Research Highlights in 2022

A paper in Physical Review Letters shows how fluctuations can induce biofilm formation by quorum-sensing bacteria.

In the 25 years since the first quantum teleportation experiments, researchers have been pushing the limits both in terms of the distances and the complexity of the quantum states involved.

A study in Physical Review Letters reports new evidence for high-energy neutrinos being associated with cataclysmic phenomena known as tidal disruption events.

How did the leopard get its spots? According to Rudyard Kipling’s 1902 children’s story, the leopard’s spots were created by fingerprints of an Ethiopian man. Fifty years later, Alan Turing laid the mathematical foundations of our understanding of leopard spots today.

A paper in Journal of the Royal Society Interface reports the physics of how the structure of part of the ear of wheat contributes to fungal spores being agglomerated by the dew cycle.

An article in Physical Reviews X shows that quantum correlations can enhance the expressivity of generative models, suggesting new ways to develop improved (quantum-inspired) classical machine learning methods.

A paper in Physical Review Letters uses experiments and simulations to understand the mechanical properties of bird nests.

Sonja Franke-Arnold discusses the first experimental generation of light with orbital angular momentum three decades ago and outlines the subsequent advances.

40 years ago, the first atomic-resolution images using scanning tunnelling microscopy were seen.

45 years after being coined, the quantum Zeno effect still holds surprises.

The first confirmed discovery of a planet outside our Solar System was announced 30 years ago. Since then, technical developments have enabled detection of thousands of exoplanets.

A paper in Physical Review X reports on the role of spatial coherence in branched flow patterns in light.

A paper in Science Advances uses a laboratory setup to simulate galaxy cluster cores and explain the suppression of heat conduction from the plasma core.

Two recent studies report more stringent constraints on dark matter from experiments with atoms and ions that make use of techniques and devices developed for quantum technologies.

A paper in Physical Review Letters reports how twisting yarn makes it stronger.

A paper in Nature shows how reinforcement learning can solve the problem of optimizing the magnetic field in a tokamak to create a variety of plasma configurations, including ones that haven’t been achieved before.

Francis Russell reflects on the history of nonlinear excitations.

Two recent studies look for magnetic monopoles in very different, and rather exotic, places: in heavy ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider and the IceCube neutrino detector in Antarctica.

Two papers in Physical Review Letters report experiments and simulations on how fluid flow affects the shapes of ice and rock formations in water.

Two papers in Nature Astronomy present new simulations of the formation of planets in our Solar System.