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A promising pathway towards the laser cooling of a molecule containing a radioactive atom has been identified. The unique structure of such a molecule means that it can act as a magnifying lens to probe fundamental physics.
Orderly or coherent multicellular flows are fundamental in biology, but their triggers are not understood. In epithelial tissues, the tug-of-war between cells is now shown to lead to intrinsic asymmetric distributions in cell polarities that drive such flows.
The ability to extract information from diffuse background signals in ultrafast electron diffraction experiments now enables a direct view of the formation of topological defects during a light-induced phase transition.
Networks of dynamic actin filaments and myosin motors, confined in cell-like droplets, drive diverse spatiotemporal patterning of contractile flows, waves, and spirals. This multiscale active sculpting is tuned by the system dynamics and size.
Trojan beams, which are optical counterparts of Trojan asteroids that maintain stable orbits alongside planets, have been successfully showcased in experiments, opening up possibilities for transporting light in unconventional settings.
Physical networks, composed of nodes and links that occupy a spatial volume, are hard to study with conventional techniques. A meta-graph approach that elucidates the impact of physicality on network structure has now been introduced.
Understanding the mechanism underlying light-induced superconductivity could help manifest it at higher temperatures. Experiments now show that the excitation of a specific phonon leads to a resonant enhancement of this effect in K3C60.
Electrons trapped above the surface of solid neon can be used to create qubits using spatial states with different charge distributions. These charge qubits combine direct electric field control with long coherence times.
Semiconducting dipolar excitons — bound states of electrons and holes — in artificial moiré lattices constitute a promising condensed matter system to explore the phase diagram of strongly interacting bosonic particles.
The Kondo effect — the screening of an impurity spin by conduction electrons — is a fundamental many-body effect. However, recent experiments combined with simulations have caused a long-standing model system for the single-atom Kondo effect to fail.
Permanent deformation in solids results from atoms not aligning with the external stress causing the deformation. Detecting such non-affine atomic rearrangements and connecting them to measurable mechanical effects is now shown to be feasible by means of high-energy X-ray diffraction.
A decade ago, the anti-laser made waves as a new type of perfect absorber that functions as a one-way trap door for light. Experiments have now demonstrated the control of light without absorbing it.
A detailed understanding of phonon transport is crucial for engineering the thermal properties of materials. A particular doping strategy is now shown to lead to good thermoelectric performance with low thermal conductivity.
A nonlinear optical approach has now enabled picosecond control of a complex band structure, driving a non-Hermitian topological phase transition across an exceptional-point singularity.
Understanding lattice-geometry-driven electronic structure and orbital character in a titanium-based superconducting kagome metal provides insights into the non-trivial topology and electronic nematicity of correlated quantum matter.
The simulation of open quantum many-body systems is one of the hardest tasks in computational physics. Now, quantum computers are close to answering crucial questions for such systems in a regime that classical computers cannot reach.
