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Eighty years on from the publication of Erwin Schrödinger’s interdisciplinary analysis on the origin of order in living organisms — What is Life? — we look at how physicists and biologists are approaching the topic today.
When photons impinge on a material, free electrons can be created by the photoelectric effect. The emitted electron current usually fluctuates with Poisson statistics, but if squeezed quantum light is applied, the electrons bunch up.
As amorphous solids, glasses and gels are similar, but the origins of their different elastic properties are unclear. Simulations now suggest differing free-energy-minimizing pathways: structural ordering for glasses and interface reduction for gels.
Questioning the validity of axioms can teach us about physics beyond the standard model. A recent search for the violation of charge conservation and the Pauli exclusion principle yields limits on these scenarios.
Controlling phase transitions in solids is crucial for many applications. Ultrafast laser pulses have now been shown to enable the energy-efficient generation of structural fluctuations in VO2 by harnessing the correlated disorder in the material.
Linear topological systems can be characterized using invariants such as the Chern number. This concept can be extended to the nonlinear regime, giving rise to nonlinearity-induced topological phase transitions.
The Majorana Demonstrator experiment reports searches for the violation of the Pauli exclusion principle and of charge conservation. In the absence of a signal, exclusion limits for these processes are reported.
The time has come to consider appropriate guardrails to ensure quantum technology benefits humanity and the planet. With quantum development still in flux, the science community shares a responsibility in defining principles and practices.
Quantum systems exhibit vastly different properties depending on their dimensionality. An experimental study with ultracold bosons now tracks quantum correlation properties during the crossover from two dimensions to one dimension.
Although topological photonics has been an active field of research for some time, most studies still focus on the linear optical regime. This Perspective summarizes recent investigations into the nonlinear properties of discrete topological photonic systems.
Photoemission experiments demonstrate that the photon number statistics of the exciting light can be imprinted on the emitted electrons, allowing the controlled generation of classical or non-classical electron number statistics of free electrons.
The shape and trajectory of a crack plays a crucial role in material fracture. High-precision experiments now directly capture this phenomenon, unveiling the intricate 3D nature of cracks.
The occurrence of propagating spiral waves in multicellular organisms is associated with key biological functions. Now this type of wave has also been observed in dense bacterial populations, probably resulting from non-reciprocal cell–cell interactions.