Articles in 2020

The properties of anyons — two-dimensional particles that are neither fermions nor bosons — have been directly measured in a quantum Hall interferometer.

Wolfgang Pauli introduced the Bohr magneton as a fundamental unit of magnetic moment during an effort to find a quantum basis for magnetism, as Davide Castelvecchi recounts.

An interferometer device is used to detect the quantum-mechanical phase that is gained when two anyons are braided around each other. The fractional value of the phase proves that these quasiparticles are neither bosons nor fermions.

The non-zero geometric phase acquired by the braiding of vortex modes in photonic waveguide lattices demonstrates their potential to serve as a platform for the study of both Abelian and non-Abelian braiding in bosonic systems.

The First Plasma discharge in the ITER tokamak is expected for 2025 with deuterium–tritium plasma operation ten years later. We spoke with ITER’s Director-General, Bernard Bigot, and Tim Luce, head of ITER’s Science & Operations Department, about the current status of the project and potential future directions in fusion research.

Ultracold alkaline-earth fermionic atoms with large number of nuclear spin states possess SU(N) symmetry. That deeply affects their interaction properties, and allows a Fermi gas of these atoms to be cooled quickly to the quantum degenerate regime.

X-ray scattering experiments show that the quantum fluctuations associated with charge order take a form that is incompatible with the idea of competition between charge order and superconductivity.

The authors investigate out-of-equilibrium crystallization of a binary mixture of sphere-like nanoparticles in small droplets. They observe the spontaneous formation of an icosahedral structure with stable MgCu₂ phases, which are promising for photonic applications.

As the construction of the ITER tokamak enters its next phase — the machine assembly — now is a good time for a recap of the history and current status of nuclear fusion research.

The unpredictability of evolution makes it difficult to deal with drug resistance because over the course of a treatment there may be mutations that we cannot predict. The authors propose to use quantum methods to control the speed and distribution of potential evolutionary outcomes.

The authors engineer Escherichia coli into two distinct strains with tunable motility. The induced control of motility leads to the formation of patterns through a self-organizing mechanism that is specific to multi-component active systems.

High-quality WSe₂–MoSe₂ heterostructures support strong coupling between the two layers, which is associated with tight hybridization and effective charge separation. In these structures, the bands of the interlayer excitons can be pressure-engineered.

When a semiconductor is embedded inside a microcavity, infrared photons have been shown to bind electrons and holes together as excitons. This result opens the door for quantum material engineering based on light–matter interactions.

The discussion of the quantum mechanical Wigner’s friend thought experiment has regained intensity. Recent theoretical results and experimental tests restrict the possibility of maintaining an observer-independent notion of measurement outcomes.