Process to create simulated lunar agglutinate particles

A method of creating simulated agglutinate particles by applying a heat source sufficient to partially melt a raw material is provided. The raw material is preferably any lunar soil simulant, crushed mineral, mixture of crushed minerals, or similar material, and the heat source creates localized heating of the raw material

Subdiffusion and cage effect in a sheared granular material

We investigate experimentally the diffusion properties of a bidimensional bidisperse dry granular material under quasistatic cyclic shear.The comparison of these properties with results obtained both in computer simulations of hard spheres systems and Lenard-Jones liquids and experiments on colloidal systems near the glass transition demonstrates a strong analogy between the behaviour of granular matter and these systems. More specifically, we study in detail the cage dynamics responsible for the subdiffusion in the slow relaxation regime, and obtain the values of relevant time and length scales.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures, submitted to PR

Experimental evidences of a large extrinsic spin Hall effect in AuW alloy

We report an experimental study of a gold-tungsten alloy (7% at. W concentration in Au host) displaying remarkable properties for spintronics applications using both magneto-transport in lateral spin valve devices and spin-pumping with inverse spin Hall effect experiments. A very large spin Hall angle of about 10% is consistently found using both techniques with the reliable spin diffusion length of 2 nm estimated by the spin sink experiments in the lateral spin valves. With its chemical stability, high resistivity and small induced damping, this AuW alloy may find applications in the nearest future

Electrical spin injection and detection in Germanium using three terminal geometry

In this letter, we report on successful electrical spin injection and detection in \textit{n}-type germanium-on-insulator (GOI) using a Co/Py/Al$_{2}$O$_{3}$ spin injector and 3-terminal non-local measurements. We observe an enhanced spin accumulation signal of the order of 1 meV consistent with the sequential tunneling process via interface states in the vicinity of the Al$_{2}$O$_{3}$/Ge interface. This spin signal is further observable up to 220 K. Moreover, the presence of a strong \textit{inverted} Hanle effect points at the influence of random fields arising from interface roughness on the injected spins.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Controlled switching of N\'eel caps in flux-closure magnetic dots

While magnetic hysteresis usually considers magnetic domains, the switching of the core of magnetic vortices has recently become an active topic. We considered Bloch domain walls, which are known to display at the surface of thin films flux-closure features called N\'eel caps. We demonstrated the controlled switching of these caps under a magnetic field, occurring via the propagation of a surface vortex. For this we considered flux-closure states in elongated micron-sized dots, so that only the central domain wall can be addressed, while domains remain unaffected.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Electrical and thermal spin accumulation in germanium

In this letter, we first show electrical spin injection in the germanium conduction band at room temperature and modulate the spin signal by applying a gate voltage to the channel. The corresponding signal modulation agrees well with the predictions of spin diffusion models. Then by setting a temperature gradient between germanium and the ferromagnet, we create a thermal spin accumulation in germanium without any tunnel charge current. We show that temperature gradients yield larger spin accumulations than pure electrical spin injection but, due to competing microscopic effects, the thermal spin accumulation in germanium remains surprisingly almost unchanged under the application of a gate voltage to the channel.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure