Volume 1 Issue 2, February 2019

The European Synchrotron Radiation Facility is upgrading to become the first high-energy fourth generation synchrotron. It will be a test bed for new technologies and will provide users with unprecedented measurement capabilities.

In January, the Dark Energy Survey (DES) completed its 6-year-mission to map more than 300 million distant galaxies; however, the equally arduous task of analysing the data is just beginning.

New simulations of DNA suggest that its surprising flexibility on short length scales can be predicted from the crookedness of its structure.

Cosmological hydrodynamics simulations reveal the possible formation of supermassive stars within metal-free primordial gas haloes. These stars are thought to be the origin of supermassive black holes.

The exact mechanisms involved in ultrafast demagnetization have long been debated. A new study published in Nature uncovers the role played in this process by the angular momentum transfer to the lattice, which is faster than previously thought.

Seven scientists share their views on some of the latest developments in attosecond science and X-ray free electron lasers (XFELs) and highlight exciting new directions.

This is an overview of the new physics that emerges in van der Waals heterostructures consisting of graphene and hexagonal boron nitride, including the integer and fractional quantum Hall effects, novel plasmonic states and the effects of emergent moiré superlattices.

Magnetic topological insulators enable the investigation of the interplay between magnetism and topological electronic states. This Review summarizes the basic notions of magnetic topological insulators and the progress in the experimental realization of exotic topological phenomena.

High harmonic spectroscopy is a femtosecond laser technique that reveals details of valence electron orbital wavefunctions in gas-phase molecules. It makes it possible to image molecular orbitals and for unimolecular chemical reactions to be followed with femtosecond resolution.

High spatial coherence of laser illumination is not always desirable, because it can cause adverse artefacts such as speckle noise. This Technical Review describes unconventional lasers that have inherently low and/or tunable spatial coherence.