Articles in 2016

Strength lies in numbers and in teamwork: tens of thousands of artificial atoms tightly packed in a nanodiamond act cooperatively, enhancing the optical trapping forces beyond the expected classical bulk polarizability contribution.

Valleytronics — exploiting a system’s pseudospin degree of freedom — is being increasingly explored in sonic crystals. Now, valley transport of sound is reported for a macroscopic triangular-lattice array of rod-like scatterers in a 2D air waveguide.

Experiments show that when driven by electric currents, magnetic skyrmions experience transverse motion due to their topological charge — similar to the conventional Hall effect experienced by charged particles in a perpendicular magnetic field.

Striking visualization of the flows generated by starfish larvae in their fluid environment offers unique insight into how these organisms live. The beautiful vortices they create betray a dynamic mechanism for trading swimming off against feeding.

Photoemission is usually driven by the energy of the illuminating laser pulses, but in the strong-field regime, the photoemission from an array of plasmonic nanoparticles is shown to be controlled by the light’s electric field.

Larval starfish use an outer layer of cilia to generate vortices in the fluid around their bodies. Spectacular imaging and mathematical modelling are combined to reveal that these dynamics are alternately optimized for swimming and feeding.

Recent progress in engineering quantum gases of polar molecules brings closer their application in fundamental tests, ultracold chemistry and the study of new quantum phases of matter.

Early forms of life could have started by molecular compounds coming together under conditions dense enough to promote reactions. But how might these droplets have undergone what we now know as cell division? The answer may be simpler than we think.

Resonances in the tunnelling spectra of a two-dimensional electron system provide strong evidence that the electrons arrange themselves into a Wigner crystal lattice with long-range ordering.

Droplets are an appealing picture for protocells in origin-of-life studies, but it’s unclear how they would have propagated by growth and division. Theory suggests that chemically active droplets spontaneously split into equal daughter droplets.

Ensembles of magnetic colloids can undergo an instability triggering the formation of clusters that move faster than the particles themselves. The many-body process relies on hydrodynamics alone and may prove useful for load delivery in fluidics.

An optical second-harmonic generation study of a series of transition metal monopnictide Weyl semimetals reveals a giant, anisotropic nonlinear optical response in these systems.

Collections of rolling colloids are shown to pinch off into motile clusters resembling droplets sliding down a windshield. These stable dynamic structures are formed through a fingering instability that relies on hydrodynamic interactions alone.

A detailed and systematic neutron-scattering study uncovers a continuum of magnetic excitations down to 0.06 K in the triangular quantum magnet YbMgGaO₄ — an observation consistent with quantum spin liquid behaviour.