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Embryo patterning relies on morphogen gradients. Now, a morphogen gradient also encodes an unjamming transition, enabling collective cellular flows that re-shape embryos while preserving patterning.
Collective and self-organized behaviour of sheep consists of intermittent episodes in which the animals follow a temporal leader—a role that is switched between various members of the group.
The CMS Collaboration reports evidence for off-shell Higgs boson contributions in the production of Z boson pairs, and measures the width of the Higgs boson, which is inversely related to its lifetime.
The Lorentz transformation of electromagnetic potentials is confirmed in experiments with a highly energetic electron beam. This provides another test of the predictions of special relativity.
A noise-resilient protocol implemented in a cavity resonator coupled to a qubit demonstrates that large nonlinear couplings are not a necessary requirement for the fast universal control and state preparation of engineered quantum systems.
Interacting quantum systems near criticality have been proposed as potential probes for quantum metrology. An experiment with Rydberg atoms now proves the enhanced sensitivity of critical many-body systems to small variations in external parameters.
A quantum simulation experiment reveals the thermalization of a ferromagnetic system realized with a one-dimensional spinor Bose gas, providing quantitative insights into the condensation dynamics of large magnetic systems.
Measurements of the proton’s generalized spin polarizabilities provide discriminating power between effective descriptions of the strong interaction at low energy.
Many-body quantum systems that escape thermalization are promising candidates for quantum information applications. A weak-ergodicity-breaking mechanism—quantum scarring—has now been observed with superconducting qubits in unconstrained models.
A quantum many-body system’s equilibrium behaviour is described by its partition function, which is hard to compute. Now it has been shown that the easier task of finding an approximation could define a distinct class of computational problems.
Properties of relaxor ferroelectrics are governed by polar nanodomains. Polarization rotation facilitated by these domains investigated by means of epitaxial strain reveals a competition between chemistry-driven disorder and strain-driven order.
Many important cellular structures in the body are curved at the scale of multiple cell lengths. Cells respond collectively to this curvature, and it influences their migration during development and growth.
Cervix and breast carcinomas are highly heterogeneous in their mechanical properties across scales. This heterogeneity provides the tumour with stability and room for cell motility.
Shot noise has traditionally been used to measure the charge of quasiparticles in a variety of mesoscopic systems. However, at sufficiently low temperatures, this usual notion tends to break down for fractional quantum Hall effect states.
Unconventional quasiparticles carrying spin but not electric charge emerge in quantum spin liquid phases. The Kondo interaction of these spinon quasiparticles with magnetic impurities may now have been observed.
A Mott insulator forms when strong interactions between particles cause them to become localized. A cold atom simulator has now been used to realize a selective Mott insulator in which atoms are localized or propagating depending on their spin state.
Entanglement entropy between two parts of a quantum state generally grows with volume, but for one-dimensional and some two-dimensional ground states, it scales with area. An area law has now been proven for a related metric in any dimension or geometry.
Strongly correlated topological materials are hard to identify. Now a design principle suggests a method for producing many topological metals where strong electron–electron interactions are a driving force.
Under certain conditions, contact electrification can lead to heterogeneous surface charge distributions—charge mosaics. Experiments and theory now show that these arise from electrostatic discharges between disjoining surfaces.
A cold-atom simulator has realized a popular many-body model of quantum magnetism in regimes that cannot be easily studied theoretically, achieving the record-coldest fermions ever seen.