Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Casimir forces are normally attractive and cause stiction, that is, static friction preventing surfaces in contact from starting to move. Now, a system exhibiting tunable repulsive critical Casimir forces, relevant for the development of micro- and nanodevices, is demonstrated.
The interplay between superconductivity that might break time-reversal symmetry and charge order is a key issue in kagome materials. Now, optical measurements show that spatial and time-reversal symmetries are broken at the onset of charge order.
Single-molecule magnetic tweezers enable probing the folding dynamics of a single talin protein for long periods of time. This allows the observation of previously inaccessible rare and kinetically trapped conformations.
Hexagonal boron nitride is a common component of 2D heterostructures. Defects implanted in boron nitride crystals can be used to perform spatially resolved sensing of properties, including temperature, magnetism and current.
The notion of chirality in dynamical systems with broken spatial symmetry but preserved time inversion symmetry has led to the concept of truly chiral phonons. These have now been observed in bulk HgS using circularly polarized Raman spectroscopy.
Ultracold gases composed of lanthanide atoms are characterized by long-range dipolar interactions. These have now been exploited to observe quantized vortices in a dipolar condensate through the manipulation of the atoms by rotating external magnetic fields.
The IceCube Collaboration reports a search for quantum gravity effects imprinted in flavour conversions of astrophysical neutrinos. No evidence for anomalous conversions between neutrino flavours is observed.
The transition from a glassy to a liquid phase is normally assumed to take place cooperatively across the whole material. But now, experiments show that, under certain conditions, isolated regions of liquid can form in the glassy matrix first.
Embryo patterning relies on morphogen gradients. Now, a morphogen gradient also encodes an unjamming transition, enabling collective cellular flows that re-shape embryos while preserving patterning.
Collective and self-organized behaviour of sheep consists of intermittent episodes in which the animals follow a temporal leader—a role that is switched between various members of the group.
The CMS Collaboration reports evidence for off-shell Higgs boson contributions in the production of Z boson pairs, and measures the width of the Higgs boson, which is inversely related to its lifetime.
The Lorentz transformation of electromagnetic potentials is confirmed in experiments with a highly energetic electron beam. This provides another test of the predictions of special relativity.
A noise-resilient protocol implemented in a cavity resonator coupled to a qubit demonstrates that large nonlinear couplings are not a necessary requirement for the fast universal control and state preparation of engineered quantum systems.
Interacting quantum systems near criticality have been proposed as potential probes for quantum metrology. An experiment with Rydberg atoms now proves the enhanced sensitivity of critical many-body systems to small variations in external parameters.
A quantum simulation experiment reveals the thermalization of a ferromagnetic system realized with a one-dimensional spinor Bose gas, providing quantitative insights into the condensation dynamics of large magnetic systems.
Measurements of the proton’s generalized spin polarizabilities provide discriminating power between effective descriptions of the strong interaction at low energy.
Many-body quantum systems that escape thermalization are promising candidates for quantum information applications. A weak-ergodicity-breaking mechanism—quantum scarring—has now been observed with superconducting qubits in unconstrained models.
The superconducting critical temperature of monolayer materials is often lower than their bulk counterparts. Now, intercalation is shown to induce two-dimensional superconducting properties while maintaining the bulk critical temperature.
Electrons in the non-superconducting state of cuprates can exhibit unusual transport behaviour. Now, analysis of experimental data shows that the magnetoresistance in this state is conventional, but influenced by an anisotropic scattering rate.
Cavitation refers to the emergence of bubbles from liquids undergoing pressure reduction. A hitherto unknown cavitation scenario is now reported, with bubbles originating from the atomically smooth interface between two immiscible liquids.