Research Highlights in 2019

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  • In December, physicists met in Paris to discuss how to push the limits of what can be measured with quantum sensors and how to keep moving them towards practical applications.

    • Zoe Budrikis
    Research Highlight
  • The three-body problem is relevant for astrophysical phenomena such as black hole mergers. It famously lacks a general analytical solution, but a new statistical solution relates the distributions of final and initial states, while requiring fewer assumptions than previous approaches.

    • Zoe Budrikis
    Research Highlight
  • Writing in Physical Review Letters the XENON collaboration reports how it is pushing the limits of the XENON1T experiment, further constraining the regions where light dark matter could be lurking.

    • Iulia Georgescu
    Research Highlight
  • Scientists benchmark quantum simulations of a textbook condensed matter system on the IBM 20-qubit quantum computer.

    • Iulia Georgescu
    Research Highlight
  • Topological insulator band theory usually neglects electron correlations as these are overridden by spin–orbit coupling. Now, two papers strongly confine 1D topological edge states in order to study the effect of correlations.

    • Ankita Anirban
    Research Highlight
  • Biological tissues are scaffolded by the extracellular matrix, but details of how this network of fibre-like macromolecules is patterned have remained elusive. Two papers demonstrate the role of feedback between cells and matrix, and identify how the mechanism is regulated.

    • Zoe Budrikis
    Research Highlight
  • Two studies published in Phys. Rev. Lett. predict new types of topological insulators that could be observed in places such as twisted bilayer graphene or periodically driven systems.

    • Iulia Georgescu
    Research Highlight
  • In September, scientists gathered at the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at the University of Cambridge to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the institute, an event marked by a symposium discussing future prospects in cosmology, large-scale structure and galaxy formation.

    • Iulia Georgescu
    Research Highlight
  • More than 1,700 planetary scientists from 52 countries gathered in Geneva, Switzerland, in September for the joint meeting of the Europlanet Society’s European Planetary Science Congress and the meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society.

    • Nilda Oklay-Vincent
    Research Highlight
  • The Optical Society’s Frontiers in Optics conference held in Washington DC, USA, this September brought together students and Nobel Laureates alike to discuss the wide-ranging fields of optics and photonics.

    • Daniel T. Payne
    Research Highlight
  • This October, the new user facilities at the Cornell High-Energy Synchrotron Source will open their doors to researchers following a major upgrade project.

    • Claire Ashworth
    Research Highlight
  • The Physics of Living Matter symposium in September covered diverse biophysics topics and systems across length scales.

    • Arianna Bottinelli
    Research Highlight
  • Two recent papers demonstrate optical waveguides consisting of ultrathin photonic crystals, which approach the lowest possible thickness for such devices.

    • Silvia Milana
    Research Highlight
  • The International Nuclear Physics Conference in Glasgow in July featured all areas of nuclear physics, an outreach programme and prizes for young scientists.

    • Zoe Budrikis
    Research Highlight
  • In July, physicists met for the biannual European Physical Society High-Energy Physics conference and discussed exciting developments in their field.

    • Iulia Georgescu
    Research Highlight
  • Fifteen years after its discovery, graphene is a serious business. The Graphene 2019 conference in June brought together academic and industrial researchers to discuss both applications and fundamental theory.

    • Silvia Milana
    Research Highlight
  • New approach based on catalysed crystal growth allowed synthesizing twisted nanowires of van der Waals materials and finely tune their topology.

    • Anastasiia Novikova
    Research Highlight
  • Two recent papers demonstrate the importance of deformations for how particles pack and how their packed configurations slowly evolve.

    • Zoe Budrikis
    Research Highlight
  • Quantum information and string theory researchers met at the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, Japan for a 5-weeks long workshop to discuss the fascinating interface between their fields.

    • Iulia Georgescu
    Research Highlight
  • Three publications in Geophysical Research Letters describe details of the Martian climate, including global dust storms and polar ice caps.

    • Laura Zinke
    Research Highlight