Techniques and instrumentation articles within Nature Physics

Featured

  • News & Views |

    Iridescent mother of pearl sports a complex structure that eludes standard imaging techniques. Now, a nanotomographic method provides high resolution 3D insight into the topological defects underpinning this composite material.

    • Rebecca A. Metzler

  • Article |

    In principle skyrmions are topologically protected, but the crystal lattice interferes with this protection so that they should be unstable to switching of their winding number. Here this process is understood via scanning tunnelling microscopy.

    • Florian Muckel
    • , Stephan von Malottki
    •  & Markus Morgenstern

  • Letter |

    Three-dimensional structures of vortex loops in a bulk micromagnet GdCo2 have been observed using X-ray magnetic nanotomography. The cross-section of these loops consists of a vortex–antivortex pair stabilized by the dipolar interaction.

    • Claire Donnelly
    • , Konstantin L. Metlov
    •  & Sebastian Gliga

  • Article |

    Energy–momentum phase-matching enables strong interactions between free electrons and light waves. As a result, the wavefunction of the electron exhibits a comb structure, which was observed using photon-induced near-field electron microscopy.

    • Raphael Dahan
    • , Saar Nehemia
    •  & Ido Kaminer

  • Measure for Measure |

    The assembly of the more than a million single parts of the ITER tokamak requires large-scale three-dimensional precision metrology. John Villanueva Jr gives us insights into the complexity of this project.

    • John Villanueva Jr

  • Article |

    The authors investigate out-of-equilibrium crystallization of a binary mixture of sphere-like nanoparticles in small droplets. They observe the spontaneous formation of an icosahedral structure with stable MgCu2 phases, which are promising for photonic applications.

    • Da Wang
    • , Tonnishtha Dasgupta
    •  & Alfons van Blaaderen

  • Article |

    Symmetry breaking is essential for polarization of cells and generation of left–right body asymmetry. Here the authors investigate the arrangement of hair cells in zebrafish and show that mirror-symmetric patterns arise from a combination of biochemical and mechanical symmetry-breaking events.

    • A. Erzberger
    • , A. Jacobo
    •  & A. J. Hudspeth

  • Perspective
    | Open Access

    The Future Circular Colliders are proposed as a future step after the Large Hadron Collider has stopped running. The first stage foresees collision of electron–positron pairs before a machine upgrade to allow proton–proton operation.

    • Michael Benedikt
    • , Alain Blondel
    •  & Frank Zimmermann

  • Perspective
    | Open Access

    The Compact Linear Collider is a proposed high-luminosity electron–positron collider that can reach TeV-scale energies. Its accelerator design and physics programme, mainly focusing on precision measurements and new physics searches, are discussed.

    • Eva Sicking
    •  & Rickard Ström

  • Perspective |

    Proposals for the particle physics programmes in the United States and Asia are discussed; mainly the International Linear Collider in Japan, the Circular Electron–Positron Collider in China and accelerator-based long-baseline neutrino experiments in the United States.

    • Pushpalatha C. Bhat
    •  & Geoffrey N. Taylor

  • Books & Arts |

    • Christine-Maria Horejs

  • Comment |

    Physics is formulated in terms of timeless, axiomatic mathematics. A formulation on the basis of intuitionist mathematics, built on time-evolving processes, would offer a perspective that is closer to our experience of physical reality.

    • Nicolas Gisin

  • Research Highlight |

    • Elizaveta Dubrovina

  • Letter |

    Conventional on-axis electron energy-loss spectroscopy can detect vibrational modes in crystals and amorphous solids at atomic resolution by isolating the specific signal from the background signal and the dipole contributions.

    • Kartik Venkatraman
    • , Barnaby D. A. Levin
    •  & Peter A. Crozier

  • Measure for Measure |

    Continuously improving precision in length measurements increases understanding of our world and its phenomena, both at small and large scales, as Leo Gross reveals.

    • Leo Gross

  • Letter |

    The authors demonstrate that individual atoms on a surface can be detected and distinguished from each other with subångström resolution using the electron spin resonance.

    • Philip Willke
    • , Kai Yang
    •  & Christopher P. Lutz

  • Editorial |

    General relativity was first experimentally verified in 1919. On the centennial of this occasion, we celebrate the scientific progress fuelled by subsequent efforts at verifying its predictions, from time dilation to the observation of the shadow of a black hole.

  • News & Views |

    The measurement of the charge density wave energy gap in high-temperature superconducting cuprates uncovers new links between competing states.

    • Jiarui Li
    •  & Riccardo Comin

  • Research Highlight |

    • Stefanie Reichert

  • Measure for Measure |

    Bart Verberck reflects on measuring the speed of light, its role in metrology, and special relativity.

    • Bart Verberck

  • Measure for Measure |

    Understanding the muon’s magnetic moment holds the key for unlocking potential new physics, as Thomas Teubner shows.

    • Thomas Teubner

  • News & Views |

    Generating pure spin currents is a necessary part of many spintronic devices. Now there is a new mechanism for doing this, utilizing nuclear spin waves.

    • Claudia K. A. Mewes

  • Letter |

    The entropy of a few-electron quantum system is measured for the first time by tracking the movement of charge in and out of the system. This could allow the unambiguous detection of Majorana fermions in solid state devices.

    • Nikolaus Hartman
    • , Christian Olsen
    •  & Joshua Folk

  • Article |

    Quantum fluctuations in space and time can now be directly imaged using a scanning superconducting quantum interference device. The technique allows access to the local dynamics of a system close to a quantum phase transition.

    • A. Kremen
    • , H. Khan
    •  & B. Kalisky

  • Measure for Measure |

    Richard Davis refreshes our memory on the venerable metre.

    • Richard Davis

  • News & Views |

    The agent responsible for the accelerated expansion of the Universe is completely unknown. Delicate interference measurements of the quantum transitions of very slow neutrons bouncing on a flat table have constrained an interesting theoretical possibility.

    • W. Michael Snow

  • Measure for Measure |

    Tests of one of the most fundamental theories in physics reveal an issue with the size of the proton — or the Rydberg constant. Thomas Udem explains.

    • Thomas Udem

  • Measure for Measure |

    Michael Jentschel and Klaus Blaum explain why the most famous equation of physics needs checking — and how to do it.

    • Michael Jentschel
    •  & Klaus Blaum

  • Measure for Measure |

    Mark Keller explains how the elementary charge will soon be reinstated in metrology — and why it got sidelined in the first place.

    • Mark W. Keller

  • Review Article |

    An overview of how electromagnetic radiation can be used for probing and modification of the magnetic order in antiferromagnets, and possible future research directions.

    • P. Němec
    • , M. Fiebig
    •  & A. V. Kimel

  • Letter |

    Unsupervised machine learning techniques can efficiently perform quantum state tomography of large, highly entangled states with high accuracy, and allow the reconstruction of many-body quantities from simple experimentally accessible measurements.

    • Giacomo Torlai
    • , Guglielmo Mazzola
    •  & Giuseppe Carleo

Browse broader subjects

Browse narrower subjects

Browse Techniques and instrumentation across other nature.com journals