Volume 5 Issue 8, August 2023

This is a brief account of the influential role physicists played in the early days of computing — a story with unexpected parallels with the current revolution in AI.

Simon Batzner, Albert Musaelian and Boris Kozinsky discuss how exploiting the symmetry of Euclidean space can help tackle challenges in molecular simulations.

10 years on from the discovery of the quantum anomalous Hall effect, Yoshinori Tokura discusses the new physics it has opened up.

Twenty-five years ago, Duncan Watts and Steven Strogatz published ‘Collective dynamics of ‘small-world’ networks’, a paper that helped kickstart the modern era of network science.

A paper in Physical Review X puts forward a model that yields networks with a maximum distance between individuals of exactly six.

A paper in Physical Review E shows that in several real-world networks, the number of cliques grows faster than the number of links, and the number of big cliques grows even faster than the number of small cliques.

A paper in Nature Communications shows that a hyperbolic map can still be useful for navigating a real-world network, even if the information about the network is incomplete.

A paper in Science Advances puts forward a framework for quantifying the level of homophily in group interactions, and shows that simple-seeming definitions of group homophily are constrained by combinatorics in ways that are not immediately obvious.

A paper in Communications Physics shows that effective interventions to increase the visibility of minorities in networks should consider both increasing the size of the minority and changing how connections are made.

Five researchers discuss how diverse physics ideas can help better understand the part of Earth’s climate system consisting of snow and ice.

Quantum computers are expected to surpass classical computers and transform industries. This Review focuses on quantum computing for financial applications and provides a summary for physicists on potential advantages and limitations of quantum techniques, as well as challenges that physicists could help tackle.

Spin caloritronics explores the interplay among spin, heat and charges in condensed matter towards new thermoelectric functionalities and applications. This Review provides an analysis of the role of spin in enhancing charge-based thermoelectricity, magneto-thermoelectricity and thermospin effects.

Topological lattice defects in topological materials offer a platform to explore a diverse range of phenomena, including fractional charges, chiral and gravitational anomalies, topological lasers and non-Hermitian skin effects. This Perspective article surveys the impact of these phenomena on condensed matter physics, photonics, acoustics and materials science.