Condensed-matter physics articles within Nature

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  • News & Views |

    A sample of the hydroxyl radical has been cooled to a temperature of a few millikelvin. The result opens the door to observing phenomena such as Bose–Einstein condensation of molecules in their ground state. See Letter p.396

    • Paul S. Julienne

  • News |

    Validation of long-predicted quantum effect points the way to thermal electronics.

    • Edwin Cartlidge

  • Letter |

    A thermal analogue of a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID, widely used to measure small magnetic fields) is realized, in which the flow of heat between the superconductors is dependent on the quantum phase difference between them.

    • Francesco Giazotto
    •  & María José Martínez-Pérez

  • Article |

    Recent developments that reduce the computational cost and scaling of wavefunction-based quantum-chemical techniques open the way to the successful application of such techniques to a variety of real-world solids.

    • George H. Booth
    • , Andreas Grüneis
    •  & Ali Alavi

  • Article |

    An explicit theoretical construction of a metallic non-Fermi liquid ground state opens a route to attack long-standing problems such as the ‘strange metal’ phase of high-temperature superconductors.

    • Hong-Chen Jiang
    • , Matthew S. Block
    •  & Matthew P. A. Fisher

  • Letter |

    A class of metal-free organic electroluminescent molecules is designed in which both singlet and triplet excitons contribute to light emission, leading to an intrinsic fluorescence efficiency greater than 90 per cent and an external electroluminescence efficiency comparable to that achieved in high-efficiency phosphorescence-based organic light-emitting diodes.

    • Hiroki Uoyama
    • , Kenichi Goushi
    •  & Chihaya Adachi

  • Letter |

    Exposing a fused silica sample to a strong, waveform-controlled, few-cycle optical field increases the dielectric’s optical conductivity by more than 18 orders of magnitude in less than 1 femtosecond, allowing electric currents to be driven, directed and switched by the instantaneous light field.

    • Agustin Schiffrin
    • , Tim Paasch-Colberg
    •  & Ferenc Krausz

  • News & Views |

    By tailoring the architecture of a bulk material at several different length scales, the ability of a semiconductor to convert heat into voltage has been optimized to a groundbreaking level of performance. See Letter p.414

    • Tom Nilges

  • News & Views |

    Silicon devices form the backbone of modern computers. It turns out that they might also be a natural hardware platform for a new era of computing technology that uses the principles of quantum physics. See Letter p.541

    • Lee C. Bassett
    •  & David D. Awschalom

  • Letter |

    Controlling the structure of thermoelectric materials on all length scales (atomic, nanoscale and mesoscale) relevant for phonon scattering makes it possible to increase the dimensionless figure of merit to more than two, which could allow for the recovery of a significant fraction of waste heat with which to produce electricity.

    • Kanishka Biswas
    • , Jiaqing He
    •  & Mercouri G. Kanatzidis

  • Letter |

    The coherent manipulation of an individual electron spin qubit bound to a single phosphorus donor atom in natural silicon provides an excellent platform on which to build a scalable quantum computer.

    • Jarryd J. Pla
    • , Kuan Y. Tan
    •  & Andrea Morello

  • Letter |

    Organic ferroelectrics with switchable electrical polarization would be an attractive prospect for applications if their Curie temperature—below which these materials display ferroelectric behaviour—could be raised to room temperature or above; this goal has now been achieved with a family of organic materials characterized by a supramolecular structural motif.

    • Alok S. Tayi
    • , Alexander K. Shveyd
    •  & Samuel I. Stupp

  • Letter |

    A giant spin Seebeck effect—three orders of magnitude greater than previously detected—has been observed in a non-magnetic material, InSb; the proposed mechanism relies only on phonon drag and spin–orbit interactions in a spin-polarized system, not on magnetic exchange.

    • C. M. Jaworski
    • , R. C. Myers
    •  & J. P. Heremans

  • Letter |

    Electronic nematicity, a unidirectional self-organized state that breaks the rotational symmetry of the underlying lattice, has been observed in an iron-based superconductor, BaFe2(As1−xP x )2, over a wide range of phosphorus concentration, resulting in a phase diagram similar to the pseudogap phase diagram of the copper oxides.

    • S. Kasahara
    • , H. J. Shi
    •  & Y. Matsuda

  • News & Views |

    Elusive theoretical fantasies known as Majorana modes have been observed in a hybrid semiconductor–superconductor system. These emergent exotica open up promising prospects for quantum computation.

    • Frank Wilczek

  • News & Views |

    Quasiparticles known as repulsive polarons are predicted to occur when 'impurity' fermionic particles interact repulsively with a fermionic environment. They have now been detected in two widely differing systems. See Letters p.615 & p.619

    • Peter Hannaford

  • News & Views |

    An inorganic semiconductor can take the place of the liquid electrolyte typically used in dye-sensitized solar cells. This achievement points the way to making these devices more easily manufactured and more stable. See Letter p.486

    • Thomas E. Mallouk

  • Letter |

    Investigations of a two-dimensional spin-imbalanced Fermi gas reveal the existence of the Fermi polaron for attractive and repulsive interactions, and the transition from the attractive polaron to a molecule.

    • Marco Koschorreck
    • , Daniel Pertot
    •  & Michael Köhl

  • Letter |

    A solution-processable inorganic semiconductor is reported that can replace the liquid electrolyte of dye-sensitized solar cells, yielding all-solid-state solar cells with impressive energy conversion efficiencies.

    • In Chung
    • , Byunghong Lee
    •  & Mercouri G. Kanatzidis

  • News & Views |

    New calculations show that the electrical resistance of Earth's liquid-iron core is lower than had been thought. The results prompt a reassessment of how the planet's magnetic field has been generated and maintained over time. See Letter p.355

    • Bruce Buffett

  • Letter |

    Propagating cracks—normally associated with material failure and viewed as undesirable—can be controlled in a film/substrate system, opening up new possibilities for nanofabrication and atomic-scale patterning.

    • Koo Hyun Nam
    • , Il H. Park
    •  & Seung Hwan Ko

  • Letter |

    Ordering in liquid-crystal applications is usually achieved using surfactants, but here, in modelled nanodroplets of liquid crystals and surfactants, the liquid crystals control the ordering effects, which resemble those seen in block copolymer ordering, such as spots and stripes.

    • J. A. Moreno-Razo
    • , E. J. Sambriski
    •  & J. J. de Pablo

  • News & Views |

    Interacting electrons that are confined to move in a one-dimensional structure do not simply jam together like cars in rush hour. Inelastic X-ray scattering shows that the electrons act as if they split into separate fractional entities. See Letter p.82

    • Ralph Claessen

  • Letter |

    The magnetic-flux analogue to coherent Josephson tunnelling of electric charge has been observed in a strongly disordered superconducting nanowire.

    • O. V. Astafiev
    • , L. B. Ioffe
    •  & J. S. Tsai

  • News & Views |

    Intense laser fields can rip electrons from an atom and slam them back into it. By using intense terahertz radiation, this idea can be extended to electrons paired with 'holes' in a semiconductor. See Letter p.580

    • Rupert Huber

  • News & Views |

    The synthesis of analogues of graphene by two different means provides insight into the origins of massless particles and paves the way for studies of materials with exotic topological properties. See Letters p.302 & p.306

    • Jonathan Simon
    •  & Markus Greiner

  • Letter |

    Experiments using ultrafast mid-infrared light pulses on nanostructures access a new regime in photoelectron emission, revealing classical sub-cycle electron dynamics in optical near-fields and breaking a diffraction limit in strong-field physics.

    • G. Herink
    • , D. R. Solli
    •  & C. Ropers

  • News & Views |

    Unusual lattice vibrations have been discovered in scandium trifluoride — a simple compound that shrinks when heated. This finding may help to explain the phenomenon of negative thermal expansion.

    • J. Paul Attfield

  • Letter |

    Observation of a many-body pairing gap in a trapped, 2D atomic Fermi gas shows that ultracold atomic gases can be used to emulate the physics of correlated 2D superconductors, with the ultimate goal of understanding high-temperature superconductivity.

    • Michael Feld
    • , Bernd Fröhlich
    •  & Michael Köhl

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