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Artificial magnetic materials may lead to studies of the thermodynamics of arbitrarily designed lattices. Unfortunately, none of the proposed materials has achieved its ground state through thermodynamic equilibrium as real materials do — until now.
Topological insulators have a conducting surface on which spin currents are not easily scattered, although the addition of magnetic impurities does affect electronic behaviour. But is this situation unique? Graphene comes to mind.
Increasing the power of ultra-high-intensity lasers requires crystal amplifiers and metre-scale optical compression gratings that are ever more difficult to build. Simulations suggest that Raman amplification in a plasma could permit the generation of laser intensities many orders of magnitude higher than currently possible.
In the pseudogap phase of a high-temperature cuprate superconductor, conflicting evidence from different experiments points to a competing state or a precursor-to-superconductivity state. One single experiment now determines that both states exist.
Rydberg molecules, which consist of one atom in its electronic ground state and one in a highly excited state, can extend to the size of a virus. But size is only one oddity of these molecules. As has now been demonstrated, the chemical bond that holds the atoms together in this fragile molecule can be coherently controlled using laser light.
Recent advances in the formulation of the second law of thermodynamics have rekindled interest in the connections between statistical mechanics and information processing. Now a 'Brownian computer' has approached the theoretical limits set by the rejuvenated second law. Or has it?
Carbon nanotubes are not superconductors but they can carry a supercurrent injected from a superconducting contact. Analysis of the tunnelling spectra of a nanotube connecting two superconductors reveals details of the bound electron–hole states that carry such a supercurrent.
The quantum kagome lattice is a fundamental but experimentally elusive frustrated magnet. Neutron spectroscopy now reveals the ground state and elementary excitations of a deformed kagome lattice in which the quantum spins form an exotic pinwheel valence-bond state.
It is possible to noiselessly amplify a quantum state by first deliberately increasing its noise. This paradoxical result may have important applications in quantum communication and metrology.
Quantum mechanics predicts that measurements on spatially separated particles can yield non-local correlations. This is well established but defies intuition about space and time. The concept of 'steering' might help us to understand quantum non-locality better.
Humans tend to explore unknown locations, but preferentially return to familiar places. The interplay between these two basic behaviours accounts for many of the scaling relations observed in human-mobility patterns.
The finding that a network of 'leaky' neurons can sustain activity-burst avalanches links the science of criticality to that of realistic brain models.
