Structure of solids and liquids articles within Nature Physics

Featured

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • Article |

    When applying sufficient strain, the flow of dense granular matter becomes critical. It is now shown that this state corresponds to random loose packing for spheres with different friction coefficients and that these packings can be mapped onto the frictionless hard-sphere system.

    • Yi Xing
    • , Ye Yuan
    •  & Yujie Wang

  • Editorial |

    Two-dimensional crystals have revolutionized fundamental research across a staggering range of disciplines. We take stock of the progress gained after twenty years of work.

  • Article |

    The Born–Oppenheimer approximation is the prevailing assumption for interpreting ultrafast electron dynamics in solids. Evidence now suggests that collisions between electrons and lattice not captured by this approximation play an important role.

    • Gilberto A. de la Peña Muñoz
    • , Alfredo A. Correa
    •  & Mariano Trigo

  • News & Views |

    The structure of disordered materials typically ages, but sometimes also rejuvenates, resulting in intriguing memory properties. Progress in numerical simulations of spin glasses has now enabled replication of such phenomena from simple models.

    • Eric Vincent

  • Article |

    Glasses relax internally even when their structure is frozen. Observations of a two-dimensional glass former now show that although structure relaxation freezes with the glass transition, non-constrained bonds survive; this accounts for persisting internal relaxation.

    • Yanshuang Chen
    • , Zefang Ye
    •  & Peng Tan

  • Article |

    It is very challenging to model hydrogen at high pressures and low temperatures because quantum effects become significant. A state-of-the-art numerical study shows that these effects cause important changes to the predicted phase diagram.

    • Lorenzo Monacelli
    • , Michele Casula
    •  & Francesco Mauri

  • Article |

    The ultrafast structural dynamics in 2D perovskites are an important part of their non-equilibrium properties. Now, their visualization reveals a light-induced reduction in the antiferro-distortion initiated by the electron–hole plasma.

    • Hao Zhang
    • , Wenbin Li
    •  & Aditya D. Mohite

  • Letter
    | Open Access

    The notion of chirality in dynamical systems with broken spatial symmetry but preserved time inversion symmetry has led to the concept of truly chiral phonons. These have now been observed in bulk HgS using circularly polarized Raman spectroscopy.

    • Kyosuke Ishito
    • , Huiling Mao
    •  & Takuya Satoh

  • Perspective |

    High-resolution imaging methods have been instrumental in advancing our understanding of the structure of materials. To move microscopy and tomography methods forwards, approaches to reassess macroscopic concepts such as symmetry are needed.

    • Sergei V. Kalinin
    • , Ayana Ghosh
    •  & Maxim Ziatdinov

  • News & Views |

    Computer simulations have revealed the topological nature of the liquid–liquid phase transition in colloidal water. This finding might lead to an experimental observation of this topological transition with colloids as building blocks.

    • Camille Scalliet

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Supercooled water undergoes a liquid–liquid phase transition. The authors show that the two phases have distinct hydrogen-bond networks, differing in their degree of entanglement, and thus the transition can be described by the topological changes of the network.

    • Andreas Neophytou
    • , Dwaipayan Chakrabarti
    •  & Francesco Sciortino

  • 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

  • Article |

    The relation between physical properties and structure in amorphous materials is poorly understood. Simulations now show that vibrations of string-like dynamical defects likely govern the low-temperature dynamics in these systems.

    • Yuan-Chao Hu
    •  & Hajime Tanaka

  • News & Views |

    The origin of a well-known feature in relaxation data seen in many glass-forming materials has now — possibly — been resolved by means of computer simulations.

    • Reiner Zorn

  • News & Views |

    Optical control of material properties is usually limited to the region that absorbs the light. Coupling to lattice vibrations that travel close to the speed of light allows ultrafast modulation of polarization deep inside a ferroelectric material.

    • Elsa Abreu

  • News & Views |

    When crystal defects are present in an ensemble of spinning colloids that induce transverse forces on each other, the defects assemble into grain boundaries that can break the system apart into a set of crystal whorls.

    • Cynthia J. O. Reichhardt
    •  & Charles Reichhardt

  • Article |

    The addition of transverse forces to an ensemble of colloidal spinners induces the appearance of odd elastic crystals, featuring self-propelled defects that organize the system into a ‘self-kneading’ crystal whorl state.

    • Ephraim S. Bililign
    • , Florencio Balboa Usabiaga
    •  & William T. M. Irvine

  • News & Views |

    At high pressure and temperature, water forms two crystalline phases, known as hot ‘black’ ices due to their partial opaqueness. A detailed characterization of these phases may explain magnetic field formation in giant icy planets like Neptune.

    • Simone Anzellini

  • Article |

    Measurements of the phase diagram of water reveal first-order phase transitions to face- and body-centred cubic superionic ice phases. The former is suggested to be present in the interior of ice giant planets.

    • Vitali B. Prakapenka
    • , Nicholas Holtgrewe
    •  & Alexander F. Goncharov

  • Perspective |

    The interaction between light and the crystal lattice of a quantum material can modify its properties. Utilizing nonlinear interactions allows this to be done in a controlled way to design specific non-equilibrium functionalities.

    • Ankit S. Disa
    • , Tobia F. Nova
    •  & Andrea Cavalleri

  • Article |

    Superionic water is believed to exist in the interior of ice giant planets. By combining machine learning and free-energy methods, the phase behaviours of water at the extreme pressures and temperatures prevalent in such planets are predicted.

    • Bingqing Cheng
    • , Mandy Bethkenhagen
    •  & Sebastien Hamel

  • Article |

    Alkali metals at high pressures have a liquid–liquid transition that is difficult to study in detail. Numerical calculations now suggest that the higher-pressure state is an electride liquid, in which electrons behave like localized anions.

    • Hongxiang Zong
    • , Victor Naden Robinson
    •  & Graeme J. Ackland

  • Article |

    The authors investigate the role of spherical confinement and curvature-induced topological defects on the crystallization of charged colloids. They conclude that crystallization in spherical confinement is due to a combination of thermodynamics and kinetic pathways.

    • Yanshuang Chen
    • , Zhenwei Yao
    •  & Peng Tan

  • News & Views |

    Artificial neural networks now allow the dynamics of supercooled liquids to be predicted from their structure alone in an unprecedented way, thus providing a powerful new tool to study the physics of the glass transition.

    • Giulio Biroli

  • Article |

    The physics that underlies the glass transition is both subtle and non-trivial. A machine learning approach based on graph networks is now shown to accurately predict the dynamics of glasses over a wide range of temperatures, pressures and densities.

    • V. Bapst
    • , T. Keck
    •  & P. Kohli

  • Letter |

    Structures containing multiple skyrmions inside a larger skyrmion—called skyrmion bags—are experimentally created in liquid crystals and theoretically predicted in magnetic materials. These may have applications in information storage technology.

    • David Foster
    • , Charles Kind
    •  & Ivan I. Smalyukh

  • Article |

    Neutron and X-ray scattering experiments show that the partly disordered material CsNiCrF6 supports multiple Coulomb phases with structural and magnetic properties dictated by underlying local gauge symmetry.

    • T. Fennell
    • , M. J. Harris
    •  & S. T. Bramwell

  • Article |

    In spite of its wide technological use, the response of silicon to rapid compression remains poorly understood. By means of an X-ray diffraction method based on a free-electron laser, the process for laser-driven dynamic shock compression is now elucidated in this system.

    • E. E. McBride
    • , A. Krygier
    •  & A. Higginbotham

  • News & Views |

    Many particles — both fundamental and emergent — carry angular momentum or spin. Experiments have now demonstrated that phonons can transport angular momentum, showing that they may have spin too.

    • Matthias B. Jungfleisch
    •  & Axel Hoffmann

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