Understanding deformations of macroscopic thin plates and shells has a long and rich history, culminating with the nonlinear Foeppl-von Karman equations in 1904. However, thermal fluctuations in thin elastic membranes fundamentally alter the long wavelength physics, leading to strongly scale-dependent elastic constants, consistent with experiments that twist and bend atomically-thin ...
Optical spectroscopies have contributed immensely to the present understanding of metals, semiconductors and superconductors. Unfortunately, optics encounters problems when it comes to “seeing” effects at length scales below the diffraction limit of light and also with probing physics outside of the light cone. Both capabilities are highly desirable for the ...
