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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.
Scientific understanding is one of the main aims of science. This Perspective discusses how advanced computational systems, and artificial intelligence in particular, can contribute to driving scientific understanding.
Decades of searching for theoretically motivated dark matter candidates have yielded no results, so the research community is starting to adopt different dark matter detection strategies. In a Viewpoint, seven scientists discuss these new approaches.
The discovery of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos and the first hints of coincident electromagnetic and neutrino emissions opened new opportunities in multi-messenger astronomy. We review theoretical expectations of neutrino emission from transient astrophysical sources and the current and upcoming experimental landscape.
In this Perspective on the physics of particle generation in the respiratory tract, fate in the air upon exhalation and the physics of inhalation, the authors conclude that the general understanding of the entire process is rudimentary, and many open questions remain.
Spin–orbit coupling in non-centrosymmetric heterostructures is called the Rashba effect. This Review highlights the latest progress covering new classes of materials with a variety of ‘Rashba-like’ spin–momentum locking schemes and new trends in non-equilibrium transport leading to enhanced functionalities in spin- and optoelectronics.
Controlled dissipation can be used to protect quantum information, control dynamics and enforce constraints. This Review explains the basic principles and overviews the applications of dissipation engineering to quantum error correction, quantum sensing and quantum simulation.
Spin qubits hosted in semiconducting nanostructures controlled and probed electrically are among platforms pursued to serve as quantum computing hardware. This Technical Review surveys experimentally achieved values on coherence, speed, fidelity and multi-qubit array size, reflecting the progress of semiconducting spin qubits over the past two decades.
Modelling soft-robot deformations induced by actuators and interactions with the surrounding environment can enable full uptake of embodied intelligence. This Technical Review provides a concise guide to modelling approaches and computational strategies that can lead to model-informed design of embodied intelligent robots.
Topological quantum materials host protected, high-mobility surface states which can be used for energy conversion and storage. This Perspective discusses recent progress in using topological materials for water splitting, batteries and supercapacitors.
Polaritons enable the precise control of light at an extreme scale. Van der Waals (vdW) materials offer a natural and versatile platform to host and tailor polaritons. This Technical Review summarizes the state of the art in the manipulation of polaritons with vdW materials.
