed and demonstrated experimentally. Plasmon modes in graphene microstructures interact strongly via the depolarization fields. An accurate quantitative description of the coupling between plasmon modes is required for designing and understanding complex plasmonic devices. Drawing inspiration from microphotonics, we present a coupled-mode theory for graphene plasmonics, in which the plasmon eigenmodes of a coupled system are expressed in terms of the plasmon eigenmodes of its uncoupled sub-systems.

Among mammalian soft tissues, articular cartilage is particularly interesting because it can endure a lifetime of daily mechanical loading despite having minimal regenerative capacity. This remarkable resilience may be due to the depth-dependent mechanical properties, which have been shown to localize strain and energy dissipation. This paradigm proposes that these properties arise from the depth-dependent collagen fiber orientation. Nevertheless, this structure-function relationship has not yet been quantified.

Recent experimental discoveries have brought a diverse set of broken symmetry states to the center stage of research on cuprate superconductors. Here, we focus on a thematic understanding of the diverse phenomenology by exploring a strong-coupling mechanism of symmetry breaking driven by frustration of antiferromagnetic (AFM) order. We achieve this through a variational study of a three-band model of the CuO2 plane with Kondo type exchange couplings between doped oxygen holes and classical copper spins.

The transforming growth factor-b (TGF-b) pathway plays a fundamental role in development and disease. Despite its importance, the dynamics of signaling activity downstream of ligand stimulation have remained largely unexplored. The recent study by Vizán et al. demonstrates that loss of signaling-capable receptors from the cell surface leads to a refractory period during which cells are incapable of responding to additional signals.

The statistical properties of fracture strength of brittle and quasibrittle materials are often described in terms of the Weibull distribution. However, the weakest-link hypothesis, commonly used to justify it, is expected to fail when fracture occurs after significant damage accumulation. Here we show that this implies that the Weibull distribution is unstable in a renormalization-group sense for a large class of quasibrittle materials. Our theoretical arguments are supported by numerical simulations of disordered fuse networks.

The superconducting properties of CaTSi3 (where T = Pt and Ir) have been investigated using muon spectroscopy. Our muon-spin-relaxation results suggest that in both these superconductors time-reversal symmetry is preserved, while muon-spin-rotation data show that the temperature dependence of the superfluid density is consistent with an isotropic s-wave gap. The magnetic penetration depths determined from our transverse-field muon-spin-rotation spectra are found to be 448(6) and 150(7) nm for CaPtSi3 and CaIrSi3, respectively. © 2014 American Physical Society.

We model, using the macrospin approximation, the magnetic reversal of a perpendicularly magnetized nanostructured free layer formed on a normal, heavy-metal nanostrip, subjected to spin-orbit torques (SOTs) generated by short (≤0.5ns) current pulses applied to the nanostrip, to examine the potential for SOT-based fast, efficient cryogenic memory.

Coherent (X-ray) diffractive imaging (CDI) is an increasingly popular form of X-ray microscopy, mainly due to its potential to produce high-resolution images and the lack of an objective lens between the sample and its corresponding imaging detector. One challenge, however, is that very high dynamic range diffraction data must be collected to produce both quantitative and high-resolution images.

An emulsion-based serial crystallographic technology has been developed, in which nanolitre-sized droplets of protein solution are encapsulated in oil and stabilized by surfactant. Once the first crystal in a drop is nucleated, the small volume generates a negative feedback mechanism that lowers the supersaturation. This mechanism is exploited to produce one crystal per drop.

We have developed two techniques for time-resolved x-ray diffraction from bulk polycrystalline materials during dynamic loading. In the first technique, we synchronize a fast detector with loading of samples at strain rates of ∼103-104 s-1 in a compression Kolsky bar (split Hopkinson pressure bar) apparatus to obtain in situ diffraction patterns with exposures as short as 70 ns. This approach employs moderate x-ray energies (10-20 keV) and is well suited to weakly absorbing materials such as magnesium alloys.