Condensed-matter physics articles within Nature Physics

Featured

  • Review Article |

    Experimental progress in controlling and manipulating trapped atomic ions has opened the door for a series of proof-of-principle quantum simulations. This article reviews these experiments, together with the methods and tools that have enabled them, and provides an outlook on future directions in the field.

    • R. Blatt
    •  & C. F. Roos

  • Progress Article |

    Lithographically fabricated micrometre-scale superconducting circuits exhibit behaviour analogues to natural quantum entities, such as atom, ions and photons. Large-scale arrays of such circuits hold the promise of providing a unique route to quantum simulation. Recent progress in technology and methodology are reviewed here, and prospects and challenges discussed.

    • Andrew A. Houck
    • , Hakan E. Türeci
    •  & Jens Koch

  • Review Article |

    Quantum optics has played an important role in the exploration of foundational issues in quantum mechanics, and in using quantum effects for information processing and communications purposes. Photonic quantum systems now also provide a valuable test bed for quantum simulations. This article surveys the first generation of such experiments, and discusses the prospects for tackling outstanding problems in physics, chemistry and biology.

    • Alán Aspuru-Guzik
    •  & Philip Walther

  • Review Article |

    Experiments with ultracold quantum gases provide a platform for creating many-body systems that can be well controlled and whose parameters can be tuned over a wide range. These properties put these systems in an ideal position for simulating problems that are out of reach for classical computers. This review surveys key advances in this field and discusses the possibilities offered by this approach to quantum simulation.

    • Immanuel Bloch
    • , Jean Dalibard
    •  & Sylvain Nascimbène

  • Article |

    Spin transfer torque—the transfer of angular momentum from a spin-polarized current to a ferromagnet’s magnetization—has already found commercial application in memory devices, but the underlying physics is still not fully understood. Researchers now demonstrate the crucial role played by the polarization of the laser light that generates the current; a subtle effect only evident when isolated from other influences such as heating.

    • P. Němec
    • , E. Rozkotová
    •  & T. Jungwirth

  • Letter |

    An outstanding question about the iron-based superconductors has been whether or not their magnetic characteristics are dominated by itinerant or localized magnetic moments. Absolute measurements and calculations of the magnetic response of undoped and Ni-doped BaFe2As2 indicate the latter.

    • Mengshu Liu
    • , Leland W. Harriger
    •  & Pengcheng Dai

  • Letter |

    It is well known that graphene deposited on hexagonal boron nitride produces moiré patterns in scanning tunnelling microscopy images. The interaction that produces this pattern also produces a commensurate periodic potential that generates a set of Dirac points that are different from those of the graphene lattice itself.

    • Matthew Yankowitz
    • , Jiamin Xue
    •  & Brian J. LeRoy

  • Article |

    The magnetic character of the cuprates is suspected by many to be involved in the emergence of unconventional superconductivity. The discovery of a second distinct magnetic excitation in HgBa2CuO4 supports a multiband picture of the magnetic structure of these materials.

    • Yuan Li
    • , G. Yu
    •  & M. Greven

  • News & Views |

    An experimental demonstration that the expansion of ultracold atoms in three dimensions can be frozen by disorder provides fertile ground for studies of metal–insulator transitions in disordered systems — including those with interacting particles.

    • Robin Kaiser

  • Letter |

    The Cooper pairs of conventional superconductors exhibit a nodeless s-wave symmetry, and most unconventional superconductors, including cuprates and heavy-fermion materials, exhibit nodal d-wave pairing. In contrast to both, angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy measurements indicate that the iron-based superconductor BaFe2(As0.7P0.3)2 exhibits an unusual nodal s-wave pairing.

    • Y. Zhang
    • , Z. R. Ye
    •  & D. L. Feng

  • News & Views |

    Squeezed states push the limits of quantum measurement precision, but observing them is never straightforward. In spin-1 Bose–Einstein condensates, an elegant algebra reveals squeezed states that would otherwise go unnoticed.

    • Austen Lamacraft

  • Letter |

    Squeezed states—which permit precision beyond the scope of Heisenberg’s uncertainty relation—are well established for spin-1/2 particles. Now an elegant demonstration of squeezing in spin-1 condensates generalizes the criteria for squeezed states to higher spin dimensions.

    • C. D. Hamley
    • , C. S. Gerving
    •  & M. S. Chapman

  • Letter |

    An experiment demonstrates that the motion of so-called skyrmions—topologically quantized magnetic whirls—causes an emergent electric field that inherits the topological quantization of the skyrmions and is directly visible in the Hall effect.

    • T. Schulz
    • , R. Ritz
    •  & A. Rosch

  • News & Views |

    Confining liquid 3He in porous silica aerogel prepared with strong anisotropy stabilizes a state of axial superfluidity.

    • Vladimir P. Mineev

  • Letter |

    Liquid 3He in silica aerogel exhibits no trace of the chiral superfluid phase present in bulk 3He. Stretching the aerogel axially introduces an anisotropy that stabilizes the chiral phase, supporting a transition to a new disordered phase at low temperatures.

    • J. Pollanen
    • , J. I. A. Li
    •  & J. A. Sauls

  • News & Views |

    Mechanical oscillations of microscopic resonators have recently been observed in the quantum regime. This idea could soon be extended from localized vibrations to travelling waves thanks to a sensitive probe of so-called surface acoustic waves.

    • Aashish Clerk

  • Article |

    Mechanical oscillations of microscopic resonators have recently been observed in the quantum regime. This idea could soon be extended from localized vibrations to travelling waves thanks to a sensitive probe of so-called surface acoustic waves.

    • Martin V. Gustafsson
    • , Paulo V. Santos
    •  & Per Delsing

  • Letter |

    One proposed explanation of unconventional superconductivity involves describing it in terms of a crossover from a conventional superconducting state to a Bose–Einstein condensate state. Angle-resolved photoelectron measurements of an iron chalcogenide superconductor could provide evidence for such crossover behaviour.

    • Y. Lubashevsky
    • , E. Lahoud
    •  & A. Kanigel

  • News & Views |

    Graphene exhibits many extraordinary properties, but superconductivity isn't one of them. Two theoretical studies suggest that by decorating the surface of graphene with the right species of dopant atoms, or by using ionic liquid gating, superconductivity could yet be induced.

    • Oskar Vafek

  • Article |

    Superfluorescence—the emission of coherent light from an initially incoherent collection of excited dipoles—is now identified in a semiconductor. Laser-excited electron–hole pairs spontaneously polarize and then abruptly decay to produce intense pulses of light.

    • G. Timothy Noe II
    • , Ji-Hee Kim
    •  & Junichiro Kono

  • Letter |

    Measurements of Hanbury Brown and Twiss correlations in atomic gases near the Bose–Einstein condensation threshold reveal strong signatures of interactions between the constituent atoms, and establish such correlation measurements as a sensitive probe for the quantum properties of matter-wave sources.

    • A. Perrin
    • , R. Bücker
    •  & J. Schmiedmayer

  • Article |

    Chiral superconducting states are expected to support a variety of exotic and potentially useful phenomena. Theoretical analysis suggests that just such a state could emerge in a doped graphene monolayer.

    • Rahul Nandkishore
    • , L. S. Levitov
    •  & A. V. Chubukov

  • Article |

    The transport measurements of an interacting fermionic quantum gas in an optical lattice provide a direct experimental realization of the Hubbard model—one of the central models for interacting electrons in solids—and give insights into the transport properties of many-body phases in condensed-matter physics.

    • Ulrich Schneider
    • , Lucia Hackermüller
    •  & Achim Rosch

  • News & Views |

    A macroscopic quantum pendulum has now been created by confining a polariton condensate in a parabolic optical trap. Spectacular images of multiparticle wavefunctions are obtained by purely optical means.

    • Alexey Kavokin

  • Letter |

    Graphene exhibits many extraordinary properties. But, despite many attempts to find ways to induce it, superconductivity is not one of them. First-principles calculations suggest that by decorating the surface of graphene with lithium atoms, it could yet be made to superconduct.

    • Gianni Profeta
    • , Matteo Calandra
    •  & Francesco Mauri

  • Letter |

    The presence, or otherwise, of magnetism in graphene has been the subject of much debate. A systematic study of point defects—a widely suggested source of ferromagnetism in graphene—suggests that although they can exhibit net spin, they remain paramagnetic, even at liquid helium temperature.

    • R. R. Nair
    • , M. Sepioni
    •  & I. V. Grigorieva

  • Letter |

    Polaritons—quasiparticles made up of a photon and exciton strongly coupled together—can form macroscopic quantum states even at room temperature. Now these so-called condensates are imaged directly. This achievement could aid the development of semiconductor-based polariton-condensate devices.

    • G. Tosi
    • , G. Christmann
    •  & J. J. Baumberg

Browse broader subjects

Browse narrower subjects

Browse Condensed-matter physics across other nature.com journals