Articles in 2023

Majorana zero modes are emergent excitations in topological superconductors. This Perspective introduces the physics of these modes, recaps the recent history of the experimental search for them and discusses the future prognosis for success.

Heavily doping silicon with phosphorus produces a dense population of metallic conduction electrons and localized magnetic moments. Low-temperature measurements show evidence of strongly correlated state.

The Lindemann criterion states that crystals melt when thermal vibrations overcome binding forces. It is now found that this picture does not hold for glasses, and that there is a universal relationship between glass temperature and thermal expansion.

Certain fish shoals ward off bird attacks by touching the water surface in a manner resembling waves observed in stadiums. This behaviour exhibits characteristics that suggest the fish might operate close to criticality.

A technique called error mitigation can significantly improve the performance of large-scale quantum computations on near-term devices without the significant resource overheard of fault-tolerant quantum error correction.

Strongly laser-driven quantum correlated many-body systems lead to the generation of light with exotic quantum features — the quantumness of a many-body system is imprinted on the state of the emitted light.

Composite fermions emerge in the fractional quantum Hall effect. Now, it has been shown that these objects can group into bubbles and that these can order into a lattice.

Strongly driven light sources have become useful in many ways but are limited to classical emission. A quantum-optical theory now shows how non-classical states of light can be achieved from strongly-driven many-body systems, for example, non-coherent and correlated high-harmonic generation.

Strong correlations between electrons in topological surface states drive the formation of surface van Hove singularities. These may be linked to charge density waves in the surface states.

Biomolecular condensates play a role in cellular processes and their size affects reaction pathways. The size distribution is connected to varying contributions of nucleation and coalescence.

The authority of science within society is contested by antiscientific movements. To restore trust, science education should involve students in the social processes of knowledge production.

Disturbances in the orientation of magnetization in a magnet can propagate as spin waves or magnons. A design that makes it possible to optically excite nanoscale spin waves offers a route to developing miniaturized spin-based devices.

Engineering of the spin–orbit interactions in a magnetic multilayered structure makes it possible to coherently generate coherent spin waves using terahertz radiation, which could benefit the development of spintronic devices.

Films of the correlated oxide NdNiO₃ form a metallic antiferromagnetic phase that can be identified using electrical currents, raising the prospect of applications in spintronics.

The quantum critical behaviour of a two-impurity Kondo model variant is observed in a system of hybrid-semiconductor islands that could provide a scalable platform for solid-state quantum simulation

Adatoms on the surface of silicon can create two-dimensional superconductivity, the order parameter symmetry of which is currently not known. Now, evidence suggests it might be a topological chiral d-wave state.

The protein VASP can undergo liquid–liquid phase separation. The interplay between the surface tension of the VASP droplet and actin polymerization controls the bundling of actin filaments, a necessary step for many cellular processes.

Tides not only affect ocean dynamics but also influence the Earth’s magnetosphere. Satellite observations have now revealed evidence of tidal effects in the Earth’s plasmasphere correlated with Moon phases.

By recovering energy from a relativistically accelerated electron beam in a multiturn configuration, a reduction of radiofrequency power has been demonstrated. This is a milestone toward more efficient and better performing accelerators.

The presence of small thermal regions in a many-body localized system could lead to its delocalization. An experiment with cold atoms now monitors the delocalization induced by the coupling of a many-body localized region with a thermal bath.