Making Invisible Physics Visible

New sensor technology created at UCSB captures nanoscale images with high spatial resolution and sensitivity.

If using a single atom to capture high-resolution images of nanoscale material sounds like science fiction, think again. That’s exactly what the Quantum Sensing and Imaging Group at UC Santa Barbara has achieved. Members of physicist Ania Jayich’s lab worked for two years to develop a radically new sensor technology capable of nanometer-scale spatial resolution and exquisite sensitivity. Their findings appear in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

The team chose to image a relatively well-studied superconducting material containing magnetic structures called vortices — localized regions of magnetic flux. With their instrument, the researchers were able to image individual vortices.

The team is currently imaging skyrmions — quasiparticles with magnetic vortex-like configurations — with immense appeal for future data storage and spintronic technologies. Leveraging their instrument’s nanoscale spatial resolution, they aim to determine the relative strengths of competing interactions in the material that give rise to skyrmions. “There are a lot of different interactions between atoms and you need to understand all of them before you can predict how the material will behave,” Jayich said.

Read more at UCSB

Image Credit: UCSB

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