Browse Articles

Real-world networks are typically characterised by a non-trivial organization at the mesoscale, such that groups of nodes are preferentially connected within distinguishable network regions known as communities. In this work the authors define unipartite, bipartite, and multilayer network representations of hypergraph flows to extract the community structure of social and biological systems with higher-order interactions.

The design and construction of advanced semiconductor devices relies on the formation of nanostructures with spatially engineered compositions. Here, the authors use phase-field simulations combined with experimental data to understand how to control and utilise phase segregation in SiGe alloys by laser processing for fabrication of in-plane heterostructures.

All aperiodic systems display an intrinsic degree of freedom, called the phason, and here it is shown that the phason space for twisted bilayered systems is a 2-torus. As a consequence, these systems host the physics of 4-dimensional integer quantum Hall effect, which can be accessed by simply sliding the layers relative to each other.

The time scales of individual contagion and human mobility are both relevant to understand the evolution of epidemics. Here, the authors study a reaction-diffusion process for an epidemic metapopulation model, showing that modulating the relative time scale of these two processes produces different epidemic outcomes and can reproduce the effect of non-pharmaceutical interventions.

The interplay between relativity and the uncertainty principle predicts the production of photons from vacuum by accelerating photodetectors. The authors propose a method to enhance photon-emission from a microwave cavity vacuum by using many photodetectors undergoing oscillatory motion within the cavity and show that when a critical detector number is exceeded, there is a coherent enhancement in the vacuum photon production, akin to Dicke superradiance.

The quantum Hall effect can be used to study the physics of correlated systems and can reveal different features of the associated phase transitions. Here, the authors consider mass anisotropy and the impact on the phase transitions of quantum Hall charge density wave states in a 2D electron gas.

The dynamics of information within complex networks can be captured by a set of operators where the effect of detachment of a node defines the node-networks entanglement, which can be used as a multiscale centrality measure. Here, the authors show that the nodes with high entanglement centrality, which are critical for information dynamics, are also the ones responsible for keeping the network integrated.

Plant leaves are out of equilibrium active solid sheets that grow in a decentralized fashion by deforming its unit cells while maintaining a typical shape. Here, the authors measure the surface growth of Tobacco leaves at high spatial and temporal resolution, and find that growth dynamics is dominated by sharp fluctuations at the cellular scale, suggesting that it is regulated and correlated in space and time.

A question of foundational importance is ‘why is nature forgetful?’, playing an important role in our understanding of thermodynamics. Here, the authors study a class of quantum processes, called approximate unitary designs, to show that these processes are highly forgetful - i.e. Markovian.

While the global efficiency measures how easy it is to travel or exchange information concurrently between any two nodes in a network, this might be difficult to compute when networks are not embedded into space and edge weights do not encode physical distances, but instead represent flows. Here, the authors propose and analyse an efficiency measure based on the flow across least resistance pathways that can be computed without any knowledge on the system except for its weighted representation.

It is generally accepted that the Universe is dominated by dark energy but the different methods to measure the Hubble constant disagree, giving origin to what is known as the "Hubble tension”. The authors demonstrate that the sole reduction of the sound horizon is not sufficient to fully resolve the Hubble tension.

By using 2D materials heterostructures it is possible to exploit the properties of both materials at the interface, for instance, spin-dependent transport for application in spintronic devices. Here, using a heterostructure of MoTe2/Graphene the authors demonstrate a proximity induced spin-galvanic effect which can be controlled by the gate voltage.

Excitons are quasiparticles consisting of an electron-hole pair and can be used to study many-body phenomenon. Here, the authors demonstrate on-demand quantum confinement of long-lived interlayer excitons in WS₂/WSe₂ heterostructures deposited on nanopatterned substrates.

The recent discovery of superconducting nickelates has reignited interest in these materials and whether they can shed light on the mechanism of unconventional superconductivity in the cuprates. Here, the authors use first principles calculations to investigate the f electrons and magnetic ordering effects in the infinite layer nickelates and elaborate on the role of the cuprate-like 3dx2-y2 band.

Synchronization phenomena, where coupled oscillators coordinate their behavior, are ubiquitous in physics, biology, and neuroscience. In this work the authors investigate a framework of coupled topological signals where oscillators are defined both on the nodes and the links of a network, showing that this leads to new topologically induced explosive transitions.

Network approaches are key to understand epidemic spreading, inherently driven by human mobility patterns and constrained by transport systems. In this work, the authors develop a country distance framework to capture the spread of COVID-19 on top of the airline network, analyzing the effectiveness of mobility restrictions in the presence of multiple outbreaks and suggesting strategies for optimized coordinated travel restrictions.

Magnetic Weyl semimetals, such as Co₃Sn₂S₂, are ideal to realise anomalous transport properties based on the Berry curvature in the specific electronic bands and are expected to be useful for topological spintronics. Here, the authors investigate the bulk and surface conduction channels of Co₃Sn₂S₂ determining the relationship between the film thickness and surface conductance.

Fano resonance is an important phenomenon for optical devices particularly for application in switching and sensing. Here, the authors demonstrate theoretically and experimentally that Fano resonances can be induced using the polarization dependent properties of stacked wire-grid metallic metasurfaces.

Doped-fullerenes are a class of organic superconductors where disorder can be used to tune the superconducting temperature as well as the presence of subgap excitations such as Yu-Shiba-Rusinov states. Here, the authors investigate how structural disorder and non-magnetic impurities affect the superconductivity of Rb-doped fullerenes and what information this can provide about the underlying mechanisms.