Reviews & Analysis

Strength lies in numbers and in teamwork: tens of thousands of artificial atoms tightly packed in a nanodiamond act cooperatively, enhancing the optical trapping forces beyond the expected classical bulk polarizability contribution.

Striking visualization of the flows generated by starfish larvae in their fluid environment offers unique insight into how these organisms live. The beautiful vortices they create betray a dynamic mechanism for trading swimming off against feeding.

Recent progress in engineering quantum gases of polar molecules brings closer their application in fundamental tests, ultracold chemistry and the study of new quantum phases of matter.

Early forms of life could have started by molecular compounds coming together under conditions dense enough to promote reactions. But how might these droplets have undergone what we now know as cell division? The answer may be simpler than we think.

Ensembles of magnetic colloids can undergo an instability triggering the formation of clusters that move faster than the particles themselves. The many-body process relies on hydrodynamics alone and may prove useful for load delivery in fluidics.

Direct satellite observations of energy transfer between large and small space plasma scales contribute to our understanding of how matter in the Universe gets hot.

Without a very precise timer one can never catch up with the electron released in photoemission. Attosecond streaking spectroscopy allows such a chronometer clock to be set to zero and reveals the role of electron correlations.

Low-mass stars form through a process known as disk accretion, eating up material that orbits in a disk around them. It turns out that the same mechanism also describes the formation of more massive stars.

A connection between low crystalline symmetry and the allowed symmetries of the current-induced torques generated through the spin–orbit interaction opens up their use in devices with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy.

Intuition informs a widespread policy of epidemic response, replacing infected workers in classrooms or hospitals with healthy substitutes. But modelling now suggests that this mechanism may be a key factor in the accelerated spread of an epidemic.

Solar eruptions are triggered by magnetic stress building up in the corona due to the motion of the Sun's dense surface. New observations reveal that these eruptions can, in turn, induce the rotational motion of sunspots.

Experiments of the Aharonov–Bohm type typically involve particles that are charged and interact with a magnetic flux. Photons aren't the former and don't do the latter. Yet, an Aharonov–Bohm ring for photons has just been realized experimentally.

By exploiting the optical Stark effect, the valley degree of freedom in monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides can be selectively manipulated and detected using all-optical methods.

The discovery of intermediate high-spin multiexciton states with surprisingly long lifetimes provides new opportunities for engineering singlet fission, which may also provide an intriguing route to quantum information and spintronic applications.

Cold collisions between hydrogen molecules and helium atoms reveal how the change from spherical to non-spherical symmetry creates a quantum scattering resonance.

Not in all superconductors do Cooper pairs respect the lattice symmetry of the crystal in which they move. Now, work finds such 'picky' Cooper pairs in the presence of strong electron–spin interaction — and gives rise to an entire host of new questions.

When light and matter are strongly coupled, they lose their distinct character and merge into a hybrid state. Three experiments explore this exotic regime using artificial atoms, with promise for quantum technologies.

Micro-explosions triggered by the absorption of X-ray laser light in drops and jets of water result in shock waves and in rapid heating and expansion of the liquid — as now revealed in state-of-the-art experiments.