Microscopy articles within Nature Physics

Featured

  • News & Views |

    Multi-colour light fields allow a nonlinear coupling between free electrons and propagating light by stimulated Compton scattering, without the need for near fields to mediate the interaction.

    • Niklas Müller
    •  & Sascha Schäfer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Coulomb interactions in free-electron beams are usually seen as an adverse effect. The creation of distinctive number states with one, two, three and four electrons now reveals unexpected opportunities for electron microscopy and lithography from Coulomb correlations.

    • Rudolf Haindl
    • , Armin Feist
    •  & Claus Ropers

  • Letter
    | Open Access

    A scanning nitrogen-vacancy microscope is used to image ferroelectric domains in piezoelectric and improper ferroelectric samples with high sensitivity. The technique relies on the nitrogen-vacancy’s Stark shift produced by the samples’ electric field.

    • William S. Huxter
    • , Martin F. Sarott
    •  & Christian L. Degen

  • News & Views |

    The virtual photons that are exchanged when a free-electron vortex beam interacts with a nanoscopic target unlock an explicit connection between polarized optical spectroscopy and the inelastic scattering of scalar electron waves.

    • David J. Masiello

  • Article |

    In principle skyrmions are topologically protected, but the crystal lattice interferes with this protection so that they should be unstable to switching of their winding number. Here this process is understood via scanning tunnelling microscopy.

    • Florian Muckel
    • , Stephan von Malottki
    •  & Markus Morgenstern

  • Article |

    Energy–momentum phase-matching enables strong interactions between free electrons and light waves. As a result, the wavefunction of the electron exhibits a comb structure, which was observed using photon-induced near-field electron microscopy.

    • Raphael Dahan
    • , Saar Nehemia
    •  & Ido Kaminer

  • Article |

    The authors investigate out-of-equilibrium crystallization of a binary mixture of sphere-like nanoparticles in small droplets. They observe the spontaneous formation of an icosahedral structure with stable MgCu2 phases, which are promising for photonic applications.

    • Da Wang
    • , Tonnishtha Dasgupta
    •  & Alfons van Blaaderen

  • Research Highlight |

    • Elizaveta Dubrovina

  • Letter |

    Conventional on-axis electron energy-loss spectroscopy can detect vibrational modes in crystals and amorphous solids at atomic resolution by isolating the specific signal from the background signal and the dipole contributions.

    • Kartik Venkatraman
    • , Barnaby D. A. Levin
    •  & Peter A. Crozier

  • Measure for Measure |

    Continuously improving precision in length measurements increases understanding of our world and its phenomena, both at small and large scales, as Leo Gross reveals.

    • Leo Gross

  • News & Views |

    The measurement of the charge density wave energy gap in high-temperature superconducting cuprates uncovers new links between competing states.

    • Jiarui Li
    •  & Riccardo Comin

  • Letter |

    A scanning tunnelling microscopy study of an intercalated iron selenide-based superconductor reveals a sign change in its superconducting gap function, providing indirect evidence for the origin of the pairing mechanism in this system.

    • Zengyi Du
    • , Xiong Yang
    •  & Hai-Hu Wen

  • News & Views |

    Standard rheology tells us how a cell responds to deformation. But ramping up the frequency reveals more about its internal dynamics and morphology, mapping a route to improved drug treatments — and possible insight into the malignancy of cancers.

    • Klaus Kroy

  • Letter |

    Microrheology of cells suggests that the dynamics of single filaments in the cytoskeleton dominate at high frequencies. This response can be used to detect differences between cell types and states — including benign and malignant cancer cells.

    • Annafrancesca Rigato
    • , Atsushi Miyagi
    •  & Felix Rico

  • Article |

    A near-field optical microscopy study provides nanoscale insight into an insulator-to-metal transition and the interplay with a neighbouring structural phase transition in a prototypical correlated electron material.

    • A. S. McLeod
    • , E. van Heumen
    •  & D. N. Basov

  • News & Views |

    Chiral symmetry breaking is imaged in graphene which, through a mechanism analogous to mass generation in quantum electrodynamics, could provide a means for making it semiconducting.

    • Christopher Mudry

  • News & Views |

    Rashba spin–orbit coupling has already provided fertile physics and applications in spintronics but real-space imaging shows how the strength of this interaction varies on the nanoscale.

    • Junsaku Nitta

  • Letter |

    Overlaying two transparent phase masks in a light beam results in a far-field achromatic intensity pattern. This effect lies at the basis of a polychromatic far-field interferometer for use in X-ray phase-contrast imaging without absorption gratings.

    • Houxun Miao
    • , Alireza Panna
    •  & Han Wen

  • News & Views |

    The transfer of protons across a high barrier only occasionally occurs through quantum-mechanical tunnelling. Low-temperature scanning tunnelling microscopy shows concerted tunnelling of four protons within chiral cyclic water tetramers supported on an inert surface.

    • Christof Drechsel-Grau
    •  & Dominik Marx

  • Letter |

    Many-body tunnelling is a complex but important phenomenon. Scanning tunnelling microscopy experiments with a Cl-terminated tip on a cyclic cluster of hydrogen-bonded water molecules now demonstrate controllable concerted tunnelling of four protons.

    • Xiangzhi Meng
    • , Jing Guo
    •  & Ying Jiang

  • News & Views |

    Controlled switching of interacting ferroelectric surface domains leads to a variety of regular and chaotic patterns, and could provide a physical platform for performing calculations.

    • Alain Pignolet

  • Research Highlights |

    • Bart Verberck

  • Letter |

    Magnetic monopoles continue to be elusive. However, an experiment now shows that the interaction of an electron beam with the tip of a nanoscopically thin magnetic needle—a close approximation to a magnetic monopole field—generates an electron vortex state, as expected for a true magnetic monopole field.

    • Armand Béché
    • , Ruben Van Boxem
    •  & Jo Verbeeck

  • Article |

    Ferroelectric domain switching on the surface of a lithium niobate thin film can be induced by the tip of a scanning probe microscope, and gives rise to both regular and chaotic spatiotemporal patterns. Moreover, the long-range interactions that govern these phenomena can be tuned by varying temperature, humidity, domain spacing and tip bias.

    • A. V. Ievlev
    • , S. Jesse
    •  & S. V. Kalinin

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