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Sunspots are transient cool regions on the Sun’s photosphere where concentrated magnetic field lines suppress convection. It turns out that sunspot oscillations can map the coronal magnetic field strength with high resolution.
Simulated pipe flow is interpreted using an ecological model in which predatory zonal flow preys on turbulence, and laminar flows emulate nutrients — establishing a link between turbulence and the directed percolation universality class.
The strong confinement of plasmons in graphene makes them interesting for practical applications, but also difficult to excite. An all-optical technique can excite plasmons in graphene over a range of frequencies.
Bilayer graphene can host topological currents that are robust against defects and are associated with the electron valleys. It is now shown that electric fields can tune this topological valley transport over long distances at room temperature.
When laser light is focused onto graphene devices in a magnetic field a long-range photo-Nernst effect causes photocurrents to be generated along the free edges.
The superconducting properties of NbSe2 as it approaches the monolayer limit are investigated by means of magnetotransport measurements, uncovering evidence of spin–momentum locking.
Using large magnetic fields to drive domain walls in nanowires causes precessional motion, which reduces the velocity. The Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction is shown to circumvent this problem by inducing soliton-like magnetic domain wall motion.
Sliding friction involves the rupturing of interfacial bonds. Measurements of the balance between the dissipation and release of energy when ruptures take place now show that sliding frictional motion can be described by means of fracture mechanics.
Experiments show that electron waves can be confined to and guided along the edges of monolayer and bilayer graphene sheets, analogous to the guiding of light waves in optical fibres.
Magnetohydrodynamic generators use magnetic fields to convert the kinetic energy of conducting fluids into electricity. Fluid motion is now shown to generate spin currents, which can induce electric voltages without applying magnetic fields.
Electric-field-induced superconductivity in samples of ultrathin FeSe grown on SrTiO3 and MgO substrates shows that the superconductivity is not an interfacial effect but is rather related to a charge imbalance of electrons and holes.
Certain bacteria swim by rotating a single helical filament, moving forwards and backwards with similar speeds. The discovery that the torque is not equal in both directions links them to multifilament species with opposite filament handedness.
The Mott insulator Sr2IrO4 is intensively studied because of its electronic similarity to the high-temperature cuprate superconductor La2CuO4. Now, spectroscopic experiments reveal evidence for a hidden order with odd-parity symmetry in this system.
The thermodynamic properties of artificial spin ice are strongly influenced by the manner in which its constituent nanomagnets are arranged. The so-called tetris lattice geometry is now shown to lead to emergent one-dimensional correlations.
Despite the simplicity of the Carnot cycle, realizing it at the microscale is complicated by the difficulty in implementing adiabatic processes. A clever solution subjects a charged particle to a noisy electrostatic force that mimics a thermal bath.
A detailed scanning tunnelling microscopy study of the cuprate superconductor Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+x reveals the microscopic origin of the d-symmetry form factor density wave that exists in the pseudogap phase of this material.
Specific heat measurements up to 35 T provide thermodynamic evidence for a magnetic-field-driven phase transition within the superconducting dome of a copper-oxide-based superconductor.
Coupling two mechanical objects becomes tricky when they are quantum and can interact only through photons. An experiment now demonstrates such an optomechanical system with two separate atomic ensembles in the same optical cavity.
Sr2IrO4 bears a striking electronic resemblance to the cuprate superconductors, except the iridate is an insulator. Introducing electrons into Sr2IrO4 leads to a d-wave gap, suggesting superconductivity or something equally exotic.
Topological protection can stabilize states of matter, but for how long? By creating metastable magnetic skyrmion lattices, the interplay between topological and thermodynamic stability has now been probed experimentally.