Weakly electric fish communicate and electrolocate objects in the dark by discharging their electric organs (EOs) and monitoring the spatiotemporal pattern of current flow through their skin. In the South-American pulse-type gymnotid fish these organs often are intriguingly complex, comprising several hundreds of electrogenic cells (electrocytes) of various morphologies, innervation patterns an...

The 11 August 1999 total solar eclipse had been studied using a large array of stations in Central Europe (Bencze et al., 2005). According to the result of this study, the amplitudes of the field line resonance (FLR)-type pulsations decreased in and around the dark spot by about a factor of 2, and this decrease moved with the velocity of the dark spot in the same direction. This decrease was in...

The dielectric dispersion in the uniaxial nematic liquid crystals affects the switching dynamics of the director, as the dielectric torque is determined by not only the present values of the electric field and director but also by their past values. We demonstrate that this "dielectric memory" leads to an unusual contribution to the dielectric torque that is linear in the present field and thus...

An experimental snapshot Mueller matrix polarimeter based on wavelength polarization coding is used to get a time-resolved description of electric-field-induced fast transition within a ferroelectric liquid-crystal cell. The parameters extracted from experimental Mueller matrices are linked to the molecule director distribution to further determine the average trajectory and the collective beha...

We show that it is possible to realize significant nonlinear optical interactions at the few photon level in graphene nanostructures. Our approach takes advantage of the electric field enhancement associated with the strong confinement of graphene plasmons and the large intrinsic nonlinearity of graphene. Such a system could provide a powerful platform for quantum nonlinear optical control of l...

A bistable liquid crystal display based on the bend and splay configurations has been demonstrated. This display can be switched between the bend and splay deformation in a three-electrode configuration and has infinite bistable lifetime. It also has wide viewing angles, excellent contrast ratios, and very fast selection. Selection electric pulse duration of 50 ms can be used to switch this dis...

A robust, nanoelectromechanical switch is proposed based upon an asymmetric pendant moiety anchored to an organic backbone between two C60 fullerenes, which in turn are connected to gold electrodes. Ab initio density functional calculations are used to demonstrate that an electric field induces rotation of the pendant group, leading to a nonlinear current-voltage relation. The nonlinearity is s...

In this paper, a novel electrostatic switch is reported that exhibits an ON/OFF capacitance ratio of 72, an ON capacitance value of 90 pF, and a pull-in voltage of less than 5 V within an area of 750 × 750 μm. These characteristics are achieved by utilizing a slit-shape middle metal layer in-between the top and bottom metal plates. This design makes the capacitance ratio and the ON state capaci...