Condensed-matter physics articles within Nature Physics

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  • Article |

    A Dirac quantum spin liquid phase is predicted to have a continuum of fractionalized spinon excitations with a Dirac cone dispersion. A spin continuum consistent with this picture has now been observed in neutron scattering measurements.

    • Zhenyuan Zeng
    • , Chengkang Zhou
    •  & Shiliang Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A successful silicon spin qubit design should be rapidly scalable by benefiting from industrial transistor technology. This investigation of exchange interactions between two FinFET qubits provides a guide to implementing two-qubit gates for hole spins.

    • Simon Geyer
    • , Bence Hetényi
    •  & Andreas V. Kuhlmann

  • Research Briefing |

    As counterparts to optical frequency combs, magnonic frequency combs could have broad applications if their initiation thresholds were low and the ‘teeth’ of the comb plentiful. Progress has now been made through exploiting so-called exceptional points to enhance the nonlinear coupling between magnons and produce wider magnonic frequency combs.

  • Article |

    Frequency combs, which are important for applications in precision spectroscopy, depend on material nonlinearities for their function, which can be hard to engineer. Now an approach combining magnons and exceptional points is shown to be effective.

    • Congyi Wang
    • , Jinwei Rao
    •  & Wei Lu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Connecting two superfluid reservoirs leads to both particle and entropy flow between the systems. Now, a direct measurement of the entropy current and production in ultracold quantum gases reveals how superfluidity enhances entropy transport.

    • Philipp Fabritius
    • , Jeffrey Mohan
    •  & Tilman Esslinger

  • Article |

    Controlling orbital magnetic moments for applications can be difficult. Now local probes of a kagome material, TbV6Sn6, demonstrate how the spin Berry curvature can produce a large orbital Zeeman effect that can be tuned with a magnetic field.

    • Hong Li
    • , Siyu Cheng
    •  & Ilija Zeljkovic

  • Article |

    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.

    • Yinqiao Wang
    • , Michio Tateno
    •  & Hajime Tanaka

  • Perspective |

    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.

    • Alexander Szameit
    •  & Mikael C. Rechtsman

  • News & Views |

    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.

    • Michael D. Bartlett

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Leggett modes can occur when superconductivity arises in more than one band in a material and represent oscillation of the relative phases of the two superconducting condensates. Now, this mode is observed in Cd3As2, a Dirac semimetal.

    • Joseph J. Cuozzo
    • , W. Yu
    •  & Enrico Rossi

  • News & Views |

    Excitation of magnons — quanta of spin-waves — in an antiferromagnet can be used for high-speed data processing. The addition and subtraction of two such modes opens up possibilities for magnon-based information transfer in the terahertz spectral region.

    • Brijesh Singh Mehra
    •  & Dhanvir Singh Rana

  • News & Views |

    Electric dipoles are common in insulators, but extremely rare in metals. This situation may be about to change, thanks to flexoelectricity.

    • Gustau Catalan

  • Article |

    Topologically protected hinge modes could be important for developing quantum devices, but electronic transport through those states has not been demonstrated. Now quantum transport has been shown in gapless topological hinge states.

    • Md Shafayat Hossain
    • , Qi Zhang
    •  & M. Zahid Hasan

  • News & Views |

    Ageing is a non-linear, irreversible process that defines many properties of glassy materials. Now, it is shown that the so-called material-time formalism can describe ageing in terms of equilibrium-like properties.

    • Beatrice Ruta
    •  & Daniele Cangialosi

  • News & Views |

    Some quantum acoustic resonators possess a large number of phonon modes at different frequencies. Direct interactions between modes similar to those available for photonic devices have now been demonstrated. This enables manipulation of multimode states.

    • Audrey Bienfait

  • News & Views |

    The integration of theory and experiment makes possible tracking the slow evolution of a photodoped Mott insulator to a distinct non-equilibrium metallic phase under the influence of electron-lattice coupling.

    • Denitsa R. Baykusheva

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The standard current–phase relation in tunnel Josephson junctions involves a single sinusoidal term, but real junctions are more complicated. The effects of higher Josephson harmonics have now been identified in superconducting qubit devices.

    • Dennis Willsch
    • , Dennis Rieger
    •  & Ioan M. Pop

  • News & Views |

    Some cerium and uranium compounds exhibit unusual transport properties due to localized electron states. Recent experiments demonstrate that quantum interference on frustrated lattices provides an alternative route to this behaviour.

    • William R. Meier

  • News & Views |

    Quantum simulators can provide new insights into the complicated dynamics of quantum many-body systems far from equilibrium. A recent experiment reveals that underlying symmetries dictate the nature of universal scaling dynamics.

    • Maximilian Prüfer

  • News & Views |

    It has long been predicted that spin-1/2 antiferromagnets on the kagome lattice should feature a series of plateaus in the change of its magnetization under an applied magnetic field. A quantum plateau of this kind has now been observed experimentally.

    • Gia-Wei Chern

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The existence of Bragg glasses—featuring nearly perfect crystalline order and glassy features—has yet to be experimentally confirmed for disordered charge-density-wave systems. A machine-learning-based experimental study now provides evidence for a Bragg glass phase in the charge density waves of PdxErTe3.

    • Krishnanand Mallayya
    • , Joshua Straquadine
    •  & Eun-Ah Kim

  • News & Views |

    Some exotic metals exhibit competing electronic states that can be influenced by small perturbations. Now, a study of a kagome superconductor shows that this competition is exquisitely sensitive to weak strain fields, providing insight into its anomalous electronic properties.

    • Stephen D. Wilson

  • Article |

    Understanding the mechanism by which magnons—the quanta of spin waves—propagate is important for developing practical devices. Now it is shown that long-range dipole–dipole interactions mediate the propagation in a van der Waals antiferromagnet.

    • Yue Sun
    • , Fanhao Meng
    •  & Joseph Orenstein

  • News & Views |

    Multiple mechanisms can create electrons with reduced kinetic energy in solids. Combining these mechanisms now appears as a promising route to enhancing quantum effects in flat band materials.

    • Priscila F. S. Rosa
    •  & Filip Ronning

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The electronic transport properties of charge-ordered kagome metals are controversial. Now careful measurements on unperturbed samples show that previously measured anisotropy in the transport occurs only when external perturbations are present.

    • Chunyu Guo
    • , Glenn Wagner
    •  & Philip J. W. Moll

  • News & Views |

    Phonons do not carry spin or charge, but they can couple to an external magnetic field and cause a sizable transverse thermal gradient. Experiments suggest that phonon handedness is a widespread effect in magnetic insulators with impurities.

    • Valentina Martelli

  • News & Views |

    Electronic transport measurements of the anomalous Hall effect can probe properties of a frustrated kagome spin ice that are hidden from conventional thermodynamic and magnetic probes.

    • Enke Liu

  • Article |

    Observations of strong electron correlation effects have been mostly confined to compounds containing f orbital electrons. Now, the study of the 3d pyrochlore metal CuV2S4 reveals that similar effects can be induced by flat-band engineering.

    • Jianwei Huang
    • , Lei Chen
    •  & Ming Yi

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