Physics articles within Nature Physics

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  • News & Views |

    Migrating cells are capable of actively opposing external forces. A study of the polymers that mediate cell motility indicates that they effect this response by branching where bent under force.

    • Anders E. Carlsson

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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 |

    Conventional approaches to optomechanics control and monitor the motion of nanoscale mechanical resonators by coupling it to a high-quality photonic cavity. An all-mechanical implementation is now demonstrated by creating a so-called phonon cavity from different oscillating modes of the resonator. This idea opens a route to using solid-state systems to investigate physics not accessible in their analogous, but better developed, quantum-optics counterpart.

    • I. Mahboob
    • , K. Nishiguchi
    •  & H. Yamaguchi

  • Article |

    A demonstration of the ability to coherently control the collective attosecond dynamics of relativistic electrons driven through a plasma by an intense laser represents an important step in the development of techniques to manipulate and study extreme states of matter.

    • Antonin Borot
    • , Arnaud Malvache
    •  & Rodrigo Lopez-Martens

  • 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 |

    It is well known that organisms profit from adapting to their environment. A study of stochastic adaptation dynamics shows that this comes at the expense of adaptive speed and accuracy—providing a framework for understanding adaptation in noisy biological systems.

    • Ganhui Lan
    • , Pablo Sartori
    •  & Yuhai Tu

  • Article |

    Commutation relations define the limit to which two complementary properties can be simultaneously known—Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. Yet it is thought that these canonical relations might be different in the quantum gravity regime. Researchers now show how quantum-optics experiments might provide a direct route for studying these effects.

    • Igor Pikovski
    • , Michael R. Vanner
    •  & Časlav Brukner

  • Letter |

    A cross-validation study comparing experimental findings obtained with a system of ultracold fermions with the results of a method based on computing contributions from millions of Feynman diagrams underlines the potential of the so-called bold diagrammatic Monte Carlo technique for solving problems in the area of strongly correlated quantum matter.

    • K. Van Houcke
    • , F. Werner
    •  & M. W. Zwierlein

  • 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

  • Article |

    Small-world topologies characterize many natural and human-built networks. Yet, how such networks organize their link weights is not fully understood. These authors report an organization scheme that captures important features of real-world systems, and identify learning rules that allow evolving networks to obtain such weight organizations based on their history.

    • Sinisa Pajevic
    •  & Dietmar Plenz

  • 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

  • Research Highlights |

    • Alison Wright

  • Research Highlights |

    • Abigail Klopper

  • Editorial |

    Two big-science projects — the Large Hadron Collider and the Planck satellite — are set to deliver major results in the coming year.

  • News & Views |

    Geomagnetic storms driven by the solar wind can cause the flux of high-energy electrons in the Earth's Van Allen belts to rapidly fall. Analysis of data obtained during one such event from multiple spacecraft located at different altitudes in the magnetosphere reveals just where these electrons go.

    • Mary K. Hudson

  • 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 |

    Magnetic reconnection is a process by which the field lines of a magnetized plasma undergo dramatic realignment, releasing large amounts of energy. Large-scale simulations of reconnection events in the Earth’s magnetosphere suggest that this process takes place over much greater distances than previously expected.

    • J. Egedal
    • , W. Daughton
    •  & A. Le

  • 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 |

    A single photon can alter the shape of a molecule. It is now shown that quantum effects can play an important role in this change leading to conformation relaxation rates hundreds of times faster than previously expected.

    • Shaul Mukamel

  • 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

  • Article |

    A molecule can alter shape as it absorbs a photon. It is now shown that quantum effects can play an important role in this change leading to conformation rates hundreds of times faster than previously expected.

    • J. Clark
    • , T. Nelson
    •  & G. Lanzani

  • 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 |

    Two-qubit entanglement can be preserved by partially measuring the qubits to leave them in a 'lethargic' state. The original state is restored using quantum measurement reversal after the qubits have travelled through a decoherence channel.

    • Alexander N. Korotkov

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