Volume 2 Issue 2, February 2020

Knowing which atomic, molecular and optical physics computer code to use and how is a challenge. Andrew Brown surveys the available software packages and discusses how code development practices in academia could be improved.

Over the next 5 years the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) will be mapping 35 million galaxies and 2.4 million quasars trying to uncover the mystery of dark energy.

A PNAS paper presents a neural network of physics publications that can identify trends and provide suggestions for future research directions in quantum physics

A Nature Physics paper reports a hardware-independent variational quantum algorithm that can be used to verify sampling and characterize unknown physical processes.

In December, physicists met in Paris to discuss how to push the limits of what can be measured with quantum sensors and how to keep moving them towards practical applications.

Cilia are hair-like organelles that enable cellular locomotion. This Review considers cilia from a dynamical systems perspective, discussing the nonlinear oscillations seen in the single cilia of microorganisms and the emergent topological phenomena seen in the ciliary arrays of animals.

Numerical methods such as the close-coupling, R-matrix and Kohn variational methods have been around for decades, but more recently they have been applied to the treatment of the time-dependent interaction of strong electromagnetic fields with atoms and molecules.

Neutron spectroscopy is a powerful probe to study the dynamics in materials. This Technical Review assesses the state-of-the-art experimental spectroscopic methods, which are optimized to provide high energy resolution and can reveal dynamic processes on the picosecond and nanosecond timescales.