Volume 13 Issue 9, September 2017

The International Conference of Physics Students continues its remarkable tradition.

Science prizes should better reflect how modern science is carried out, argue Shivaji Sondhi and Steven Kivelson.

Flow without friction is a strange phenomenon usually seen in quantum fluids that are cooled to temperatures near absolute zero, but features of superfluidity have now been seen with polaritons at ambient conditions.

The ATLAS Collaboration observed photons elastically scattering from other photons — an effect predicted by quantum electrodynamics over 80 years ago.

Spins can act as mediators to interconvert electricity, light, sound, vibration and heat. This Progress article gives an overview of the recent advances associated with nanoscale spin conversion.

The amplification of waves reflected from a rotating obstacle, or superradiance, has been predicted in hydrodynamics and black-hole physics. An experiment with rotating vortex flows confirms this phenomenon.

Superfluidity is a phenomenon usually restricted to cryogenic temperatures, but organic microcavities provide the conditions for a superfluid flow of polaritons at room temperature.

Measuring the photocurrent response to circularly polarized mid-infrared light provides direct access to the chirality of Weyl fermions in Weyl semimetals — the property responsible for a range of exotic phenomena.

A decades-old proposal that all distinct packings are equally probable in granular media has gone unproven due to the sheer number of packings involved. Numerical simulation now demonstrates that it holds — precisely at the jamming threshold.

Quantum electrodynamics predicts a rare process in which light is scattered by light. The ATLAS Collaboration reports signs of this elusive effect in the collisions of ultra-relativistic lead ions.

A spectroscopic study of the superconducting phase in sulfur hydride under extreme pressures is presented, revealing the energy scale for the electron–phonon interaction in this system.

A careful study of the low-valent, quasi-two-dimensional trilayer metallic nickelate Pr₄Ni₃O₈ is presented, revealing this system to be a close analogue of cuprate systems, and offering tantalizing hope that it may superconduct if appropriate electron doping can be achieved.

Exciton–polariton condensates have garnered interest as a means to access macroscopic displays of quantum phenomena such as Bose–Einstein condensation and superfluidity. In this work, a direct measure of the polariton–polariton interaction is obtained.

Andreev bound states in semiconductor–superconductor hybrid structures are studied using microwave spectroscopy — a tool that could be also used for investigating Majorana modes.

The ability to transfer quantum information from a memory to a flying qubit is important for building quantum networks. The very fast release of a multiphoton state in a microwave cavity memory into propagating modes is demonstrated.

The injection, transport and manipulation of spins using electric fields in ultrathin films of black phosphorus show the potential of this material as a platform for two-dimensional semiconductor spintronics devices.

Hybrid perovskites are known to have excellent optoelectronic properties, but the observation of exciton states with long spin lifetimes suggests that they may also have potential spintronics applications.

When a glass transforms into a liquid, is the absorbed specific heat vibrational or configurational in origin? Vibrational spectroscopy experiments on strong and fragile metallic glasses now strongly suggest the latter.

The proteins that adhere cells together in tissue assemble in domains near the cell–cell interface. Experiments, simulations and theory show that formation of these domains is regulated by the membrane itself — with an explicit role for fluctuations.

Swarms and statistical physics seem like natural bedfellows, but concepts like scaling are yet to prove directly applicable to insect group dynamics. A study of midges suggests they are, and that they may give rise to a new universality class.

High-precision laboratory experiments with neutrons and atoms are converging to a verdict on 'chameleon fields' as a possible explanation of dark energy, explains Tobias Jenke.