Volume 18 Issue 6, June 2022

Against the backdrop of various philosophical accounts, this Comment argues for the need of a human rights approach to scientific progress, which requires us to rethink how we view scientific knowledge.

Advances in precision lithography and measurement have made it possible to observe and control the magnetic phase transition in kagome artificial spin ice, which could lead to new technological devices.

Upon combining dissipative and nonlinear effects in a bipartite lattice of cavity polaritons, dissipatively stabilized bulk gap solitons emerge, which create a topological interface.

A theoretical analysis shows how a person’s location in space could be verified by the transmission of single photons. A vital application of quantum networks may be within reach.

Experiments show that interactions between electrons in twisted bilayer graphene can create a spatial order that doubles the size of the twisted unit cell.

Two-dimensional model glasses exhibit characteristics in their low-frequency vibrational density of states that can be traced to the quasilocalized dynamics of string-like objects. This finding provides an explanation for a universal feature of glasses known as the boson peak.

Thermodynamic concepts can be used to understand nonlinear wave systems, but direct evidence for these analogies is scarce. Experiments with multimode fibres have now enabled direct measurement of the thermalization process of optical waves.

Heat transport measurements on twisted bilayer graphene reveal a strong asymmetry between electrons and holes — a consequence of band reconstruction, induced by electronic interactions, at partial fillings of the moiré superlattice.

Low-temperature measurements on twisted bilayer graphene show that the exotic ‘strange metal’ state is almost certainly caused by interactions between electrons.

Charge carriers in an engineered bilayer Mott insulator are predicted to form tightly bound, mobile pairs, glued together by string excitations of the antiferromagnetic order — a scenario that can be tested with quantum gas microscopy experiments.

Unless you are nearby, it is difficult to verify where someone is. Access to a single qubit and classical computation and communication makes it possible to securely check someone’s position as long as adversaries’ quantum resources are limited.

Heat transport in electronic systems is influenced by nearby superconductors due to the so-called proximity effect. Combining this with the manipulation of superconductivity using magnetic fields enables the control of nanoscale thermal transport.

The presence or absence of a strange metal phase in twisted bilayer graphene has been controversial. Now, measurements over a wide range of temperature and doping give much stronger evidence for its existence.

Correlated insulating states are common in twisted bilayer graphene when the density of carriers is close to an integer per moiré unit cell. Now, such states emerge at half-integer fillings and show signs of being spin or charge density waves.

The change in a band structure when a magnetic field is applied should depend on the momentum of the electronic state, but this is hard to measure. Now, this effect is demonstrated in a topological magnet.

Studies of unconventional pairing mechanisms in cold atoms require ultralow temperatures. Large-scale numerics show that certain bilayer models allow for deeply bound and highly mobile pairs of charges at more accessible temperatures.

Polaritons are quasiparticles created through the coupling of matter excitations and light. A cold-atom experiment using matter waves instead of photons reports the observation of analogues of polaritons with tunable properties and no dissipation.

It is difficult to analyse open quantum systems because an accurate description of their environments becomes intractably large. A method that automatically identifies an efficient representation provides a flexible approach to numerical simulations.

The relation between physical properties and structure in amorphous materials is poorly understood. Simulations now show that vibrations of string-like dynamical defects likely govern the low-temperature dynamics in these systems.

Drive engineering in optical systems can be used to stabilize new nonlinear phases in topological systems. Dissipatively stabilized gap solitons in a polariton lattice establish drive engineering as a resource for nonlinear topological photonics.

Optical nonlinearities in multimodal systems lead to a complex behaviour that can be described as a thermalization process, which is expected to lead to a Rayleigh–Jeans distribution. This process has now been observed in graded-index fibres.

Thermal transport measurements provide a complementary view of the electronic structure of a material to electronic transport. This technique is applied to twisted bilayer graphene, and highlights the particle–hole asymmetry of its band structure.

Artificial spin ice formed of nanomagnets arranged on a lattice mimics frustrated magnetism seen in condensed matter. By controlling magnetic interactions, theoretically predicted phase transitions are now observed in artificial kagome-lattice spin ice.

Long-range order is normally related to an entropy decrease. Yet, an increase in entropy in one part of a system can induce long-range order in another. A new form of such entropy-driven order is now demonstrated in an artificial spin-ice system.

The sliding of a water drop on a surface is traditionally described by taking flow within the drop and contact-line friction into account. Now, evidence shows that electric forces can also substantially affect water-on-surface sliding dynamics.

The shift of the definition of the kilogram in 2019 away from an artefact to one relying on the Planck constant inspires technological innovation, as Naoki Kuramoto elucidates.