Commentary:

Is information the key?

Gilles Brassard

Could the theorems of quantum information science hold the key to understanding the quantum world at its most profound level? Gilles Brassard suggests that the truly fundamental laws of nature might concern, not waves and particles, but information.

Article:

Matter-wave interferometry in a double well on an atom chip

T. Schumm, S. Hofferberth, L. M. Andersson, S. Wildermuth, S. Groth, I. Bar-Joseph, J. Schmiedmayer and P. Krüger

Construction of a chip-based atom interferometer that allows Bose-Einstein condensates to be coherently split in two provides a useful new tool for the manipulation and study of matter waves.

News and Views:

Just what is superconductivity?

Steven M. Girvin

Whether or not a superconductor is truly superconducting depends on its size and even its shape. In a geometry intermediate between one and two dimensions, it seems a thin film does not reach a state of zero resistance except at zero temperature.

Letter:

Electric-field control of spin transport

Sangeeta Sahoo, Takis Kontos, Jürg Furer, Christian Hoffmann, Matthias Gräber, Audrey Cottet and Christian Schönenberger

A carbon nanotube transistor with magnetoresistance that is tunable in both sign and magnitude by the voltage applied to its gate, represents an important step in the development of multifunctional spintronic devices.

News and Views:

No neutrinos is good news

David Wark

A tighter limit on the half-life of a tellurium nucleus for 'neutrinoless double-beta decay' marks progress towards a better understanding of the ever-elusive neutrinos and the measurement of their mass.

Review article:

The physics of core-collapse supernovae

Stan Woosley and Thomas Janka

Most frequently a supernova results from the core-collapse of a dying star, and the wealth of physics involved in the process presents a huge computational challenge. Follow this guide to gravitational collapse, convective instability, neutrino emission and energy deposition, gamma-ray bursts and rapid neutron capture in some of the most powerful events in the Universe.

Commentary:

A high-power laser fusion facility for Europe

Mike Dunne

Unprecedented sums of money are being committed to fusion research facilities around the world, yet there is a distinct danger that key opportunities for performing fundamental and applied research will be missed. Mike Dunne puts the case for a dedicated civilian high-power laser facility to fill this breach.

Article:

Thermal equivalence of DNA duplexes without calculation of melting temperature

Gerald Weber, Niall Haslam, Nava Whiteford, Adam Prügel-Bennett, Jonathan W. Essex and Cameron Neylon

The thermodynamics of the DNA double helix are complex. The melting temperatures of its base-pair sequences are difficult to predict, even to define. A new statistical-mechanics model, however, generates a more meaningful melting 'index' of sequences.

News and Views:

Follow the money

Michael F. Shlesinger

The tracking of the circulation of dollar bills around the United States, to map human travel patterns, has at last uncovered a physical example of a particular style of random walk.

Review:

Vacuum Rabi splitting in semiconductors

G. Khitrova, H. M. Gibbs, M. Kira, S. W. Koch and A. Scherer

This review describes the history of realizing vacuum Rabi splitting in the single-quantum-dot regime, including the mechanisms involved, the essential parameters of the quantum dots and microcavities that have enabled its realization, and the criteria that must be satisfied for genuine quantum behaviour — where one photon can control the transmission or reflection of another.

Thesis:

Fine grain physics, Physics and philanthropy

Mark Buchanan and Lawrence M. Krauss

In their monthly columns, Mark Buchanan finds remarkable science in the most ordinary of circumstances, and Lawrence Krauss ponders the long-term implications of private donations to finance physics research.

Feature:

Towards a complete theory of high T_c

Given the successes of the microscopic theory of conventional superconductors, it seems natural to expect a similar all-encompassing theory for high-temperature superconductivity. But is it the best approach? Where are we heading? We asked the experts.

Research highlights:

Efimov states, Maxwell's equations and more...

A selection of stories from the recent literature, chosen by the Nature Physics editors.

Letter:

Zero-point entropy in stuffed spin-ice

G. C. Lau, R. S. Freitas, B. G. Ueland, B. D. Muegge, E. L. Duncan, P. Schiffer and R. J. Cava

Extra spins 'stuffed' into the frustrated magnet, or spin ice, Ho₂Ti₂O₇ add disorder to the lattice. Surprisingly, the residual (zero-point) entropy of the system shows no change.

News and Views:

Conducting the beat

Thomas Pfeifer

The ability to generate intense attosecond pulses of light promises unprecedented opportunities to study the lightest and fastest of all chemically relevant particles — electrons. Two techniques demonstrate progress towards measuring and controlling their attosecond dynamics.

Article:

A toolbox for lattice-spin models with polar molecules

A. Micheli, G. K. Brennen and P. Zoller

Molecules stored in optical lattices can be controlled with high precision. When these molecules are polar — as theoretical work now shows — a complete toolbox can be created to 'engineer' so-called lattice spin models. These exhibit many non-trivial many-body effects.

News and Views:

Diamond wedding for spin couple

John J. L. Morton

Observing coherent coupling between two quantum objects in the solid state is hard enough at millikelvin temperatures. Now, this has been achieved at room temperature — using nitrogen defects in diamond — opening up an avenue to practical quantum computing.

Article:

Edge stability and transport control with resonant magnetic perturbations in collisionless tokamak plasmas

Todd E. Evans, Richard A. Moyer, Keith H. Burrell, Max E. Fenstermacher, Ilon Joseph, Anthony W. Leonard, Thomas H. Osborne, Gary D. Porter, Michael J. Schaffer, Philip B. Snyder, Paul R. Thomas, Jonathan G. Watkins and William P. West

Plasma instabilities known as edge-localized modes pose a serious problem for magnetically confined fusion research. But by resonantly perturbing the fields that confine a fusion plasma, it seems these instabilities can be almost eliminated.

Editorial:

To him who waits

"Ray Davis knew how to wait. Davis, who died on 31 May, was the pioneer of experiments with solar neutrinos. With John Bahcall, who died last year, they were the originators of the 'solar neutrino problem' — a mystery that took more than 30 years to solve."

Letter:

High harmonic generation in the relativistic limit

B. Dromey, M. Zepf, A. Gopal, K. Lancaster, M. S. Wei, K. Krushelnick, M. Tatarakis, N. Vakakis, S. Moustaizis, R. Kodama, M. Tampo, C. Stoeckl, R. Clarke, H. Habara, D. Neely, S. Karsch and P. Norreys

Accelerating electrons from a solid target to relativistic speeds with a petawatt pulsed laser enables the intense, high-harmonic generation of light at wavelengths below 4 nm, useful for attosecond applications, and in the so-called 'water window' needed for biomolecular imaging.

Books and Arts:

Ideas in revolution

Richard Webb

The Life of Galileo, by Bertolt Brecht — "The robust, pacy and ultimately moving revival at London's National Theatre of this epic play makes a nod to the modern in its staging. Simon Russell Beale flexes with voluminous energy as a Galileo whose sharp insights and razor tongue are fuelled by copious quantities of cigarettes and whisky. Clad in open-necked shirt and corduroys, he would not look out of place on the faculty of any present-day university..."

Article:

Reynolds number effects on Rayleigh-Taylor instability with possible implications for type Ia supernovae

William H. Cabot and Andrew W. Cook

Turbulent mixing of unstably stratified fluid layers can be found in oceans, atmospheres and stellar cores. And as the luminosity of type Ia supernovae is used to determine the expansion rate of the universe, it pays to model the instability growth and flame propagation.

Books and Arts:

How it happened

George Ellis

The Cosmic Century: A History of Astrophysics and Cosmology, by Malcolm S. Longair — "There is a case that the historical approach is indeed a good way to develop an understanding of a subject... you have to know not only the 'right' way — the mode of understanding that has led to the greatest progress and clearest vision — but also the plausible 'wrong' ways of doing things, the approaches that seemed good at the time but did not work out."

Article:

Chiral tunnelling and the Klein paradox in graphene

M. I. Katsnelson, K. S. Novoselov and A. K. Geim

The Klein paradox — the unexpected perfect transmission of relativistic particles through a potential barrier — is most commonly associated with certain types of black holes. The unique properties of the charge carriers in graphene suggest it could be observed much closer to home.