Condensed-matter physics articles within Nature

Featured

  • Article |

    Vortices in an electron fluid are directly observed in a para-hydrodynamic regime in which the spatial diffusion of electron momenta is enabled by small-angle scattering rather than electron–electron scattering.

    • A. Aharon-Steinberg
    • , T. Völkl
    •  & E. Zeldov

  • Research Briefing |

    Swirling vortices have been directly observed in a flow of electric current for the first time. Unlike conventional viscous fluids, collective fluid-like behaviour in this case is not caused by particle–particle collisions, but results from a previously unidentified mechanism involving single electrons scattering from material surfaces at small angles.

  • News & Views |

    A mechanism resembling a crankshaft switches the electric polarization of a material in response to changes in an applied magnetic field. The resulting four-state switch is linked to the material’s intriguing topology.

    • Wei Ren
    •  & Laurent Bellaiche

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The discovery of graphite–diamond hybrid carbon, Gradia, which consists of graphite and diamond nanodomains interlocked through coherent interfaces, clarifies the long-standing mystery of how graphite turns into diamond.

    • Kun Luo
    • , Bing Liu
    •  & Yongjun Tian

  • News & Views |

    A simple method for incorporating molecules into the gaps of stacked semimetallic materials through immersion offers an efficient way of filtering electrons, which could be useful for information-storage technologies.

    • Xi Ling

  • Article |

    By intercalating layered 2D atomic crystals with selected chiral molecules, a new class of chiral molecular intercalation superlattices is reported, demonstrating highly ordered structures and achieving high tunnelling magnetoresistance and spin polarization ratios.

    • Qi Qian
    • , Huaying Ren
    •  & Xiangfeng Duan

  • Research Briefing |

    Continuous amplification of coherent matter waves has been demonstrated, allowing an exotic state of matter called a Bose–Einstein condensate to be maintained indefinitely. This set-up is the matter-wave analogue of an optical laser enclosed by fully reflective mirrors, and it could have uses in both applied and fundamental physics.

  • News & Views |

    The collective vibrations of atoms at the interface between two semiconducting materials have been imaged with nanometre-scale resolution. Their dynamics depends sensitively on the abruptness of the boundary.

    • Fredrik S. Hage

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A method for mapping phonon momenta reveals non-equilibrium phonon dynamics at nanoscale interfaces enabling study of actual nanodevices and aiding understanding of heat dissipation near nanoscale hotspots.

    • Chaitanya A. Gadre
    • , Xingxu Yan
    •  & Xiaoqing Pan

  • Article |

    Precise control over the quantum state of a two-dimensional Fermi gas together with single-particle-resolved fluorescence imaging enables the direct observation of the formation of Cooper pairs at the Fermi surface.

    • Marvin Holten
    • , Luca Bayha
    •  & Selim Jochim

  • News & Views |

    A method has been developed for fabricating thin films of the 2D insulator hexagonal boron nitride with a uniform crystal orientation. The advance makes this material a key contender for replacing silica substrates in future electronics.

    • Soo Ho Choi
    •  & Soo Min Kim

  • Perspective |

    The control of light–matter interactions as a way to manipulate and synthesize strongly correlated quantum matter is discussed, highlighting a field termed ‘strongly correlated electron–photon science’.

    • Jacqueline Bloch
    • , Andrea Cavalleri
    •  & Angel Rubio

  • Article |

    Bubbles of ultracold atoms have been created, observed and characterized at the NASA Cold Atom Lab onboard the International Space Station, made possible by the microgravity environment of the laboratory.

    • R. A. Carollo
    • , D. C. Aveline
    •  & N. Lundblad

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Pressures of up to 900 gigapascals (9 million atmospheres) are achieved in a laser-heated double-stage diamond cell, enabling the synthesis of Re7N3, and materials characterization is performed in situ using single-crystal X-ray diffraction.

    • Leonid Dubrovinsky
    • , Saiana Khandarkhaeva
    •  & Natalia Dubrovinskaia

  • Article |

    Light-field control of real and virtual charge carriers in a gold–graphene–gold heterostructure is demonstrated, and used to create a logic gate for application in lightwave electronics.

    • Tobias Boolakee
    • , Christian Heide
    •  & Peter Hommelhoff

  • Article |

    Three tunable quantum Hall broken-symmetry states in charge-neutral graphene are identified by visualizing their lattice-scale order with scanning tunnelling microscopy and spectroscopy.

    • Alexis Coissard
    • , David Wander
    •  & Benjamin Sacépé

  • Article |

    A Josephson diode is made by fabricating an inversion symmetry breaking van der Waals heterostructure of NbSe2/Nb3Br8/NbSe2, demonstrating that even without a magnetic field, the junction can be superconducting with a positive current but resistive with a negative current.

    • Heng Wu
    • , Yaojia Wang
    •  & Mazhar N. Ali

  • Article |

    A study combining spectroscopy and mathematical topology  reports the observation of linked node loops in a quantum magnet, with properties suggesting a Seifert bulk–boundary correspondence.

    • Ilya Belopolski
    • , Guoqing Chang
    •  & M. Zahid Hasan

  • News & Views |

    The polarization, wavelength and power of a light wave can be simultaneously identified by a compact device made from twisted layers of carbon atoms — with a little help from an artificial neural network.

    • Justin C. W. Song
    •  & Yidong Chong

  • Article |

    A catalogue of the naturally occurring three-dimensional stoichiometric materials with flat bands around the Fermi level provides a powerful search engine for future theoretical and experimental studies.

    • Nicolas Regnault
    • , Yuanfeng Xu
    •  & B. Andrei Bernevig

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The fabrication of copper thin films with ultraflat surfaces and only occasional mono-atomic steps, which show semi-permanent resistance to oxidation over long periods, is reported and the mechanism explained using first-principles calculations.

    • Su Jae Kim
    • , Yong In Kim
    •  & Se-Young Jeong

  • Article |

    Using continuous microwave application without substantial heating, Floquet–Andreev states in graphene Josephson junctions are realized, and their energy spectra are measured directly by superconducting tunnelling spectroscopy.

    • Sein Park
    • , Wonjun Lee
    •  & Gil-Ho Lee

  • Review Article |

    Recent theoretical and experimental progress in identifying and understanding magnetic topological materials is reviewed, highlighting the antiferromagnetic topological insulator MnBi2Te4 and the ferromagnetic Weyl semimetal Co3Sn2S2, and future research directions are discussed.

    • B. Andrei Bernevig
    • , Claudia Felser
    •  & Haim Beidenkopf

  • Article |

    Multiple complementary optical signatures confirm the persistence of ferroelectricity and inversion-symmetry-breaking magnetic order down to monolayer NiI2, introducing the physics of type-II multiferroics into the area of van der Waals materials.

    • Qian Song
    • , Connor A. Occhialini
    •  & Riccardo Comin

  • Article |

    Precise quantitative scaling laws are observed between the normalized T-linear coefficient and Tc among copper oxides, pnictides and a class of organic superconductors, suggesting a common underlying physics at work in these unconventional superconductors.

    • Jie Yuan
    • , Qihong Chen
    •  & Zhongxian Zhao

  • News & Views |

    Measurements indicate that electrons move in loops between the atoms of an intriguing class of superconducting material. Such dynamics breaks key symmetries of the crystal lattice — suggesting the material hosts a rare state of matter.

    • Morten H. Christensen
    •  & Turan Birol

  • Article |

    Analysing the structure of a PbTiO3 epitaxial layer sandwiched between SrRuO3 electrodes led to observation of a topology with two periodic modulations that form an incommensurate polar crystal, providing an analogue to incommensurate spin crystals.

    • Dorin Rusu
    • , Jonathan J. P. Peters
    •  & Marin Alexe

  • News & Views |

    Crystal-lattice vibrations reveal the mechanism by which laser pulses can strip a metal of its magnetism. The vibrations absorb the angular momentum of electrons in a sample, allowing it to demagnetize.

    • Georg Woltersdorf

  • Review Article |

    The essential properties of moiré materials and the progress and latest developments in the field are reviewed, and their fabrication and physics are discussed from a reproducibility perspective.

    • Chun Ning Lau
    • , Marc W. Bockrath
    •  & Fan Zhang

  • Article |

    The quantum contribution to friction enables the rationalization of the peculiar friction properties of water on carbon surfaces, and in particular the radius dependence of slippage in carbon nanotubes.

    • Nikita Kavokine
    • , Marie-Laure Bocquet
    •  & Lydéric Bocquet

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