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Whether or not an electron wavepacket accumulates a time delay when tunnelling out of an atom is still under debate. Improved all-optical characterization of the tunnelling dynamics by combining one- and two-colour driving fields may shed light on this question.
In its second measurement campaign, the Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino experiment achieved a sub-electronvolt sensitivity on the effective electron anti-neutrino mass.
Topological phenomena have mostly been studied in conservative systems. Experiments on optical resonator networks now show that topologically non-trivial characteristics can also emerge in dissipation.
The activity of molecular motors drives the self-organization of cytoskeleton structures, leading to large-scale active flows. Now, experiments and simulations show how a gelation process enables such long-range transport in spindles.
Physical systems with continuous degrees of freedom can be used to implement quantum error correction codes. An autonomous correction protocol has now been used to extend the lifetime of a qubit encoded in the motion of a trapped ion.
Electrons in an external magnetic field absorb electromagnetic radiation via cyclotron resonance. Deviations from this behaviour in the form of overtone resonances due to ultraslow magnetoplasmonic excitations are now reported for graphene.
A DNA-binding protein condenses on DNA via a switch-like transition. Surface condensation occurs at preferential DNA locations suggesting collective sequence readout and enabling sequence-specificity robustness with respect to protein concentration.
Topological effects have been found in a range of classical-wave systems, but it was unclear if the concept could be extended to diffusion. An approach using spatiotemporal modulations has now implemented them in a diffusive system
α-RuCl has a quantum magnetic phase that may be a spin liquid hosting Majorana fermion excitations. Heat capacity measurements show an anisotropic dependence on magnetic-field direction, consistent with predictions for the putative spin liquid.
An electron with a linear dispersion relation should contribute half of a quantum of Hall conductance and thereby manifest the parity anomaly. This is demonstrated in a heterostructure of topological insulator materials.
Optimally depositing optical energy into an extended region of a diffusive medium, such as biological tissue, is a challenging task. A matrix that maps the incoming wavefront to the field distribution inside the material can predict the energy enhancement that occurs at a given depth.
In burning plasma, alpha particles from fusion reactions are the dominant source of heating. The design choices that resulted in reaching this state in experiments at the National Ignition Facility are reported.
Spin–orbit coupling is an important feature of isolated quantum systems, but less is known about how it responds to dissipation. An experiment in a cold atomic gas now shows how these two effects enable topologically robust spin transfer.
Studies of first-order phase transitions in quantum simulators have so far been restricted to the weakly interacting regime. A tunable discontinuous phase transition has now been realized with strongly correlated atoms in a driven optical lattice.
Perturbations and disturbances can bring complex networks into undesirable states in which global functionality is suppressed. Now, a recovery scheme explains how to revive a damaged network by controlling only a small number of nodes.
The precise nature of the charge-density-wave state in kagome superconductors remains unclear. Now, local spectroscopy shows that rotational symmetry in real space is broken, with one direction being distinct from the other two.
Spectroscopic measurements show how the features of the band structure related to the kagome lattice in CsV3Sb5 contribute to the observed strongly correlated phases.
The beating of motile cilia arises from the collective action of hundreds of proteins. A study of the dynamics of cilia under different environmental and genetic conditions shows that the space of beating variations is low-dimensional.
Infrared images of Jupiter taken by the Juno spacecraft reveal an energy transfer driven by moist convection. This mechanism is expected to enhance heat transfer, which might also be relevant to Earth’s atmosphere.
In stellarators, turbulence is detrimental for the confinement of the plasma. In the Large Helical Device, a confinement regime with reduced turbulence and improved confinement is observed.