Volume 2 Issue 8, August 2020

Why the Hall conductance is quantized was an open problem in condensed matter theory for much of the past 40 years. Spyridon Michalakis who worked on the solution — published in 2015 — gives a personal take on how the field evolved.

A Nature Nanotechnology paper presents evidence of new fractional excitations in monolayer WSe₂

The Solar system is chaotic, making its long-term future hard to predict. A paper in Physical Review Letters shows that help may come in the form of instantons, more commonly used in statistical mechanics and gauge field theories.

Twenty-five years ago a paper in Science reported the first observation of the exotic state of matter predicted in the 1920s by Satyendra Nath Bose and Albert Einstein: a Bose–Einstein condensate.

Over the past 40 years, the quantum Hall effect (QHE) has inspired new theories and led to experimental discoveries in a range of fields going beyond solid-state electronics to photonics and quantum entanglement. In this Viewpoint, physicists reflect on how the QHE has influenced their research.

Despite comprising only about 15% of the known molecular inventory of the interstellar medium, molecular ions have an outsized role in driving chemical evolution. This Review examines the advances — and challenges — in laboratory spectroscopy that have enabled the study of ions in space.

Quantum simulation with ultracold atomic gases is an established platform for investigating complex quantum processes. Focusing on optical lattice experiments, this Technical Review overviews the available tools and their applications to the simulation of solid-state physics problems.

Droplets in general are multicomponent and experience gradients in concentration, often leading to transport phenomena and phase transitions. This Perspective discusses recent progress on the physicochemical hydrodynamics of such droplet systems and their relevance for many important applications.