Reviews & Analysis

Physical networks, composed of nodes and links that occupy a spatial volume, are hard to study with conventional techniques. A meta-graph approach that elucidates the impact of physicality on network structure has now been introduced.

Understanding the mechanism underlying light-induced superconductivity could help manifest it at higher temperatures. Experiments now show that the excitation of a specific phonon leads to a resonant enhancement of this effect in K₃C₆₀.

Electrons trapped above the surface of solid neon can be used to create qubits using spatial states with different charge distributions. These charge qubits combine direct electric field control with long coherence times.

Semiconducting dipolar excitons — bound states of electrons and holes — in artificial moiré lattices constitute a promising condensed matter system to explore the phase diagram of strongly interacting bosonic particles.

The Kondo effect — the screening of an impurity spin by conduction electrons — is a fundamental many-body effect. However, recent experiments combined with simulations have caused a long-standing model system for the single-atom Kondo effect to fail.

Permanent deformation in solids results from atoms not aligning with the external stress causing the deformation. Detecting such non-affine atomic rearrangements and connecting them to measurable mechanical effects is now shown to be feasible by means of high-energy X-ray diffraction.

Neutron spectroscopy, entanglement analysis, and simulations provide evidence that KYbSe₂ closely approximates a 2D quantum spin liquid. Although KYbSe₂ displays magnetic ordering at low temperatures, its magnetic dynamics are dominated by fractionalized excitations that exhibit anomalously large quantum entanglement, indicating that on finite timescales KYbSe₂ exhibits quantum spin liquid physics.

A decade ago, the anti-laser made waves as a new type of perfect absorber that functions as a one-way trap door for light. Experiments have now demonstrated the control of light without absorbing it.

A detailed understanding of phonon transport is crucial for engineering the thermal properties of materials. A particular doping strategy is now shown to lead to good thermoelectric performance with low thermal conductivity.

Landau’s theory of Fermi liquids predicts that impurities embedded in a Fermi sea of atoms form quasiparticles called polarons that interact with one another via the surrounding medium. Such mediated polaron–polaron interactions have been directly observed and are shown to depend on the quantum statistics of the impurities.

A nonlinear optical approach has now enabled picosecond control of a complex band structure, driving a non-Hermitian topological phase transition across an exceptional-point singularity.

Understanding lattice-geometry-driven electronic structure and orbital character in a titanium-based superconducting kagome metal provides insights into the non-trivial topology and electronic nematicity of correlated quantum matter.

The simulation of open quantum many-body systems is one of the hardest tasks in computational physics. Now, quantum computers are close to answering crucial questions for such systems in a regime that classical computers cannot reach.

Currently, a general framework explaining the fundamental dynamic transitions from solid to fluid of mechanically probed soft materials is lacking. Now, a unifying van der Waals-like model is proposed that describes the dynamic solid–liquid transition in the rheology of these materials.

Measurements of two neighbouring silicon-based qubits show that the charge noise they each experience is correlated, suggesting a common origin. Understanding these correlations is crucial for performing error correction in these systems.

An approach combining single-cell imaging, agent-based simulations, and continuum mechanics theory is used to observe the effect of environmental stiffness on biofilm development. These measurements indicate that confined biofilms behave as active nematics, in which the internal organization and cell lineage are controlled by the shape and boundary of the biofilm.