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Confined within a porous aerogel, superfluid 3He loses its long-range order owing to random microscopic disorder, and becomes a glassy superfluid. Intriguingly, this effect can be switched off and the superfluidity restored.
Being able to sense nuclear spin dimers is an important next step towards single-molecule structural analysis from NMR measurements. Now the sensing of a single 13C–13C nuclear spin dimer near a nitrogen–vacancy centre in diamond is reported, together with a structural characterization at atomic-scale resolution.
A room-temperature motion sensor with record sensitivity is created using a levitating silica nanoparticle. Feedback cooling to reduce the noise arising from Brownian motion enables a detector that is perhaps even sensitive enough to detect non-Newtonian gravity-like forces.
Inelastic X-ray scattering studies of YBa2Cu3O6.6 reveal strong electron-phonon coupling and an inhomogeneous state made up of charge-density-wave nanodomains, which may explain some anomalous properties of the pseudogap state.
Long-pulse plasmas created in the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) mark another advance in fusion. The Chinese tokamak now demonstrates a method for controlling the instabilities at the plasma edge that might otherwise limit the performance of prototypical fusion power plants such as ITER.
Ferroelectric domain switching on the surface of a lithium niobate thin film can be induced by the tip of a scanning probe microscope, and gives rise to both regular and chaotic spatiotemporal patterns. Moreover, the long-range interactions that govern these phenomena can be tuned by varying temperature, humidity, domain spacing and tip bias.
A high-confinement plasma that is potentially useful for controlled fusion has now been sustained for over 30 s. The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak in Hefei, China, achieved this record pulse length by first confining the plasma using lithium-treated vessel walls, and then maintaining it with a so-called lower hybrid current drive.
An electron and a hole trapped in the same quantum dot couple together to form an exciton. Conventionally the hole involved is a heavy hole. Light-hole excitons are now observed by applying elastic stress to initially unstrained gallium arsenide-based dots. The quasiparticles are identified by their optical emission signature, and could be used in future quantum technologies.
The spin lifetime of a paramagnetic molecule on a superconducting surface is increased by orders of magnitude thanks to the effect of the superconducting gap, leading to improved control of molecular spin systems.
Small Fermi surfaces have been observed by quantum oscillations in the YBCO family of copper oxide superconductors, but until now it has been unclear whether they are specific to YBCO or universal to all underdoped cuprates.
Every metal has an underlying Fermi surface that gives rise to quantum oscillations. So far, quantum oscillation measurements in the superconductor YBCO have been inconclusive owing to the structural complexities of the material. Quantum oscillations in a Hg-based cuprate—with a much simpler structure—help to establish the origin and universality of the oscillations.
When a paramagnetic molecule is placed on a superconducting surface the lifetime of its spin excitations increases dramatically. This effect, caused by the depletion of the electronic states within the energy gap at the Fermi level, could find application in coherent spin manipulation.
