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A revisiting of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in the light of modern quantum information theory yields a formulation that takes into account the reduction in uncertainty from the point of view of a quantum observer.
The community of statistical physicists meets every three years on a different continent at the series of STATPHYS conferences to define the state-of-the-art in the field and to outline its possible evolution.
Real-space visualizations of the Pauli exclusion principle in clouds of cold fermions show quantum mechanics at work, and suggest a new tool for measuring nanokelvin temperatures.
Thermal noise destroys the fragile correlations that characterize many-body systems at a quantum critical point. Theoretical work now shows that another generic form of noise acts differently: flicker noise may alter some properties of a quantum phase transition, but it can preserve the quantum critical state.
Broken symmetry is central to understanding the properties and behaviour of many solid-state systems, but the speed with which they occur makes them difficult to study. Using a state-of-the-art ultrafast pump–probe technique, a new study reveals in unprecedented detail the rich variety of phenomena that arise during a symmetry breaking transition.
Solar flares are the most energetic events in our Solar System, but relatively little is known about their contribution to the total energy the Earth receives from the Sun. The detection of a moderate solar flare in the total solar irradiance suggests their impact on the variability of the Sun's output could be larger than expected.
Pair formation and condensation usually occur together in Fermi superfluids. The observation of a pseudogap that implies pairing above the condensation temperature in a strongly interacting Fermi gas is thus an exciting development.
The electrical current that can be carried by a high-temperature superconductor is known to be sharply reduced by grain boundaries in the superconductor. A state-of-the-art calculation shows that this arises because of the accumulation of charge at the grain boundary.
Coulomb interactions can cause a rapid change in the phase of the wavefunction along a very narrow superconducting system. Such a phase slip at the quantum level is now measured in a chain of Josephson junctions.
A superconductor that can be doped with elements that add electrons or take them away may finally lead to a clearer understanding of the transition from an insulator to a superconductor.
The Turing mechanism provides a paradigm for the spontaneous generation of patterns in reaction–diffusion systems. A framework that describes Turing-pattern formation in the context of complex networks should provide a new basis for studying the phenomenon.
Confinement of helium in a micrometre-size box rounds the sharp transition and depresses the specific-heat maximum. But coupling an array of boxes through a thin, non-superfluid film is now shown to raise that maximum, while the boxes also enhance superfluidity in the film.
The critical point of a fluid is defined as the point beyond which it ceases to exhibit distinct liquid- or gas-like states. A crossover between liquid-like and gas-like behaviour observed by inelastic X-ray scattering suggests subtle effects involving nanoscale fluctuations in the one-phase region above the critical point.
Experiments aimed at finding Einstein's elusive gravitational waves have reached their designed sensitivity. Yet we are still waiting for the first detection. What can we learn from this?
