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A cold-atom experiment confirms Boltzmann’s special case predicted more than a century ago: the ‘breathe’ mode of a gas in a perfectly isotropic three-dimensional harmonic potential is never damped by elastic collisions.
A switchable induced magnetic moment in a non-magnetic metal that is separated from a ferromagnet by a thick superconducting layer contradicts existing models.
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.
A theoretical study looks at the interplay between disorder and chiral symmetry in the photon statistics in a one-dimensional photonic lattice, predicting that for increased disorder coherent light becomes thermal.
The mechanisms of decoherence in solid-state spin qubits subject to low magnetic fields turn out to be more complex than previously expected as an additional fast relaxation stage has now been identified.
When multicellular systems need to communicate over long distances, and signalling molecules are too slow to diffuse, travelling fronts of these molecules emerge—a phenomenon now reconstituted in a coupled array of artificial cells.
Bound states in semiconductor–superconductor hybrids are shown to have parity lifetimes of over 10 milliseconds, suggesting that they could provide a platform for topological quantum computing.
To study atomic-scale friction in a controlled environment, researchers used two trapped, laser-cooled ions in an additional optical potential. This set-up provides a better understanding of the interplay between thermal and structural lubricity.
Although electron motion is prohibited in magnetic insulators, the electron spin can be transported by magnons. Such magnons, generated and detected using all-electrical methods, are now shown to travel micrometre distances at room temperature.
Realizing non-trivial topological effects is challenging in acoustic systems. It is now shown that inversion symmetry breaking can be used to create acoustic analogues of the topological Haldane model.
In organic semiconductors, pairs of charge-carrying spins can behave as four-level systems. It is now shown that in the regime of ultrastrong coupling, the collective behaviour of these spins gives rise to a spin-Dicke effect.
Epidemics often exhibit drastic dynamics, unmatched by percolation theory—a difference that may be due to cooperation between contagions. A mechanistic model implicates network topology in regulating the efficiency of this cooperation.
An interferometric measurement based on high-harmonic generation now provides direct access to the electron wavefunction during field-induced tunnelling.
Using post-selection and electromagnetically induced transparency in a cold atomic gas it is now possible to generate a strong nonlinear interaction between two optical beams, bringing nonlinear optics into the quantum regime.
The abundant production of (anti-)nuclei in relativistic heavy-ion collisions provides a platform to test the CPT invariance of nucleon–nucleon interactions—offering the highest precision measurement to date in the light-nuclei sector.
A simple system for studying self-organization in biology comprises driven actin filaments, thought to interact primarily via binary collisions. Angle-resolved statistics suggest that the transition to polar order is driven by multi-filament events.