Extremely short pulses of polarized light waves are excellent for studying many different types of materials. Existing methods for producing such pulses do not always produce the desired properties. The processes that take place inside matter are extremely short-lived, and the light pulses used to study them need to be similarly short — in the range of around 100 attoseconds (billionths of a billionth of a second). In this timespan, a light wave can undergo only a few rotations, which may not be enough to provide useful information about the material.

A novel route to achieve two dimensional (2D) carrier confinement in a wedge shaped wall structure, made of a polar semiconductor, has been demonstrated theoretically. Tapering of the walls along the direction of the spontaneous polarization leads to the development of charges of equal polarity on the two inclined facades of the wall.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has become an indispensable tool for biological molecular imaging and clinical diagnosis during the past two decades. The image contrast in MRI which depends on the varying water concentration and local environment, often fails to produce a good signal which leads to the implementation of external contrast agents.

Half metallic ferromagnets (HMF) offer great opportunities in the field of spintronics. This is due to their peculiar band structure [see comparison between the density of states (DoS) of a metal, nonmagnetic semiconductor and a HMF in figures (a), (b) and (c) respectively], which gives rise to large spin polarized currents even at elevated temperatures, thereby rendering them suitable for room temperature applications.

We simulate deformations in polycrystalline solids using the phase field crystal model. When the polycrystal is sheared, it shows interesting patterns of atomic displacements that has signatures of crystallinity at nano-scale and flow properties of amorphous solids at meso-scales.

Proton is made up of quarks, antiquarks and gluons. We also know that proton has spin 1/2. How does the spin of the proton gets generated from different contributions from quarks and gluons ? What is the role of their orbital angular momentum ? These are intriguing questions in hadron physics. The answer seems to be not so straightforward, as the number of qaurks and gluons in the proton is not constant, it depends on the momentum or energy scale of the probe with which we investigate.