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Exploring and exploiting electric dipole arrangements analogously to what is possible with magnetic spin textures is an emerging prospect. Now a spontaneous toroidal polar topology is observed in ferroelectric liquid crystals.
The local electronic structure of interface states between topologically distinct domains is imaged and controlled, allowing visualization of the interplay between strong interactions and non-trivial topology.
Copper-based and iron-based compounds exhibit an interplay between magnetism and superconductivity. Now, this idea is extended to two-dimensional oxide heterostructures, where a spatially varying superconducting order is demonstrated at the EuO/KTaO3 interface.
Cooling efficiency in thermoelectric devices decreases considerably at lower temperatures. Now thermoelectric cooling at cryogenic temperatures is directly imaged in a van der Waals semimetal.
Despite being essential to many applications in quantum science, entanglement can be easily disrupted by decoherence. A protocol based on repetitive quantum error correction now demonstrates enhanced coherence times of entangled logical qubits.
Complexity of learning Hamiltonians from Gibbs states is an important issue for both many-body physics and machine learning. The optimal sample and time complexities of quantum Hamiltonian learning for high temperature has now been proven.
Photon-mediated entanglement in atomic ensembles coupled to cavities enables the engineering of quantum states with a graph-like entanglement structure. This offers potential advantages in quantum computation and metrology.
Combining multiparticle levitation with cavity control enables cavity-mediated interaction between levitated nanoparticles, whose strength can be tailored via optical detuning and position of the two particles.
Most applications of surface plasmons are based on their near-field properties. These properties are now shown to be governed by nonclassical scattering between multiparticle plasmonic subsystems.
Cluster states made from multiple photons with a special entanglement structure are a useful resource for quantum technologies. Two-dimensional cluster states of microwave photons have now been deterministically generated using a superconducting circuit.
Although dissipation is often detrimental to the observation of topological effects, a photonic molecule driven at several incommensurate frequencies is shown to be a candidate system for quantized topological transport in synthetic dimensions.
Attosecond interferometry measurements of photoionization delays in planar carbon-based molecules can provide information on the dimension and shape of the two-dimensional hole generated in the process.
A transducer that generates microwave–optical photon pairs is demonstrated. This could provide an interface between optical communication networks and superconducting quantum devices that operate at microwave frequencies.
Topologically protected hinge modes could be important for developing quantum devices, but electronic transport through those states has not been demonstrated. Now quantum transport has been shown in gapless topological hinge states.
The standard current–phase relation in tunnel Josephson junctions involves a single sinusoidal term, but real junctions are more complicated. The effects of higher Josephson harmonics have now been identified in superconducting qubit devices.
The existence of Bragg glasses—featuring nearly perfect crystalline order and glassy features—has yet to be experimentally confirmed for disordered charge-density-wave systems. A machine-learning-based experimental study now provides evidence for a Bragg glass phase in the charge density waves of PdxErTe3.
During a photoinduced phase transition, electronic rearrangements are usually faster than lattice ones. Time-resolved measurements now show that the insulator-to-metal transition in a thin-film Mott insulator is preceded by lattice reconfiguration.