Articles in 2023

Environmental factors such as mechanical stresses govern the cellular behavior and physiology, but the role of selfinduced biomechanical stresses in growing bacterial colonies is still unclear. The authors reveal how the response to collective mechanical forces acting on the individual cells regulates the size of growing bacteria.

The mechanical response of polymer films is affected by size effects under nanoconfinement, but the mechanism of such response in terms of molecular configurations and chain conformations has proven elusive. The authors reveal the conformational origin of the stiffening behavior in crosslinked polymeric nanofilms via simulations and experiments.

The narrow escape theory (NET) predicts the escape time distribution of Brownian particles confined to a domain with reflecting borders except for one small window. We systematically tested the NET in a disc both experimentally as well as with stochastic numerical simulations and found excellent agreement with theory.

Optical frequency combs enable precise measurement of optical frequencies, but integrated setups require a delicate balance between high precision and low power consumption. The authors demonstrate a sub-kHz-frequency measurement scheme based on a fully stabilized electro-optic comb that enables the parallel measurement of multiple wavelengths.

The full-quantum propagation of molecular degrees of freedom is onerous even for the capability of noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices (NISQ), and methods to perform mixed quantum-classical dynamics on NISQ devices are at an early stage of development. The authors present a modular algorithm to perform mixed quantum-classical dynamics NISQ devices.

Magnetic skyrmions are topological excitations that have attracted great attention recently for their potential applications in low power, ultrahigh density memory. A major challenge has been to find materials that meet the dual requirement of small skyrmions stable at room temperature. Here, the authors further both these goals by developing epitaxial FeGe films with excess Fe using atomic layer molecular beam epitaxy far from thermal equilibrium.

The condensed-matter counterpart of the Poincaré group may consist of various spacetime symmetry groups of spacetime crystals. In this work, the authors report the theoretical foundation of the projective spacetime symmetry algebras, explicitly work them out in (1,1) dimensions and discuss their consequences over spacetime lattices with gauge fluxes.

The potential for discovery with ultrafast gas-phase diffraction experiments is limited as we often rely on advanced simulations to interpret results. The authors present a method that can expand this discovery potential by directly inverting diffraction patterns for approximate molecular structure probability distributions with a ~100X real-space resolution improvement.

The investigation of a chiral active fluid composed of a carpet of standing and spinning colloidal rods, combined with simulations for synchronously rotating hard discs in a hydrodynamic explicit solvent reveals here the simultaneous occurrence and relation of two seemingly separate phenomena: active turbulence and odd viscosity.

Doping is a tried and tested method to tune the properties of a range of quantum materials either by introducing defects into the system or engineering the charge carrier concentration. Here, the authors use photoemission spectroscopy to investigate the effects of surface doping of alkali metals on the Mott insulator Ca₂RuO₄, revealing an orbital-selective surface metal-insulator transition induced by the surface-dopant interaction.

The authors experimentally demonstrate with a transmission electron microscope that single-shot 3D imaging is possible in the near-field limit, by simultaneously inferring local depth and thickness. The proposed reconstruction method uses priors from the homogenously amorphous specimen, and it can be extended for imaging multi-layered samples.

Designing quantum batteries able to outperform the classical ones requires a balance of fast charging, durable storage and effective work extraction. With their theoretical model, the authors propose a quantum battery with quadratic driving which induces plentiful useful work near to certain critical points. The model may be realized with parametric cavities or nonlinear circuits.

The nuclear decay of 176Lu can be looked at as a cosmochronometer to measure the age of astrophysical and geological events. The authors report the half-life of the 176Lu decaying to 176Hf using a method almost independent on the uncertainties in the previous experiments and the assumption for the isochron methods, in the process reconciliating the difference of measurements from previous experiments.

Many challenging problems in science and engineering rely on the study of dynamical systems that evolve continuously in time, and yet this feature proves difficult to be captured reliably using modern machine learning (ML) models. This paper develops a convergence test based on numerical analysis and illustrates how this methodology can be combined with existing ML techniques to validate models for science and engineering applications.

Here, the authors show that when non-collinear antiferromagnet Mn₃Sn is pumped by femtosecond laser pulses it acts as a source of picosecond current pulses that emit electro-dipole radiation in the THz range of the spectrum. The origin of these photo-currents are attributed to the photon drag effect.

Recently, the study of optical frequency combs and nonlinear dynamics in optical microresonators demonstrated a vast variety of dissipative structures with a wide range of nonlinear phenomena. In this paper, the authors extend the conventional systems to the chains of resonators, demonstrating rich two-dimensional dynamics in different dynamical regimes.

Quiet points (QPs) in chip-integrated microcomb platforms allow the cancellation of transduction noise arising due to the presence of Raman self-frequency shifts, but the conditions to exploit them are fortuitous and system-dependent. The authors propose a strategy to deterministically engineer QPs both in terms of spectral width and position.

Recent observations of macroscopic quantum condensation using electron-hole (e-h) bilayers have activated the research of its application to electronics. The authors propose and demonstrate a method for the formation of a self-organized bilayer at the Si MOS interface with an e-h distance of the order of the exciton Bohr radius, which paves the way for condensation and, ultimately, low-power cryogenic Si MOS devices.

The WavemiX network has made significant progress in bringing together theoreticians, experimentalists, and machine scientists. At the third edition of its flagship workshop, different communities collaborated to discuss the practical challenges of achieving superior spatial and time resolution and devise useful applications in ultrafast science.

While Phillips’ theory states that the early stages of wind-wave generation are governed by a resonance mechanism, the majority of studies focussed on the situation where surface waves have already been generated by the wind. The authors fill this gap and address the problem of surface wave generation when calm water is exposed to turbulent wind.