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By engineering the electron wavefunction, it is possible to create AharonovBohm-like phases and relativistic effects such as length contraction and time dilation in a non-relativistic setting and in the absence of electromagnetic fields.Article p261; News & Views p211 IMAGE: IDO KAMINER COVER DESIGN: ALLEN BEATTIE
Scientists involved in nuclear research before and after the end of the Second World War continue to be the subjects of historical and cultural fascination.
Magnetocaloric and electrocaloric effects are driven by doing work, but this work has barely been explored, even though these caloric effects are being exploited in a growing number of prototype cooling devices.
Photons immediately spring to mind when we talk about long-distance entanglement. But the spins at the ends of one-dimensional magnetic chains can be entangled over large distances too — providing a solid-state alternative for quantum communication protocols.
Photonic crystals can control the flow of light but they are extremely sensitive to structural disorder. Although this often degrades performance, disorder can actually be used to enhance light collimation.
Electrons moving in a one-dimensional crystal can acquire a geometrical phase. Sound waves in phononic crystals are now shown to display the same effect — underlining the similarity between conventional solids and acoustic metamaterials.
The transfer of protons across a high barrier only occasionally occurs through quantum-mechanical tunnelling. Low-temperature scanning tunnelling microscopy shows concerted tunnelling of four protons within chiral cyclic water tetramers supported on an inert surface.
Over the past decade, ultracold polar molecules have found application in hybrid quantum computation and quantum simulation, directions established in three early papers published in Nature Physics.
The Mott transition is investigated in three different organic insulators with triangular lattices and evidence of quantum criticality in an intermediate temperature regime is uncovered.
Understanding the motion of magnetic skyrmions is essential if they are to be used as information carriers in devices. It is now shown that topological confinement endows the skyrmions with an unexpectedly large mass, which plays a key role in their dynamics.
A single-particle model is usually used to interpret the tunnelling spectra of molecules on surfaces, but scanning tunnelling microscopy now shows that many-body effects can occur in a single molecule.
Many-body tunnelling is a complex but important phenomenon. Scanning tunnelling microscopy experiments with a Cl-terminated tip on a cyclic cluster of hydrogen-bonded water molecules now demonstrate controllable concerted tunnelling of four protons.
The behaviour of sound waves in phononic crystals—metamaterials with spatially varying acoustic characteristics—is similar to that of electrons in solids. Now, phononic band inversion and Zak phases have been measured for a 1D phononic system.
The rotation curve of a galaxy reflects the galactic mass distribution. For the Milky Way, such observational data are incompatible with models based on baryonic matter alone, which could be due to the presence of dark matter in the inner Milky Way.
Whether the wavefunction corresponds to reality or represents our limited knowledge of a quantum system is still under debate. A photonic experiment provides evidence for the former.
Quantum communication relies on the ability to entangle quantum states. Experiments now show that this is possible in a bulk material, with unpaired spins at the ends of antiferromagnetic spin chains entangled over long distances.
By engineering the electron wavefunction it is possible to create Aharonov–Bohm-like phases and relativistic effects such as length contraction and time dilation in a non-relativistic setting and in the absence of electromagnetic fields.
Photonic-crystal waveguides can control light propagation on subwavelength scales, but structural disorder typically causes scattering and broadening. It is now shown that disorder can enhance light collimation beyond conventional limits.
By exploiting the interaction between light and phonons in a silica microsphere resonator it is possible to generate Brillouin scattering induced transparency, which is akin to electromagnetically induced transparency but for acoustic waves.
The relaxation processes of light-emitting excited ions are tunable, but electrical control is challenging. It is now shown that graphene can be used to manipulate the optical emission and relaxation of erbium near-infrared emitters electrically.