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Once it seemed there were but a few holes in our understanding of physics. Today, we risk crucial gaps opening up in the funding of physics research.

In a solid, electrons behave differently than in a vacuum. In particular, their charge can break up into fractions of the elementary charge. Theoretical work shows how the electron's spin could help to observe fractional charges directly.

Quantum mechanics provides the means for solving certain communication tasks more efficiently than is possible classically. Photons entangled in multiple degrees of freedom could provide a route to fully tap that potential.

A little foresight.

Despite more than a decade of study, single-wall carbon nanotubes still have the ability to surprise. One recent study finds that in ultraclean nanotubes an unexpectedly strong spin–orbit coupling arises; another demonstrates their ability to support one-dimensional Wigner crystals.

The complex behaviour of high-temperature superconductors has inspired some complex models and theories, but a conventional model seems to work just fine for scanning tunnelling spectroscopy.

Electric-field induced control of the magnetic ground state of a carbon nanotube quantum dot enables the orientation of injected spins to be reversed without using an external magnetic field.

Spin-polarized neutrons are sensitive to magnetic fields, and they can relatively easily penetrate through matter. A new imaging technique uses these two properties for mapping the three-dimensional distribution of magnetic fields inside massive objects.

A tunable source of coherent narrowband terahertz radiation is realized by using a laser to modulate the emission characteristics of a relativistic electron beam.

Substantial improvements, through the use of squeezed light, in the sensitivity of a prototype gravitational-wave detector built with quasi-free suspended optics represents the next step in moving such devices out of the lab and into orbit.

Classically, one photon can transport one bit of information. But more is possible when quantum entanglement comes into play, and a record ‘channel capacity’ of 1.63 bits per photon has now been demonstrated, using a method that overcomes fundamental limitations of earlier approaches to ‘superdense coding’.

A systematic experimental study of the ionization of argon by mid-infrared light confirms half-a-century-old predictions and paves the way to the development of brighter, shorter attosecond pulse sources.

There are two major theories regarding the normal state of a high-temperature superconductor: that the ‘pseudogap’ state is either a disordered superconductor or a distinct and competing phase. But could it be both?

In conventional superconductors, the critical temperature goes to zero as the density of charge carriers falls due to increased scattering. But in high-temperature superconductors, the scattering rate as a function of charge carriers was unknown, until now.

Beautiful, intricate patterns in limestone result from feedback between hydrodynamics and chemistry. This self-organizing process resides in an unfamiliar region of parameter space for systems of deposition under fluid flow.

Random collisions between particles usually generate disorder in a system. But under certain conditions, particles in suspended in a liquid subjected to periodic shear forces can collide in a way that leads to fewer subsequent collisions and less disorder.