News & Views

It has long been predicted that spin-1/2 antiferromagnets on the kagome lattice should feature a series of plateaus in the change of its magnetization under an applied magnetic field. A quantum plateau of this kind has now been observed experimentally.

Some exotic metals exhibit competing electronic states that can be influenced by small perturbations. Now, a study of a kagome superconductor shows that this competition is exquisitely sensitive to weak strain fields, providing insight into its anomalous electronic properties.

When cracks creep forward in our three-dimensional world, they do so because of accompanying cracks racing perpendicular to the main direction of motion with almost sonic speed. Clever experiments have now directly demonstrated this phenomenon.

Inertial confinement represents one of two viable approaches for producing energy from the fusion of hydrogen isotopes. Scientists have now achieved a record yield of fusion energy when directly irradiating targets with only 28 kilojoules of laser energy.

Multiple mechanisms can create electrons with reduced kinetic energy in solids. Combining these mechanisms now appears as a promising route to enhancing quantum effects in flat band materials.

Phonons do not carry spin or charge, but they can couple to an external magnetic field and cause a sizable transverse thermal gradient. Experiments suggest that phonon handedness is a widespread effect in magnetic insulators with impurities.

Electronic transport measurements of the anomalous Hall effect can probe properties of a frustrated kagome spin ice that are hidden from conventional thermodynamic and magnetic probes.

Experiments with unprecedented energy and momentum resolution reveal the nature of the pairing symmetry in KFe₂As₂ and pave the way for a unified theoretical description of unconventional superconductivity in iron-based materials.

Quasicrystals are ordered but not periodic, which makes them fascinating objects at the interface between order and disorder. Experiments with ultracold atoms zoom in on this interface by driving a quasicrystal and exploring its fractal properties.

Scalable quantum computers require quantum error-correcting codes that can robustly store information. Exploiting the structure of well-known classical codes may help create more efficient approaches to quantum error correction.

Optical atomic clocks are extremely accurate sensors despite the poor use of their resources. A parallel quantum control approach might help to optimize the resources of optical atomic clocks, which could lead to an exponential improvement in their performance.

Precise frequencies of nearly forbidden transitions have been ascertained in the simplest molecule, the molecular hydrogen ion. This work offers a new perspective on precision measurements and fundamental physical tests with molecular spectroscopy.

Predicting the large-scale behaviour of complex systems is challenging because of their underlying nonlinear dynamics. Theoretical evidence now verifies that many complex systems can be simplified and still provide an insightful description of the phenomena of interest.

Cells actively rearrange their cytoplasmic machinery to perform diverse functions. Now, friction forces generated between cytoplasmic components provide a physical basis for cell shape change.

A promising pathway towards the laser cooling of a molecule containing a radioactive atom has been identified. The unique structure of such a molecule means that it can act as a magnifying lens to probe fundamental physics.

Orderly or coherent multicellular flows are fundamental in biology, but their triggers are not understood. In epithelial tissues, the tug-of-war between cells is now shown to lead to intrinsic asymmetric distributions in cell polarities that drive such flows.

The ability to extract information from diffuse background signals in ultrafast electron diffraction experiments now enables a direct view of the formation of topological defects during a light-induced phase transition.

Networks of dynamic actin filaments and myosin motors, confined in cell-like droplets, drive diverse spatiotemporal patterning of contractile flows, waves, and spirals. This multiscale active sculpting is tuned by the system dynamics and size.

Trojan beams, which are optical counterparts of Trojan asteroids that maintain stable orbits alongside planets, have been successfully showcased in experiments, opening up possibilities for transporting light in unconventional settings.

Physical networks, composed of nodes and links that occupy a spatial volume, are hard to study with conventional techniques. A meta-graph approach that elucidates the impact of physicality on network structure has now been introduced.