Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Dusty plasmas are ubiquitous in the universe and are widely used in laboratory and industrial applications, and yet elements of theoretical understanding of the interaction between dust grains with their environment remains incomplete. The authors present experimental measurements that challenge the collisionless electron assumptions widely used in current models of dusty plasmas.
Non-Hermitian systems can house a range of unusual physical phenomena such as the skin-effect which has been typically observed in optical lattices and electrical circuits. Here, the authors show the non-Hermitian skin effect in thermal transport, demonstrating that the topologically protected heat flow can be realized by using thermal metamaterials.
Obtaining spatially-resolved electronic structure information at the microscale is key to a complete understanding of phase transitions and domain separation in the solid-state. Here, micro- and nanoscale angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy reveals the electronic structure of domains in the striped phase of IrTe2.
Existing methods for molecular simulations with quantum computers use ansatz constructed as series of fermionic excitation evolution. Here, qubit excitation evolutions are employed instead, in combination with the ADAPT-VQE protocol, to construct short and accurate ansatz suitable for noisy and imperfect quantum computers.
Lattice dynamics can govern the thermal conductivity solids and understanding the underlying mechanisms may enable enhanced performance of devices via judicious engineering. Here, insight into the anisotropic thermal conductivity of semiconducting α-GaN is gained by measuring the Matryoshka phonon dispersions.
A key feature of topological insulators, such as Bi2Se3 is their protected electronic surface states where the direction of spin is locked to their momentum. Here, using spin-polarized electron energy loss spectroscopy, the authors demonstrate that collective charge excitations can initiate spin-dependent electron scattering at the surface of Bi2Se3, and this occurs for both the elastic and inelastic scattering channels.
Emergent phenomena in complex many-body systems driven far from equilibrium are currently a subject of intense study. Here, the authors report on a nonlinear current-density relationship in experiments of magnetic colloids driven above disordered energy landscapes, and explain the underlying mechanisms through analytical modeling.
Kondo insulators exhibit a characteristic low-temperature saturation in resistivity the reasons for which have so far eluded physical explanation. Here, using many-body simulations the authors propose an alternative mechanism where the finite lifetimes of the intrinsic bulk carriers play an integral role.
Strong light-matter coupling can be achieved using the optical modes of microcavities and the underlying physics explored using ultrafast spectroscopic techniques. Here, the authors investigate the strong coupling regime between colloidal quantum dots and optical cavities and using femtosecond pump-probe spectroscopy and photoluminescence spectroscopy investigate the role of Rabi flopping.
The gain and loss inherent in non-Hermitian quantum systems can modify the flow of coherence between subsystems, which may be lost or recovered from the environment. Here, the coherence flow in PT-symmetric and anti-PT symmetric systems is investigated experimentally and theoretically.
Photonic honeycomb lattices have attracted attention for their interesting optical properties, but are complicated to reconfigure after fabrication. This work proposes to reduce this complexity to a 1D ring-resonator array by using only one real dimension and one synthetic dimension.
Twisted light beams allow unique control of light-matter interaction, but classical models cannot describe this phenomenon at the single-photon level. Here, the quantum state of structured photons is derived instead from quantum field theory which captures the quantum uncertainty in its angular momentum and the non-local photonic spin density correlation.
Temporal modulation materials have been attracting attention thanks to their ability to break wave reciprocity, i.e., waves traveling from point A to B are identical to waves propagating from B to A. The authors present a linear temporal modulation device with a giant acoustic impedance modulation ratio and ability to linearly change wave frequency, operating in two quantized states when a shunt circuit is connected and disconnected by a MOSFET.
The increasing availability of new data on biological and sociotechnical systems highlights the importance of well grounded filtering techniques to separate meaningful interactions from noise. In this work the authors propose the first method to detect informative connections of any order in statistically validated hypergraphs, showing on synthetic benchmarks and real-world systems that the highlighted hyperlinks are more informative than those extracted with traditional pairwise approaches.
Observations on confluent epithelial tissues show the emergence of dynamic contraction patterns that are suspected to be governed mechanically. Here, the authors propose a model for epithelial sheets and show that cells’ Extension-Induced-Contraction response explains experimentally-observed contraction pulses, that along with a cell softening response enhances epithelial resistance to rupture.
The underlying mechanism of the superconductivity in high-Tc cuprates and the role spin and charge excitations play has been under debate since the cuprates were first discovered. Here, the authors perform a series of calculations for multi- and single-orbital model of a 1D cuprate system revealing the importance of oxygen degrees of freedom and their relevance to resonant inelastic x-ray scattering experiments.
Experimental testing of the expected linear optical anisotropy of 2D crystals, arising from their finite thickness, have so far been complicated by substrate contributions. Here, immersion of monolayer samples in a low-refractive-index polymer allows more accurate determination of their optical constants.
Before laser-driven accelerators can reach broad application, their performance must be ensured by robust characterization. Here, an interferometric method allowing high-resolution measurement of the beam size is demonstrated.
The manipulation of spins with ultrafast lasers is a promising route to control the properties of a wide variety of quantum materials. Here, the authors present a simulation of Floquet-engineered spin fluctuations in a correlated system and of their fingerprints in ultrafast inelastic X-ray scattering experiments.
The kinetic magnetoelectric effect is an orbital analog of the Edelstein effect and offers an additional degree of freedom to control magnetization via the charge current. Here, using DFT calculations, the authors demonstrate the presence of said effect in a topological insulator identifying Cu2ZnSnSe4 as a potential candidate
