No Arabic abstract
The majority of nuclei available for study in solid state Nuclear Magnetic Resonance have half-integer spin $I > 1/2 $, with corresponding electric quadrupole moment. As such, they may couple with a surrounding electric field gradient. This effect introduces anisotropic line broadening to spectra, arising from distinct chemical species within polycrystalline solids. In Multiple Quantum Magic Angle Spinning (MQMAS) experiments, a second frequency dimension is created, devoid of quadrupolar anisotropy. As a result, the center of gravity of peaks in the high resolution dimension is a function of isotropic second order quadrupole and chemical shift alone. However, for complex materials, these parameters take on a stochastic nature due in turn to structural and chemical disorder. Lineshapes may still overlap in the isotropic dimension, complicating the task of assignment and interpretation. A distributed computational approach is presented here which permits simulation of the two-dimensional MQMAS spectrum, generated by random variates from model distributions of isotropic chemical and quadrupole shifts. Owing to the non-convex nature of the residual sum of squares (RSS) function between experimental and simulated spectra, simulated annealing is used to optimize the simulation parameters. In this manner, local chemical environments for disordered materials may be characterized, and via a re-sampling approach, error estimates for parameters produced.
The negatively-charged nitrogen vacancy (NV$^-$) centre in diamond is a remarkable optical quantum sensor for a range of applications including, nanoscale thermometry, magnetometry, single photon generation, quantum computing, and communication. However, to date the performance of these techniques using NV$^-$ centres has been limited by the thermally-induced spectral wandering of NV$^-$ centre photoluminescence due to detrimental photothermal heating. Here we demonstrate that solid-state laser refrigeration can be used to enable rapid (ms) optical temperature control of nitrogen vacancy doped nanodiamond (NV$^-$:ND) quantum sensors in both atmospheric and textit{in vacuo} conditions. Nanodiamonds are attached to ceramic microcrystals including 10% ytterbium doped yttrium lithium fluoride (Yb:LiYF$_4$) and sodium yttrium fluoride (Yb:NaYF$_4$) by van der Waals bonding. The fluoride crystals were cooled through the efficient emission of upconverted infrared photons excited by a focused 1020 nm laser beam. Heat transfer to the ceramic microcrystals cooled the adjacent NV$^-$:NDs by 10 and 27 K at atmospheric pressure and $sim$10$^{-3}$ Torr, respectively. The temperature of the NV$^-$:NDs was measured using both Debye-Waller factor (DWF) thermometry and optically detected magnetic resonance (ODMR), which agree with the temperature of the laser cooled ceramic microcrystal. Stabilization of thermally-induced spectral wandering of the NV$^{-}$ zero-phonon-line (ZPL) is achieved by modulating the 1020 nm laser irradiance. The demonstrated cooling of NV$^-$:NDs using an optically cooled microcrystal opens up new possibilities for rapid feedback-controlled cooling of a wide range of nanoscale quantum materials.
We theoretically investigate thermalization and spin diffusion driven by a quantum spin bath for a realistic solid-state NMR experiment. We consider polycrystalline L-alanine, and investigate how the spin polarization spreads among several $^{13}$C nuclear spins, which interact via dipole-dipole coupling with the bath of strongly dipolar-coupled $^1$H nuclear (proton) spins. We do this by using direct numerical simulation of the many-spin time-dependent Schrodinger equation. We find that, although the proton spins located near the carbon sites interact most strongly with the $^{13}$C spins, this interaction alone is not enough to drive spin diffusion and thermalize the $^{13}$C nuclear spins. We demonstrate that the thermalization within the $^{13}$C subsystem is driven by the collective many-body dynamics of the proton spin bath, and specifically, that the onset of thermalization among the $^{13}$C spins is directly related to the onset of chaotic behavior in the proton spin bath. Therefore, thermalization and spin diffusion within the $^{13}$C subsystem is controlled by the proton spins located far from the C sites. In spite of their weak coupling to the $^{13}$C spins, these far-away protons help produce a network of strongly coupled proton spins with collective dynamics, that drives thermalization.
Recently developed quantum algorithms suggest that in principle, quantum computers can solve problems such as simulation of physical systems more efficiently than classical computers. Much remains to be done to implement these conceptual ideas into actual quantum computers. As a small-scale demonstration of their capability, we simulate a simple many-fermion problem, the Fano-Anderson model, using liquid state Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR). We carefully designed our experiment so that the resource requirement would scale up polynomially with the size of the quantum system to be simulated. The experimental results allow us to assess the limits of the degree of quantum control attained in these kinds of experiments. The simulation of other physical systems, with different particle statistics, is also discussed.
Poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) has long been regarded as an ideal piezoelectric plastic because it exhibits a large piezoelectric response and a high thermal stability. However, the realization of piezoelectric PVDF elements has proven to be problematic, amongst others, due to the lack of industrially-scalable methods to process PVDF into the appropriate polar crystalline forms. Here, we show that fully piezoelectric PVDF films can be produced via a single-step process that exploits the fact that PVDF can be molded at temperatures below its melting temperature, i.e. via solid-state-processing. We demonstrate that we thereby produce d_PVDF, the piezoelectric charge coefficient of which is comparable to that of biaxially stretched d_PVDF. We expect that the simplicity and scalability of solid-state processing combined with the excellent piezoelectric properties of our PVDF structures will provide new opportunities for this commodity polymer and will open a range of possibilities for future, large-scale, industrial production of plastic piezoelectric films
Finding new ionic conductors that enable significant advancements in the development of energy-storage devices is a challenging goal of current material science. Aside of material classes as ionic liquids or amorphous ion conductors, the so-called plastic crystals (PCs) have been shown to be good candidates combining high conductivity and favourable mechanical properties. PCs are formed by molecules whose orientational degrees of freedom still fluctuate despite the material exhibits a well-defined crystalline lattice. Here we show that the conductivity of Li+ ions in succinonitrile, the most prominent molecular PC electrolyte, can be enhanced by several decades when replacing part of the molecules in the crystalline lattice by larger ones. Dielectric spectroscopy reveals that this is accompanied by a stronger coupling of ionic and reorientational motions. These findings, which can be understood in terms of an optimised revolving door mechanism, open a new path towards the development of better solid-state electrolytes.