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An ultracold quantum gas experiment shows that, when it crosses the many-body phase transition, the original ground state can evolve coherently into the new emergent phase, reflecting the initial global coherence presented in the system.
Taking into account the spatial distribution of population and its mobility, a reaction–diffusion model of an epidemic process reveals several different critical regimes, in which human mobility may even be detrimental to the spread of the disease.
Non-equilibrium signatures of topology—the appearance, movement and annihilation of vortices in a cold-atom system—are identified, showing that topological phase can emerge dynamically from a non-topological state.
Photon correlation measurements in driven-dissipative systems reveal the dynamical properties of dissipative phase transitions, as shown for optical bistability of cavity polaritons in GaAs.
Exploiting the magnetic field-induced shift of entropy in certain molecular salts when going from 1D short-range ordering to a 3D quantum critical point could provide a route for producing strongly fluctuating quantum materials.
The effect of blackbody radiation is expected to be very weak. The acceleration due to the attractive optical forces from blackbody radiation is measured in an atom interferometer and, surprisingly, it dominates gravity and radiation pressure
A spiral chimera state, composed by an ordered spiral surrounding a core of asynchronous oscillators, is revealed in a large grid of chemical oscillators.
Atomically thin chromium tri-iodide is shown to be a 2D ferromagnetic insulator with an optical response dominated by ligand-field transitions, emitting circularly polarized photoluminescence with a helicity determined by the magnetization direction.
Attosecond light pulses are used to probe ultrafast processes. The experimental observation of attosecond electron pulses now promises the marriage of these techniques with electron microscopy and diffraction.
Understanding how single cells evolved into multicellular organisms requires knowledge of the physical constraints on the evolution of cell clusters. Evidence that an evolution in cell shape delays fracturing offers a route to increased complexity.
Multiphoton superradiance is observed in a nuclear system excited by an X-ray free-electron laser. Tracking the system decay photon by photon shows strong enhancement of the first photon’s decay rate, in good agreement with Dicke’s formulation.
A photonic crystal can realize an analogue of a valley Hall insulator, promising more flexibility than in condensed-matter systems to explore these exotic topological states.
The intensity correlations in incoherently scattered X-rays from a free-electron laser can be exploited to image 2D objects with a resolution close to or below the diffraction limit.
A study of the strong coupling of different exciton species in two-dimensional molybdenum diselenide in a cavity uncovers the rich many-body physics and may lead to new devices.
A scanning tunnelling microscopy study of an intercalated iron selenide-based superconductor reveals a sign change in its superconducting gap function, providing indirect evidence for the origin of the pairing mechanism in this system.
Proximity effects enable superconductivity to leak into normal metals. In graphene, a Klein-like tunnelling of superconducting pairs from a high-temperature superconductor allows the proximity effects to be tuned by electric fields.
In nanoscale electronic circuits, controlling the flow of heat is essential. A demonstration of a heat Coulomb blockade arising from thermal many-body effects shows that thermal transport follows distinct rules in the quantum regime.
Electrons are diffracted by a standing light wave of light, a phenomenon known as the Kapitza–Dirac effect. A generalization of this effect opens perspectives for the manipulation of ultrashort electron wavepackets by intense laser fields.
Acoustic Weyl points are realized in a three-dimensional chiral phononic crystal that breaks inversion symmetry, with the topological nature of the associate surface states providing robust modes that propagate along only one direction.
A classical algorithm solves the boson sampling problem for 30 bosons with standard computing hardware, suggesting that a much larger experimental effort will be needed to reach a regime where quantum hardware outperforms classical methods.