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Hubbard excitons are elusive quasiparticles that are predicted to form in strongly correlated insulators. Detecting their internal structure and dynamics clarifies the involvement of spin fluctuations in their binding and recombination processes.
The liquid-crystal-like order of cells in epithelial tissues aids rearrangements, but there is disagreement over the dominant liquid crystal phase. Now, a unified approach reveals that two distinct symmetries dominate at different scales.
The guiding of magnetic fields by soft ferromagnetic solids is well known and exploited in magnetic shielding applications. Now, ferroelectric nematic liquids are shown to analogously guide electric fields.
An experimental approach enables the observation of the microscopic details of the relaxation of a highly equilibrated glass back to the liquid phase in real time. This points to a scenario where devitrification proceeds via localized seeds separated by macroscopic length scales.
Chains of coupled superconducting islands known as Josephson junction arrays were predicted to be insulating at high impedance, but superconducting behaviour has been observed. A study of the arrays’ transport suggests thermal effects are responsible.
Time-varying photonics offers ways to manipulate light–matter interactions as never thought before. An experiment with photonic time interfaces reveals how they can enable broadband coherent control of waves.
A milestone for the coherence time of a macroscopic mechanical oscillator may be a crucial advance for enabling the development of quantum technologies based on optomechanical architectures and for fundamental tests of quantum mechanics.
A new binding mechanism between trapped laser-cooled ions and atoms has been observed. This advancement offers a novel control knob over chemical reactions and inelastic processes on the single particle limit.
The near-zero thermal expansion of Invar alloy Fe65Ni35 is technologically important but still unexplained. Measurements show that this phenomenon can be explained by the cancellation of magnetic and phonon contributions to the alloy’s entropy.
Generating high harmonics or attosecond pulses of light is normally thought of as a classical process, but a theoretical study has now shown how the process could be driven by quantum light.
Measuring the transmission matrix of disordered structures has so far been limited to the domain of linear systems. Now it has been measured for nonlinear disorder, with exciting implications for information capacity.
Regenerative animals accurately regrow lost appendages. Now, research suggests that mechanical waves propagating from the amputation edge have a key role in this process.
Amorphous gel structures are present in our everyday lives in the form of food, cosmetics, and biological systems. Experiments now show that their formation cannot be explained within the framework of equilibrium physics.
Exploring the combined effects of many-body interactions and topology is experimentally challenging. Now, researchers have shown that strong interparticle interactions force ultracold atoms to shift as a whole or one by one, or break quantization in a topological pump.
