Electronics, photonics and device physics articles within Nature Physics

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    | 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 |

    Electrons trapped above the surface of solid neon can be used to create qubits using spatial states with different charge distributions. These charge qubits combine direct electric field control with long coherence times.

    • Atsushi Noguchi

  • News & Views |

    Chains of coupled superconducting islands known as Josephson junction arrays were predicted to be insulating at high impedance, but superconducting behaviour has been observed. A study of the arrays’ transport suggests thermal effects are responsible.

    • Dmitri V. Averin

  • Article |

    Coherent control is an interference technique widely used to control dynamic wave processes. Its analogue in the time domain allows the tailored suppression, enhancement and reshaping of optical pulses, and the mimicking of collisions between them.

    • Emanuele Galiffi
    • , Gengyu Xu
    •  & Andrea Alù

  • Article |

    Achieving low decoherence is challenging in hybrid quantum systems. A superconducting-circuit-based optomechanical platform realizes millisecond-scale quantum state lifetime, which allows tracking of the free evolution of a squeezed mechanical state.

    • Amir Youssefi
    • , Shingo Kono
    •  & Tobias J. Kippenberg

  • Research Briefing |

    A coherent interface between a mechanical oscillator and superconducting electrical circuits would enable the control of quantum states of mechanical motion, but such interfaces often result in excess mechanical energy loss. A new material-agnostic approach is shown to achieve strong electromechanical coupling while preserving a long phonon lifetime.

  • News & Views |

    Imposing PT-symmetry and pseudo-Hermitian symmetry on an electric circuit with non-reciprocal couplings results in a complex morphology of degenerate eigenvalues that might yield new possibilities in sensing and dynamical engineering.

    • Savannah Garmon

  • News & Views |

    Levitated nanoparticles can now be cooled to the motional ground state in two dimensions. This advance could enable a new generation of macroscopic quantum experiments.

    • Dalziel J. Wilson

  • Article |

    It has been predicted that Josephson junction devices could produce quantized currents in analogy to the Shapiro steps of voltage used to define the voltage standard. These dual Shapiro steps have now been observed in a Josephson junction array.

    • Nicolò Crescini
    • , Samuel Cailleaux
    •  & Nicolas Roch

  • News & Views |

    ‘Squeezing’ of light can be used to alter the distribution of quantum noise to benefit quantum sensing and other applications. An improved design for a microwave photon squeezer provides high performance over a large bandwidth.

    • Baleegh Abdo

  • News & Views |

    Measurements of charge pumping in a quantum anomalous Hall device demonstrate that quantized Hall conductance does not require an edge to transport current, paving the way for the realization of other exotic electronic behaviour.

    • Christopher Eckberg

  • Article |

    Superconducting currents around a loop containing a weak link can be quantized and only change during discrete events called phase slips. Now, the heat generated by a single phase slip and the subsequent relaxation have been experimentally observed.

    • E. Gümüş
    • , D. Majidi
    •  & C. B. Winkelmann

  • News & Views |

    Using a quantum annealer to simulate the dynamics of phase transitions shows that superconducting quantum devices can coherently evolve systems of thousands of individual elements. This is an important step toward quantum simulation and optimization.

    • David Bernal Neira

  • Article |

    Experiments inspired by the behaviour of active matter show that an external optical stimulus can spatially reconfigure colloidal random lasers and continuously tune their lasing threshold.

    • Manish Trivedi
    • , Dhruv Saxena
    •  & Giorgio Volpe

  • Letter |

    Heat transport in electronic systems is influenced by nearby superconductors due to the so-called proximity effect. Combining this with the manipulation of superconductivity using magnetic fields enables the control of nanoscale thermal transport.

    • Nadia Ligato
    • , Federico Paolucci
    •  & Francesco Giazotto

  • News & Views |

    Photon emission is a major source of decoherence for several quantum technologies. Four superconducting qubits have been combined to create a ‘dark state’ qubit with strongly suppressed photon emission due to collective interference effects.

    • Stuart J. Masson
    •  & Ana Asenjo-Garcia

  • Article |

    Insulating states that are formed because of pairing between electrons and holes are known to exist in engineered bilayer structures in high magnetic fields. Now evidence suggests they can occur in a monolayer crystal at zero field.

    • Yanyu Jia
    • , Pengjie Wang
    •  & Sanfeng Wu

  • News & Views |

    Superconducting devices ubiquitously have an excess of broken Cooper pairs, which can hamper their performance. It is widely believed that external radiation is responsible but a study now suggests there must be an additional, unknown source.

    • Andrew P. Higginbotham

  • Letter |

    The performance of superconducting devices can be degraded by quasiparticle generation mechanisms that are difficult to identify and eliminate. Now, a small superconducting island can be kept quasiparticle free for seconds at a time.

    • E. T. Mannila
    • , P. Samuelsson
    •  & J. P. Pekola

  • News & Views |

    The reliability of quantum computers depends on the correction of noise-induced errors, which requires additional resources. Experiments on superconducting qubits have now demonstrated the capabilities of a less-demanding scheme for error detection.

    • Morten Kjaergaard

  • Article |

    Large-scale quantum computers will manipulate quantum information encoded in error-corrected logical qubits. A complete set of operations has now been realized on a logical qubit with error detection.

    • J. F. Marques
    • , B. M. Varbanov
    •  & L. DiCarlo

  • News & Views |

    Solitary waves — solitons — occur in a wide range of physical systems with a broad array of attributes and applications. Carefully engineered light–matter interactions have now produced an optomechanical dissipative soliton with promising properties.

    • Alessia Pasquazi

  • News & Views |

    Integrating quantum technology with existing telecom infrastructure is hampered by a mismatch in operating frequencies. An optomechanical resonator now offers a strain-mediated spin–photon interface for long-distance quantum networks.

    • Lilian Childress
    •  & Jack Sankey

  • News & Views |

    Polaritons are hybrid states of light and matter that occur in a wide range of physical platforms. When a nanosphere is levitated inside an optical cavity, light can hybridize with the motion on a plane rather than along an axis, resulting in ‘vectorial’ polaritons.

    • Tania S. Monteiro

  • News & Views |

    A Cooper-pair box qubit is used to squeeze the energy of a heavy oscillating membrane towards a quantum energy eigenstate, bringing measurements of how mass and quantum mechanics interact one step closer.

    • Mario Gely
    •  & Gary A. Steele

  • Perspective |

    The interplay of topological properties and non-Hermitian symmetry breaking has been implemented for a range of classical-wave systems. Recent advances, challenges and opportunities are reviewed across the different physical platforms.

    • Corentin Coulais
    • , Romain Fleury
    •  & Jasper van Wezel

  • Article |

    Spin currents are generated from an antiferromagnet/heavy-metal heterostructure using optical excitation on picosecond timescales. This will have applications in antiferromagnetic spintronics.

    • Hongsong Qiu
    • , Lifan Zhou
    •  & Peiheng Wu

  • News & Views |

    The properties of anyons — two-dimensional particles that are neither fermions nor bosons — have been directly measured in a quantum Hall interferometer.

    • Rui-Rui Du

  • Letter |

    Electrons and holes in doped quantum wells cannot form bound states from usual Coulomb interaction. However, when the system is embedded in a cavity, the exchange of photons provides an effective attraction, leading to the creation of bound excitons.

    • Erika Cortese
    • , Ngoc-Linh Tran
    •  & Simone De Liberato

  • Article |

    Analogous to the radiation-pressure coupling known in optomechanics, photon-pressure interaction between superconducting circuits can reach the strong coupling regime, which allows flexible control of the electromagnetic resonator’s quantum state.

    • D. Bothner
    • , I. C. Rodrigues
    •  & G. A. Steele

  • Article |

    An optomechanical cavity comprising a re-entrant cavity and membrane resonators can be tuned in and out of the Casimir regime. At the transition between the two regimes, the mechanical resonators exhibit a change in stiffness—the Casimir spring.

    • J. M. Pate
    • , M. Goryachev
    •  & M. E. Tobar

  • Letter |

    A quasiparticle in Andreev levels was coupled to a superconducting microwave resonator and its spin was monitored in real time. This has potential applications in the readout of superconducting spin qubits and measurements of Majorana fermions.

    • M. Hays
    • , V. Fatemi
    •  & M. H. Devoret

  • News & Views |

    Experiments show how the magnetic order in antiferromagnets can be manipulated through lattice vibrations excited by a laser. This induces a large and reversible magnetic moment at very high speed.

    • Dominik M. Juraschek
    •  & Prineha Narang

  • Letter |

    Moiré engineering has rapidly gained currency as a means to manipulate electronic states of matter in van der Waals heterostructures. Now, the feat is achieved in epitaxially grown oxide heterostructures, thus opening up fresh opportunities for strongly correlated electronic systems.

    • Xinzhong Chen
    • , Xiaodong Fan
    •  & Changgan Zeng

  • News & Views |

    Speed is of the essence when it comes to signal processing, but electronic switching times have reached a limit. Optically controlled tunnel currents across a nanoscale plasmonic gap could considerably accelerate future nanoelectronic devices.

    • Olga Smirnova

  • Editorial |

    The combination of microwave photons with superconducting quantum circuits offers promise for quantum technologies and the fundamental study of quantum light–matter interactions. This month, a Focus issue explores this field of research.

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