Theoretical physics articles within Nature Physics

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  • Article
    | 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

  • Comment |

    Quantum hypothesis testing—the task of distinguishing quantum states—enjoys surprisingly deep connections with the theory of entanglement. Recent findings have reopened the biggest questions in hypothesis testing and reversible entanglement manipulation.

    • Mario Berta
    • , Fernando G. S. L. Brandão
    •  & Marco Tomamichel

  • Comment |

    Supersymmetric quantum field theories have special properties that make them easier to study. This Comment discusses how the constraints that supersymmetry places on renormalization group flows have been used to study strongly coupled field theories.

    • Jaewon Song

  • News & Views |

    The study of complexity of unitary transformations has become central to quantum information theory and, increasingly, quantum field theory and quantum gravity. A proof of how complexity grows with system size demonstrates the power of a geometric approach.

    • Michal P. Heller

  • Article |

    Quantum operations can be considered as points in a high-dimensional space in which distance reflects the similarity of two operations. Applying differential-geometric methods in this picture gives insights into the complexity of quantum systems.

    • Adam R. Brown

  • News & Views |

    Limits on the quantum entanglement entropy in one dimension have been a key factor in understanding the physics of many-body systems. A bound that applies in any dimension has now been derived for a different measure known as entanglement spread.

    • Enrique Rico Ortega
    •  & Simone Montangero

  • Editorial |

    It is easy to dismiss research into the foundations of quantum mechanics as irrelevant to physicists in other areas. Adopting this attitude misses opportunities to appreciate the richness of quantum mechanics.

  • News & Views |

    A theoretical analysis shows how a person’s location in space could be verified by the transmission of single photons. A vital application of quantum networks may be within reach.

    • Yusuf Alnawakhtha
    •  & Carl A. Miller

  • Comment |

    Scientists have long preferred the simplest possible explanation of their data. More recently, a worrying trend to favour unnecessarily complex interpretations has taken hold.

    • Igor Mazin

  • News & Views |

    On the face of it, characterizing quantum dynamics in the exponentially large Hilbert space of a many-body system might require prohibitively many experiments. In fact, the locality of physical interactions means that it can be done efficiently.

    • Vedran Dunjko

  • Research Highlight |

    • Richard Brierley

  • Article |

    The unpredictability of evolution makes it difficult to deal with drug resistance because over the course of a treatment there may be mutations that we cannot predict. The authors propose to use quantum methods to control the speed and distribution of potential evolutionary outcomes.

    • Shamreen Iram
    • , Emily Dolson
    •  & Michael Hinczewski

  • Article |

    Braneworld cosmologies describe our universe as a four-dimensional membrane embedded in a bulk five-dimensional anti-de Sitter spacetime. In a possible holographic realization, observers on the brane experience cosmology, and gravity is localized.

    • Stefano Antonini
    •  & Brian Swingle

  • Perspective |

    A type of stochastic neural network called a restricted Boltzmann machine has been widely used in artificial intelligence applications for decades. They are now finding new life in the simulation of complex wavefunctions in quantum many-body physics.

    • Roger G. Melko
    • , Giuseppe Carleo
    •  & J. Ignacio Cirac

  • Article |

    Large-scale numerical examination of a disordered Bose–Hubbard model in two dimensions shows entanglement based signature of many-body localization, providing answers to the challenging questions posed by recent experiments.

    • Thorsten B. Wahl
    • , Arijeet Pal
    •  & Steven H. Simon

  • Perspective |

    Recent developments have seen concepts originally developed in quantum information theory, such as entanglement and quantum error correction, come to play a fundamental role in understanding quantum gravity.

    • Xiao-Liang Qi

  • Perspective |

    It is the common wisdom that time evolution of a many-body system leads to thermalization and washes away quantum correlations. But one class of system — referred to as many-body localized — defy this expectation.

    • Ehud Altman

  • Perspective |

    Quantitative tools for measuring the propagation of information through quantum many-body systems, originally developed to study quantum chaos, have recently found many new applications from black holes to disordered spin systems.

    • Brian Swingle

  • Article |

    The physical conditions that support a geometric interpretation of spacetime, such as the equivalence between rest and inertial mass, are shown not to be necessarily valid in the quantum regime, and a quantum formulation is provided.

    • Magdalena Zych
    •  & Časlav Brukner

  • Comment |

    David Hilbert famously argued that infinity cannot exist in physical reality. The consequence of this statement — still under debate today — has far-reaching implications.

    • George F. R. Ellis
    • , Krzysztof A. Meissner
    •  & Hermann Nicolai

  • Article |

    A generalized Mott-insulating state is found theoretically starting from a holographic model. The state has features in common with the conventional variety, and upon doping shares striking similarities with the stripe phases found in cuprates.

    • Tomas Andrade
    • , Alexander Krikun
    •  & Jan Zaanen

  • News & Views |

    Many-body quantum systems fail to reach thermalization only under specific circumstances. An analysis now reveals a new, different kind of non-equilibrating dynamics based on the many-body analogue of quantum scars in single-particle quantum chaos.

    • Vanja Dunjko
    •  & Maxim Olshanii

  • Article |

    Ergodicity can be strongly broken by integrable or many-body localized systems. A new form of weak ergodicity breaking is shown to arise from the presence of special eigenstates in the many-body spectrum akin to quantum scars in chaotic systems.

    • C. J. Turner
    • , A. A. Michailidis
    •  & Z. Papić

  • Review Article |

    This Review Article outlines the exploration of the interplay between parity–time symmetry and non-Hermitian physics in optics, plasmonics and optomechanics.

    • Ramy El-Ganainy
    • , Konstantinos G. Makris
    •  & Demetrios N. Christodoulides

  • Research Highlights |

    • Andrea Taroni

  • Review Article |

    This Review surveys the electronic properties of quantum materials through the prism of the electron wavefunction, and examines how its entanglement and topology give rise to a rich variety of quantum states and phases.

    • B. Keimer
    •  & J. E. Moore

  • News & Views |

    The ATLAS Collaboration observed photons elastically scattering from other photons — an effect predicted by quantum electrodynamics over 80 years ago.

    • Spencer R. Klein

  • News & Views |

    Improved-accuracy measurements of the ground-state hyperfine splitting in highly charged bismuth ions reveal a surprising discrepancy with the predictions of quantum electrodynamics.

    • Jean-Philippe Karr

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