Volume 2 Issue 12, December 2020

Understanding the first few minutes of the Universe has been hampered by uncertainty in the cross section of the so-called deuterium burning process. A paper in Nature reports a much-improved cross section, putting models of the early Universe on firmer footing.

A Science paper presents a method of growing twisted spiral structures of 2D materials by using curved substrates.

In 2000, David DiVincenzo gave a set of basic criteria for building a quantum computer, which have guided research for the past 20 years. Today, despite not all the criteria having been cleared, additional complex requirements have emerged.

Strong experimental evidence for the existence of the simplest type of anyons (particles that are neither bosons nor fermions) has emerged this year. The next step is to uncover more exotic types of anyons, such as Majorana fermions.

The past decade has witnessed remarkable progress in our understanding of equilibration, thermalization and prethermalization, due in large part to experimental breakthroughs in ultracold atomic gases. This Review discusses theoretical and experimental advances on these topics and the challenges ahead.

Axion fields provide a unique way to understand large quantized electromagnetic responses in topological insulators and dynamics in Weyl semimetals. This Review discusses the theory of axion fields in condensed matter, their experimental realization and their application in next-generation devices.

The rapidly developing field of topological data analysis represents data via graphs rather than as solutions to equations or as decompositions into clusters. This Review discusses the methods and provides examples from physics and other sciences.

A variety of quantum programming languages have been developed over the past few years, enabling newcomers and seasoned practitioners alike. This Review gives a brief introduction to quantum programming, overviewing some of the existing languages and the ecosystem around them.