Collectively moving cellular systems often contain both motile and non-motile genotypes, and when mixed, these agents segregate spontaneously. The study reveals that the segregation of topological charges between these agents depends on activity and interfacial tension, with high activity and low tension favoring a positively charged motile phase.

The evolution of X-ray transient absorption signal in studies of ultrafast molecular dynamics is controlled by the shapes of potential energy surfaces of the associated core-excited states. The authors use experiment and theory to measure the slopes of potential energy surfaces for excitations out of the C 1s and Cl 2p shells to valence antibonding orbitals in CCl₄

This work concerns a systematic study of Fe_1-xO employing complementary methods of powder and single-crystal X-ray diffraction and synchrotron Mössbauer source spectroscopy up to 94 GPa and 1700 K. It presents a structural and magnetic transitional pressure-temperature diagram of Fe_1-xO and demonstrates the complex physicochemical properties of simple Fe_1-xO binary oxide under extreme conditions.

Engineering sizeable spin-orbit coupling (SOC) in graphene generates effects unmatched in traditional low-dimensional systems. Here, the authors show that the periodic modulation of SOC in 1D patterned graphene heterostructures leads to unusual mini-band structures with symmetry-protected Dirac cones featuring enhanced spin Berry curvature, which paves the way to tunable spin Hall responses.

Network data often includes categorical node attributes whose relevance to the network’s structure is often unknown. Here the authors propose the metablox (metadata block structure exploration) tool, to quantify the relationship between categorical node metadata and the block structure of the network, using Stochastic block models and description length.

The newly discovered photomolecular effect reveals that photons can evaporate water clusters in the visible spectrum where bulk water absorbs little. This work generalizes boundary conditions for Maxwell’s equations with Feibelman parameters and presents modified Fresnel coefficients and interfacial absorptance predicting trends consistent with experiments.

Hexagonal silicon-germanium features efficient direct bandgap light emission. Here, the authors demonstrate the presence of stimulated emission and optical gain in hexagonal silicon germanium and provide a roadmap to reach lasing.

Cochlea is a high-resolution auditory transduction organ to distinguish sounds in both high sensitivity and broadband working frequency. The authors mimic a cochlea on a plate, which can separate, purify and decode complicated elastic waves in quite a compact way.

Elastic structures featuring tessellated rhombuses exhibit instability and heterogeneous patterns under compression. This study reveals how chiral orders emerge and can be suppressed by adjusting mismatches between local deformations and the overall geometry.

Cis-trans photoisomerization is a key process for many processes in biology and materials science, but only careful and time-consuming quantum chemistry methods can describe such reaction in detail. Here, a predictive tool is presented requiring few and affordable calculations, evaluating the efficiency of paradigmatic and modified photoswitches.

This study focuses on reducing noise in the circuit used in the quantum error mitigation method called Virtual Distillation (VD). The authors introduce an approach which significantly enhances the noise tolerance of VD and improves the accuracy by an order of magnitude compared to the standard VD.

The quest for room-temperature superconductivity has been a long-standing aspiration and a central focus of research in the field of condensed matter physics. Here, the authors propose integrating hydride units into Boron-Carbon clathrate structures to achieve high-temperature superconductivity at ambient pressure.

The integration of quantum dot spin qubits and classical cryogenic microelectronics is important for scaling up silicon-based quantum computers. The authors show that their silicon technology tailored for low-power electronics and low-noise quantum dots enables the integration of classical multiplexers and quantum dot spin qubit devices on the same chip.