Volume 18 Issue 3, March 2022

The atmospheres of most planets in our Solar System have a single large cyclonic vortex at each of their poles. Jupiter with its polygonal cyclones surrounding a single one, however, falls out of line, owing to an energy transfer to larger scales.

Light travels through disordered media on a random path that is hard to control. A comprehensive study has now shown that optical energy can be deposited at a desired depth in a disordered waveguide by injecting a light field with a particular shape.

A rare-earth ion in a long-lived clock state can control a nearby ensemble of nuclear spins. Interfacing this pristine photon emitter with a small quantum processor may be a route towards making identical solid-state nodes for quantum networks.

Isolated gases of ultracold atoms have long provided a window into the study of continuous quantum phase transitions. Discontinuous quantum phase transitions have now been observed in a shaken lattice gas of strongly interacting atoms.

Individual cilia are typically attached to cell surfaces, where they sweep back and forth. A new study charts the behavioural space of the beating patterns of cilia isolated from the cell.

The physics of large systems is often understood as the outcome of the local operations among its components. Now, it is shown that this picture may be incomplete in quantum systems whose interactions are constrained by symmetries.

Laser accelerators promised to deliver high-energy particle beams for biomedical uses, but have struggled to meet constraints on dose control and stability. An experiment now enables translational research with proton beams at ultrahigh dose rate.

Predicting collapses of a complex system is notoriously hard. Finding ways to pull a collapsed system back to normal is even harder. A theoretical study now shows how reviving a single unit of a failed network might restore its whole functionality.

Environmental noise can severely hinder the storage and transmission of quantum information. Experiments now reveal that trapped ions are promising candidates for reliable quantum memories.

Collapse models predict that the superposition principle of quantum mechanics breaks down at macroscopic scales. This Review discusses constraints on these models from non-interferometric experiments.

In burning plasma, alpha particles from fusion reactions are the dominant source of heating. The design choices that resulted in reaching this state in experiments at the National Ignition Facility are reported.

Studies of first-order phase transitions in quantum simulators have so far been restricted to the weakly interacting regime. A tunable discontinuous phase transition has now been realized with strongly correlated atoms in a driven optical lattice.

The precise nature of the charge-density-wave state in kagome superconductors remains unclear. Now, local spectroscopy shows that rotational symmetry in real space is broken, with one direction being distinct from the other two.

A DNA-binding protein condenses on DNA via a switch-like transition. Surface condensation occurs at preferential DNA locations suggesting collective sequence readout and enabling sequence-specificity robustness with respect to protein concentration.

The Large Hadron Collider beauty collaboration reports a test of lepton flavour universality in decays of bottom mesons into strange mesons and a charged lepton pair, finding evidence of a violation of this principle postulated in the standard model.

In systems with no symmetry, local operations can combine to make any unitary transformation across a whole quantum system, but if symmetries limit the allowed operations, they cannot all be generated using local transformations.

The modern understanding of quantum transport relies on geometric concepts such as the Berry phase. The geometric approach has now been extended to the theory of optical transitions.

Physical systems with continuous degrees of freedom can be used to implement quantum error correction codes. An autonomous correction protocol has now been used to extend the lifetime of a qubit encoded in the motion of a trapped ion.

Spectroscopic measurements show how the features of the band structure related to the kagome lattice in CsV₃Sb₅ contribute to the observed strongly correlated phases.

Optimally depositing optical energy into an extended region of a diffusive medium, such as biological tissue, is a challenging task. A matrix that maps the incoming wavefront to the field distribution inside the material can predict the energy enhancement that occurs at a given depth.

A laser–plasma accelerator provides proton beams for the precise irradiation of human tumours in a mouse model. This work advances translational research with ultrahigh proton dose rates at laser-driven sources.

The activity of molecular motors drives the self-organization of cytoskeleton structures, leading to large-scale active flows. Now, experiments and simulations show how a gelation process enables such long-range transport in spindles.

The beating of motile cilia arises from the collective action of hundreds of proteins. A study of the dynamics of cilia under different environmental and genetic conditions shows that the space of beating variations is low-dimensional.

Perturbations and disturbances can bring complex networks into undesirable states in which global functionality is suppressed. Now, a recovery scheme explains how to revive a damaged network by controlling only a small number of nodes.

In stellarators, turbulence is detrimental for the confinement of the plasma. In the Large Helical Device, a confinement regime with reduced turbulence and improved confinement is observed.

Infrared images of Jupiter taken by the Juno spacecraft reveal an energy transfer driven by moist convection. This mechanism is expected to enhance heat transfer, which might also be relevant to Earth’s atmosphere.

The coexistence of qualitative and quantitative scales characterizes advances in earthquake measurements. Although often confused, intensity and magnitude refer to very different things, as Leonardo Benini explains.