In a recent report, the American Association of Physics Teachers has developed an updated set of recommendations for curriculum of undergraduate physics labs. This document focuses on six major themes: constructing knowledge, modeling, designing experiments, developing technical and practical laboratory skills, analyzing and visualizing data, and communicating physics. These themes all tie together as a set of practical skills in scientific measurement, analysis, and experimentation.

Two-dimensional materials possess very different properties from their bulk counterparts. While changes in single-particle electronic properties have been investigated extensively, modifications in the many-body collective phenomena in the exact two-dimensional limit remain relatively unexplored. Here, we report a combined optical and electrical transport study on the many-body collective-order phase diagram of NbSe 2 down to a thickness of one monolayer. Both the charge density wave and the superconducting phase have been observed down to the monolayer limit.

We report that spin current transport across Pt/ferromagnet (FM) interfaces as measured by the spin torques exerted on the FM is strongly dependent on the type and the thickness of the FM layer and on post-deposition processing protocols. By employing both harmonic voltage measurements and spin-torque ferromagnetic resonance measurements, we find that the efficiency of the Pt spin Hall effect in exerting a dampinglike spin torque on the FM corresponds to an effective spin Hall ratio ranging from <0.05 to >0.10 under different interfacial conditions.

We report the formation and observation of an electron liquid in Sr2-xLaxTiO4, the quasi-two-dimensional counterpart of SrTiO3, through reactive molecular-beam epitaxy and in situ angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. The lowest lying states are found to be comprised of Ti 3dxy orbitals, analogous to the LaAlO3/SrTiO3 interface and exhibit unusually broad features characterized by quantized energy levels and a reduced Luttinger volume.

We study the crossover scaling behavior of the height-height correlation function in interface depinning in random media. We analyze experimental data from a fracture experiment and simulate an elastic line model with nonlinear couplings and disorder. Both exhibit a crossover between two different universality classes. For the experiment, we fit a functional form to the universal crossover scaling function. For the model, we vary the system size and the strength of the nonlinear term and describe the crossover between the two universality classes with a multiparameter scaling function.

We present a theory for the large suppression of the superfluid density ρs in BaFe2(As1-xPx)2 in the vicinity of a putative spin-density wave quantum critical point at a P doping, x=xc. We argue that the transition becomes weakly first order in the vicinity of xc, and disorder induces puddles of superconducting and antiferromagnetic regions at short length scales; thus, the system becomes an electronic microemulsion. We propose that frustrated Josephson couplings between the superconducting grains suppress ρs.

While the wing kinematics of many flapping insects have been well characterized, understanding the underlying sensory, neural, and physiological mechanisms that determine these kinematics is still a challenge. Two main difficulties in understanding the physiological mechanisms arise from the complexity of the interaction between a flapping wing and its own unsteady flow, as well as the intricate mechanics of the insect wing hinge, which is among the most complicated joints in the animal kingdom. These difficulties call for the application of reduced-order approaches.

To determine the thermal noise limit of graphene biotransistors, we have measured the complex impedance between the basal plane of single-layer graphene and an aqueous electrolyte. The impedance is dominated by an imaginary component but has a finite real component. Invoking the fluctuation-dissipation theorem, we determine the power spectral density of thermally driven voltage fluctuations at the graphene/electrolyte interface. The fluctuations have 1/fp dependence, with p = 0.75-0.85, and the magnitude of fluctuations scales inversely with area.

We couple magnetic tweezer techniques with standard lithography methods to make magnetically actuated single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) devices. Parallel arrays of 4-10 m-long SWNT cantilevers are patterned with one end anchored to the substrate and the other end attached to a micron-scale iron magnetic tag that is free to move in solution. Thermal fluctuations of this tag provide a direct measurement of the spring constant of the SWNT cantilevers, yielding values of 10-7-10-8 N/m.

Recent theoretical insights into the possibility of non-Abelian phases in ν=2/3 fractional quantum Hall states revived the interest in the numerical phase diagram of the problem. We investigate the effect of various kinds of two-body interlayer couplings on the (330) bilayer state and exactly solve the Hamiltonian for up to 14 electrons on sphere and torus geometries. We consider interlayer tunneling, short-ranged repulsive/attractive pseudopotential interactions, and Coulomb repulsion.