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Present-day understanding of planet formation has strongly been influenced by laboratory work under microgravity. This Review discusses the numerous experiments on the processes involved, from the onset of planet formation in sticking collisions to erosion of planetesimal surfaces.
The interaction of light with matter probed with a scanning tunnelling microscope reveals dynamics at atomic space-time scales. This Review discusses experimental schemes by which light–matter interaction is explored, taking advantage of light coupled into or extracted from the tunnel junction.
In the past few years, gravitational-wave observations provided stunning insights into some of the most cataclysmic events in the Universe, heralding a bright future for gravitational-wave physics and astronomy. This is a Roadmap for the field in the coming two decades.
Experiments suggest that graphene systems with moiré potentials exhibit orbital magnetism. This Perspective discusses the experimental evidence and introduces theoretical perspectives on the phenomena.
Low-energy neutrons are key for understanding fundamental concepts of quantum mechanics and physics beyond the standard model. This Review addresses topics such as matter-wave interferometry, quantum mechanical relations and hypothetical dark sector models and interactions.
Spin currents, which are generated by chiral structures, can be used to manipulate chiral topological magnetic excitations. This Review brings together advances in chiral molecules, chiral magnetic structures and chiral topological matter to provide an outlook towards potential applications.
First-principles calculations have been very successful in predicting topological quantum materials. This Technical Review covers topological band theory and provides a guide to the study of topological materials with first-principles methods.
X-ray lasers offer unprecedented capabilities, with their tunable, intense and short X-ray pulses. This Technical Review discusses the current and future use of X-ray lasers for probing molecular catalysts and metalloenzymes and their chemical reactions in real time and under functional conditions.
The search for topological phases of matter is evolving towards strongly interacting systems, including magnets and superconductors. This Review discusses the proof-of-principle methodologies applied to probe topological magnets and superconductors with scanning tunnelling microscopy.
A clock using the excitation of a low-energy excited state in the 229Th nucleus promises high accuracy and sensitivity to new physics. The recently measured properties of this nucleus will lead to nuclear laser spectroscopy with trapped Th ions and Th-doped crystals.
Semiconductor qubits are expected to have diverse future quantum applications. This Review discusses semiconductor qubit implementations from the perspective of an ecosystem of applications, such as quantum simulation, sensing, computation and communication.
Fourier ptychography is an imaging approach that addresses the intrinsic trade-off between resolution and field of view in optical systems and provides computational correction of optical aberrations. This Technical Review surveys its implementations and applications.
Symmetry breaking plays a significant role in the determination of the fascinating physical phenomena and quantum phase transitions in 2D materials. This Review discusses the state-of-the-art physical and chemical approaches to engineer the symmetry breaking of 2D materials and their heterostructures.
Complexity economics relaxes the assumptions of neoclassical economics to assume that agents differ, that they have imperfect information about other agents and they must, therefore, try to make sense of the situation they face. This Perspective sketches the ideas of complexity economics and describes how it links to complexity science more broadly.
Geometric insights into the structure and function of complex networks have led to exciting developments in network science. This Review Article summarizes progress in network geometry, its theory, and applications to biological, sociotechnical and other real-world networks.
Conventional solar cells suffer from the thermalization energy loss of hot carriers, which sets the Shockley–Queisser limit. This Review highlights the insightful mechanisms of slow hot carrier cooling dynamics and efficient carrier transport/extraction in 2D van der Waals heterojunctions, following opportunities in practical hot carrier solar cells.
Economic complexity methods predict changes in the geography of economic activities and explain differences in economic growth, inequality, greenhouse emissions and labour market outcomes. This Review summarizes a decade of research on economic complexity and its applications.
Viruses display fascinating dynamics during their life cycle. Only recently has it become possible to probe viral dynamics at the single-particle level. This Review discusses dynamical properties of viruses and recent developments in physical virology approaches to probe such dynamics.
