Reviews & Analysis

Modern society relies on many interdependent networks such as electric grids, supply chain networks and ecological networks. This Perspective describes progress and challenges in harnessing insights from statistical physics and control theory to develop better control and management strategies of such complex networks and infrastructure systems.

Diffusion is a fundamental transport mechanism that is distinct from wave propagation. Over the past decade, many approaches to control diffusion have been developed. This Review summarizes the origin, development and future of diffusion metamaterials that manipulate heat, particles and plasmas.

Predicting atmospheric ice formation from aerosol particles for cloud and climate modelling remains challenging. This Review summarizes recent fundamental advances on the governing parameters that lead to ice nucleation from liquid droplets and solid substrates, applying experiments and computational theory.

The dynamic pair distribution function (DyPDF) is an inelastic neutron scattering method that provides information about the local dynamics of a crystalline material. This Technical Review provides a comparison of data across spectrometers and outlines a robust data treatment regimen as a guide to users of this technique.

Although the complexity of quantum systems scales exponentially with their size, classical algorithms and optimization strategies can still play an important role in the characterization of quantum states, their dynamics and the detection process.

Photocurrent can be used to reveal the out-of-equilibrium properties of quantum materials over a range of spatiotemporal scales. This Technical Review outlines the principles of photocurrent diagnostics and how it can be used to probe electronic states, quantum geometry and quantum kinetics of materials.

Quantum sensors enable new possibilities in biomedical applications due to their high sensitivity. In this Review, the status of quantum sensing is presented, and the path towards real-world applications on the molecular, cellular and organism scale is evaluated.

Physical non-equilibria can drive cycles of replication and selection chemistries that play a role in the prebiotic replication of DNA and RNA. This Perspective offers insights from astrophysics, geoscience and microfluidics on how various environments on early Earth could have hosted such reactions.

The practicalities of data sharing vary widely between disciplines, which have diverse needs and face different challenges. In this Viewpoint, scientists from seven multi-user facilities discuss the status of data sharing in their communities.

Computer simulations may unlock crucial aspects of how a liquid transforms into a glass, but are hampered by rapidly growing relaxation times near the transition. This Review summarizes progress towards overcoming this problem and creating realistic in silico glasses, and discusses what understanding has been enabled.

Thouless pumping is a dynamical quantum effect that results in a quantized response of a many-body system. It stems from the topological properties of the band structure that emerge under a periodic drive in the adiabatic limit. This Review addresses the robustness of topology in adiabatically driven systems exploring fundamental issues regarding the roles of interactions, disorder and higher dimensions in quantum transport.

Ignition of a millimetre-sized pellet containing a mix of deuterium–tritium, published in 2022, puts to rest questions about the capability of lasers to ignite thermonuclear fuel.

High-resolution images of the local charge distribution in materials often have a key role in establishing structure–property relationships. This Technical Review provides an overview of atomic-resolution charge density imaging techniques in transmission electron microscopy with a focus on recent advances in phase-retrieval methods and applications to heterogeneous materials.

Randomized measurements provide a feasible procedure for probing properties of many-body quantum states realized in today’s quantum simulators and quantum computers. This Review covers implementation, classical post-processing and theoretical performance guarantees of randomized measurement protocols, surveying their many applications and discussing current challenges.

Magnetic resonance elastography captures multiscale mechanical information conveyed by shear waves, enabling noninvasive measurement of the physical behaviour of biological tissues—a behaviour that can change markedly with disease. This Review summarizes the basic technical concepts of magnetic resonance elastography and outlines preclinical and clinical applications.

Even for flows as simple as those through pipes and channels, the nature of the transition to turbulence has remained elusive. This Perspective discusses how statistical mechanics and specifically directed percolation may provide an answer to this old problem.

For many complex or living systems, it is impossible to individually sample all their units, but subsampling can heavily bias the inference about their collective properties. This Perspective presents the subsampling problem and reviews recent developments to overcome this fundamental limitation.

The Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction is an exchange coupling that appears in magnetic systems with spin–orbit coupling. This Technical Review systematically surveys first-principles-calculations methods for DMI in different material systems and for a range of induced magnetic phenomena.

Non-Hermitian theory consists of mathematical structures that are used to describe open systems, which can give rise to non-Hermitian topology not found in Hermitian systems. This Review provides an overview of non-Hermitian band topology and discusses recent developments, such as the non-Hermitian skin effect and non-Hermitian topological classifications.

This Expert Recommendation describes how high conversion efficiency in high-order harmonic generation can be achieved over a large range of pressures and medium lengths, following a hyperbolic equation, and provides design guidance for future high-flux extreme ultraviolet sources.