Research articles

In spite of its wide technological use, the response of silicon to rapid compression remains poorly understood. By means of an X-ray diffraction method based on a free-electron laser, the process for laser-driven dynamic shock compression is now elucidated in this system.

A periodic pattern of Cooper pairs is observed at the atomic scale and is shown to be correlated with the local strength of the superconductivity. This reveals a new interplay between different ordered states in the cuprates.

Suspended clusters of honeybees withstand dynamic mechanical forcing from their environment. Experiments and simulations suggest that collective stability relies on individual bees responding to local variations in strain.

A rigid particle moving along a soft wall feels a repulsive force that can reduce its drag. Evidence now suggests that for thin enough walls the particle can be displaced appreciably—a finding that may have implications for biological membranes.

Water drops placed at rest on flat, hot solids are found to rotate and spontaneously propel themselves in the direction of their rotation. The effect is due to symmetry breaking of the flow inside the drop, which couples rotation to translation.

Non-equilibrium Bose–Einstein condensation of 7 ± 2 photons is observed in a sculpted dye-filled microcavity. The small number of particles allows the authors to access and characterize the non-equilibrium dynamics of the bosonic modes.

A theoretical and numerical approach, validated by experiments at the KSTAR facility, shows how magnetohydrodynamic instabilities in tokamak plasmas can be efficiently controlled by a small relaxation of the confining field into a 3D configuration.

The realization of a two-dimensional quadrupole topological insulator—featuring gapless corner states but an otherwise insulating bulk and edge—establishes electrical circuits as a versatile platform for implementing topological band structures.

Superradiance is reported from an ensemble of nitrogen–vacancy centres coupled to a microwave resonator in the fast cavity limit.

The entropy of a few-electron quantum system is measured for the first time by tracking the movement of charge in and out of the system. This could allow the unambiguous detection of Majorana fermions in solid state devices.

Quantum fluctuations in space and time can now be directly imaged using a scanning superconducting quantum interference device. The technique allows access to the local dynamics of a system close to a quantum phase transition.

The phase transition between a superconductor and insulator is examined in a new type of heterostructure. A metallic regime is found, which disappears in a magnetic field, giving fresh insight to a paradigmatic quantum phase transition.

Demonstration of a passive swap gate between the states of a fibre-guided photonic qubit and a single atom.

A highly precise measurement of an optical transition in the helium atom has been obtained using state-of-the-art techniques. The result provides a stringent test of QED theory at low energy levels with tools of atomic physics.

The physical conditions that support a geometric interpretation of spacetime, such as the equivalence between rest and inertial mass, are shown not to be necessarily valid in the quantum regime, and a quantum formulation is provided.

The demonstration of substantially enhanced high-harmonic emission from a silicon metasurface suggests a route towards novel photonic devices based on a combination of ultrafast strong-field physics and nanofabrication technology.

Coherent driving of all transitions of a three-level system generates a closed-contour interaction, which is here shown to create efficient manipulation methods for electronic spins in nitrogen–vacancy centres in diamond.

Fluid transport at the nanoscale is important for understanding a range of phenomena in biological and physical systems. A theory accounting for transport through fluctuating channels is presented, providing a framework for designing active membranes.

The Kerr and Faraday effects enable routing of light in an applied magnetic field. Now a new class of magneto-optical phenomena is proposed and demonstrated in which light emission is controlled perpendicular to the external magnetic field.

Using terahertz pulses, the quasiparticle dynamics of the heavy-fermion compound CeCu_6−xAu are investigated in the vicinity of its quantum critical point.