Phase transitions and critical phenomena articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Hydrogen has multiple molecular phases which are challenging to explore computationally. The authors develop a machine-learning approach, learning from reference ab initio molecular dynamics simulations, to derive a transferable hierarchical force model that provides insight into high pressure phases and the melting line of H2.

    • Hongxiang Zong
    • , Heather Wiebe
    •  & Graeme J. Ackland

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Superconductivity in doped SrTiO3 near to a ferroelectric quantum critical point emerges due to a strong interaction driving the formation of Cooper pairs, the nature of which has remained elusive for several decades.  Here, the authors reveal that pairing is due to the exchange of longitudinal hybrid polar modes rather than transverse critical modes.

    • C. Enderlein
    • , J. Ferreira de Oliveira
    •  & S. E. Rowley

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Heterogenous ice nucleation is a ubiquitous phenomenon, but predicting the ice nucleation ability of a substrate is challenging. Here the authors develop a machine-learning data-driven approach to predict the ice nucleation ability of substrates, which is based on four descriptors related to physical properties of the interface.

    • Martin Fitzner
    • , Philipp Pedevilla
    •  & Angelos Michaelides

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding dynamics of fermionic bound states is important for their potential application in quantum devices. Here the authors study zero temperature dynamics and dissipation of fermions bound on a moving goal-post shaped wire in superfluid 3He-B.

    • S. Autti
    • , S. L. Ahlstrom
    •  & D. E. Zmeev

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The presence of ferroaxial domain states is recently experimentally demonstrated by a nonlinear optical technique, which lacks high spatial resolution to visualize ferroaxial domains. Here, the authors visualize spatial distributions of ferroaxial domains in NiTiO3 showing an order-disorder type ferroaxial transition.

    • T. Hayashida
    • , Y. Uemura
    •  & T. Kimura

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding the critical scaling behaviors of quantum phase transitions can provide profound physical implications. Here, the authors report temperature dependence of the derivative of longitudinal resistance at a magnetic-field induced quantum phase transition between the quantum anomalous Hall insulator to the axion insulator in magnetic topological insulator sandwich samples.

    • Xinyu Wu
    • , Di Xiao
    •  & Cui-Zu Chang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The entanglement in non-critical ground states is conjectured to obey the area law, which is believed to arise from the short-range nature of interactions. Here the authors prove that the entanglement area law rigorously holds in one-dimensional systems even in the presence of long-range interactions.

    • Tomotaka Kuwahara
    •  & Keiji Saito

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Thermoelectric efficiency of SnS and SnSe is reported to peak around the phase transition temperature around 800 K; however, the transition mechanism and origin of ultralow thermal conductivity remain unclear. Here, the authors reveal the soft-mode mechanism of the phase transition that impacts thermal transport and thermoelectric efficiency.

    • T. Lanigan-Atkins
    • , S. Yang
    •  & O. Delaire

  • Article
    | Open Access

    1T-TaS2 possesses complex electronic phase behaviors in transition-metal di-chalcogenides, undergoing several charge-ordered phases before finally into an insulating state of unknown origin. Here, the authors determine its electronic and structural properties experimentally, revealing its origin.

    • Y. D. Wang
    • , W. L. Yao
    •  & Y. Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Despite the apparent simplicity of a H2O molecule, the mutual ferroelectric ordering of the molecules is unresolved. Here, the authors realize a macroscopic ferroelectric phase transition in a network of dipole-dipole coupled water molecules located in nanopores of gemstone.

    • M. A. Belyanchikov
    • , M. Savinov
    •  & B. Gorshunov

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The large family PbZrO3-based solid solutions are usually considered as antiferroelectric materials with specific antiparallel polarization configuration. Here, the authors demonstrate the PbZrO3-based material has ferrielectric dipoles ordering and configure a clear structure-property relationship.

    • Zhengqian Fu
    • , Xuefeng Chen
    •  & Fangfang Xu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The effect of the lattice degrees of freedom on the metal-insulator transition of VO2 remains a topic of debate. Here the authors show that the lattice compatibility of the high temperature tetragonal phase and the low-temperature monoclinic phase strongly influences the electronic transition, as manifested in the tunability of its hysteresis via chemical substitution.

    • Y. G. Liang
    • , S. Lee
    •  & I. Takeuchi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Multiple quantum critical behaviors exist in the heavy fermion material CeRhIn5, but their interrelation is less studied. Here, Helm et al. investigate the interrelation of two quantum critical points and other relevant orders, revealing a strongly non-mean-field-like phase diagram.

    • Toni Helm
    • , Audrey D. Grockowiak
    •  & Philip J. W. Moll

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Helium is generally considered too inert to be present in giant ice planet mantles. The authors, by first-principles calculations and crystal structure searches, find stable ammonia–helium compounds at the conditions of Uranus and Neptune’s upper mantles, with possible implications in the planet composition models.

    • Jingming Shi
    • , Wenwen Cui
    •  & Yinwei Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Despite intensive research on the electrically driven insulator-to-metal transition, this phenomenon is not well understood. Using quasi 1D nanowires of two Mott insulators, the authors reveal the central role of defects in enabling a non-thermal doping driven insulator-to metal transition.

    • Yoav Kalcheim
    • , Alberto Camjayi
    •  & Ivan K. Schuller

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Electronics and magnetic phase transitions typically do not involve mechanical degrees of freedom directly, but their impact on thermodynamic properties affects the mechanical response of a material. Here the authors show that resonators made from 2D materials exhibit anomalies at phase transitions.

    • Makars Šiškins
    • , Martin Lee
    •  & Peter G. Steeneken

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Exploring nucleation processes of gallium by molecular simulation is extremely challenging due to its structural complexity. Here the authors demonstrate a neural network potential trained on a multithermal–multibaric DFT data for the study of the phase diagram of gallium in a wide temperature and pressure range.

    • Haiyang Niu
    • , Luigi Bonati
    •  & Michele Parrinello

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Doped Sr2IrO4 is of interest because of its close similarities to La2CuO4, a parent compound of the cuprates. Nelson et al. reveal the intrinsic evolution of its electronic structure with hole doping by avoiding the strong in-plane disorder introduced by previously used chemical substitutions.

    • J. N. Nelson
    • , C. T. Parzyck
    •  & K. M. Shen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Living organisms, like fish and bacteria, frequently change their pattern as a group to cope with environment. Here, Bäuerle et al. reproduce this phenomenon using a synthetic system of controllably interactive colloids to show their collective motions that indicates being close to a critical point.

    • Tobias Bäuerle
    • , Robert C. Löffler
    •  & Clemens Bechinger

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding failure propagation dynamics in complex networks with recovery processes is vital to realizing networks that are resistant to large scale failures. Here, the authors report a model for general failure propagation dynamics in complex networks with non-Markovian recovery processes.

    • Zhao-Hua Lin
    • , Mi Feng
    •  & Ying-Cheng Lai

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In many strongly correlated systems the coupling of electronic and lattice degrees of freedom leads to ambiguity over the mechanism driving electronic phase transitions. Here the authors show that inter-layer effects play an important role in the charge ordering transition of 1T-TaS2.

    • C. J. Butler
    • , M. Yoshida
    •  & Y. Iwasa

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The dynamics of many discontinuous phase transitions is determined by the nucleation and growth of regions of the new phase. Katsufuji et al. demonstrate that the orbital ordering transition of doped BaV10O15 presents an electronic example of nucleation-growth behaviour.

    • Takuro Katsufuji
    • , Tomomasa Kajita
    •  & Kazunori Ueno

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Quasiperiodic systems share features with disordered models but their underlying determinism give them distinct behaviour. Here the authors study the critical behaviour of quasiperiodic spin models and show that the renormalization group fixed points have couplings given by self-similar discrete sequences.

    • Utkarsh Agrawal
    • , Sarang Gopalakrishnan
    •  & Romain Vasseur

  • Article
    | Open Access

    \(\alpha\)-RuCl\({}_{3}\) is a candidate Kitaev spin liquid but whether or not this is realised depends on the details of the magnetic interactions. Here, the authors use state-of-the-art numerical methods to predict that for a large parameter region the Kitaev phase is supplanted by nematic paramagnetic phases.

    • Hyun-Yong Lee
    • , Ryui Kaneko
    •  & Yong Baek Kim

  • Article
    | Open Access

    α-RuCl3 has properties consistent with predictions of a phase hosting fractionalized Majorana fermions but that could also be explained by conventional magnetic excitations. Here the authors find evidence for fractionalized quasiparticles by studying magnetic excitations across the field-temperature phase diagram.

    • Dirk Wulferding
    • , Youngsu Choi
    •  & Kwang-Yong Choi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Neural network representations of quantum states are hoped to provide an efficient basis for numerical methods without the need for case-by-case trial wave functions. Here the authors show that limited generalization capacity of such representations is responsible for convergence problems for frustrated systems.

    • Tom Westerhout
    • , Nikita Astrakhantsev
    •  & Andrey A. Bagrov

  • Article
    | Open Access

    LaNiO3 is a strange metal, for reasons that are not well understood. Here, Liu et al. report evidence for scattering of charge carriers by antiferromagnetic quantum fluctuations in high-purity epitaxial thin films of LaNiO3, suggesting it is close to an antiferromagnetic quantum critical point.

    • Changjiang Liu
    • , Vincent F. C. Humbert
    •  & Anand Bhattacharya

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Description of non-equilibrium phase transitions is problematic, due to the absence of suitable free energy landscapes. Here, the authors experimentally show delayed photon condensation and timing jitter in a dye-filled microcavity, modelled by a non-equilibrium extension of the free-energy landscape.

    • Benjamin T. Walker
    • , João D. Rodrigues
    •  & Robert A. Nyman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Little is known about how the speed of ecosystem collapse depends on ecosystem size. Here, Cooper, Willcock et al. analyse empirical data and models finding that although regime shift duration increases with ecosystem size, this relationship saturates and even large ecosystems can collapse in a few decades.

    • Gregory S. Cooper
    • , Simon Willcock
    •  & John A. Dearing

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The microscopic understanding of photo-induced insulator-to-metal transition (IMT) in 1T-TaS2 remains elusive. Here, Stahl et al. identify the collapse of interlayer molecular orbital dimers during a collective electronic phase transition as a key mechanism for the IMT in 1T-TaS2.

    • Quirin Stahl
    • , Maximilian Kusch
    •  & Tobias Ritschel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Exactly how seemingly simple solid-state precipitation occurs in alloys remains elusive. Here, the authors show that excess vacancies introduced into a nanoscale, irradiated or deformed aluminium-copper alloy enable template-directed nucleation of the known strengthening phase θʹ.

    • Laure Bourgeois
    • , Yong Zhang
    •  & Nikhil V. Medhekar

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Twisting the relative orientation of the sheets in few-layer van der Waals materials can cause drastic changes in the electronic bandstructure. Here, the authors predict that twisted bilayer GeSe realises an effective one-dimensional flat-band electronic system with exotic, strongly correlated behaviour.

    • D. M. Kennes
    • , L. Xian
    •  & A. Rubio

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Mahan exciton, exotic quasiparticle predicted in 1967, had never been found in room temperature semiconductors. With ultrafast optics and many-body theory, Palmieri et al. show that methylammonium lead bromide perovskites are ideal platforms to unveil Mahan exciton physics at room temperature.

    • Tania Palmieri
    • , Edoardo Baldini
    •  & Majed Chergui

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Metastable cubic ice has been identified in several conditions relevant to geo and astrochemistry, but was always characterized by stacking disorder. Here the authors synthesize a hydrogen hydrate and degas hydrogen, obtaining pure non-defected cubic ice, observed by X-ray and neutron diffraction.

    • Kazuki Komatsu
    • , Shinichi Machida
    •  & Hiroyuki Kagi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The interconversion of spin and charge is fundamental to the operation of spintronic devices. Here the authors demonstrate spin-to-charge conversion in the correlated material vanadium dioxide, and show that the efficiency changes dramatically across the metal-insulator transition.

    • Taqiyyah S. Safi
    • , Pengxiang Zhang
    •  & Luqiao Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    While metallic glasses are expected to have tunable structures, these have rarely been demonstrated. Here, the authors combine temperature and pressure to show a two-way structural tuning in rare earth-based metallic glasses beyond the nearest-neighbor atomic shells.

    • Hongbo Lou
    • , Zhidan Zeng
    •  & Qiaoshi Zeng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The role of disorder in the formation of charge density waves (CDWs) remains elusive in typical CDW materials. Here, the authors report coexisting diffraction signals and anomalous slow dynamics of charge domains near the CDW transition temperature in ZrTe\({}_{3}\), suggesting as fingerprints of pristine and disorder-perturbed CDWs.

    • Li Yue
    • , Shangjie Xue
    •  & Yuan Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mechanical solitons are notoriously difficult to control. Here, the authors report a theoretical framework for programming static periodic topological solitons into a metamaterial, and demonstrate its implementation in real metamaterials computationally and experimentally.

    • Yafei Zhang
    • , Bo Li
    •  & C. Q. Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The interaction of localized and conduction electrons in some heavy fermion materials is believed to give rise to a Kondo insulating state. Kushwaha et al. present evidence that Ce3Bi4Pd3 is a Kondo insulator with a gap small enough to be driven into a Fermi liquid phase with accessible magnetic fields.

    • Satya K. Kushwaha
    • , Mun K. Chan
    •  & Neil Harrison

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A significant challenge in understanding the behaviour of strongly correlated materials is their sensitivity to composition. Here the authors show that stoichiometric CaFe3O5 avoids the electronic phase separation reported in a non-stoichiometric sample, and also exhibits an incommensurate magnetic phase.

    • Simon J. Cassidy
    • , Fabio Orlandi
    •  & Simon J. Clarke

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Advances in the design and fabrication of superconducting devices enable physicists to design and monitor quantum electronic systems in synthetic environments. Here the authors observe how many-body effects influence the zero-point motion of a Josephson junction coupled to a high impedance transmission line.

    • Sébastien Léger
    • , Javier Puertas-Martínez
    •  & Nicolas Roch

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Solid evidence of quantum fluctuations associated to a quantum critical point in cuprate superconductors remains elusive. Here, Auvray et al. report Raman scattering evidence of enhanced electronic nematic fluctuations near the endpoint of the pseudogap phase in Bi\({}_{2}\)Sr\({}_{2}\)CaCu\({}_{2}\)O\({}_{8+\delta }\).

    • N. Auvray
    • , B. Loret
    •  & Y. Gallais

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Soft porous crystals hold big promise as functional nanoporous materials due to their stimuli responsive flexibility. Here, molecular dynamics simulations reveal a new type of spatial disorder in mesoscale crystals that helps to understand the size-dependency of their phase transition behavior.

    • Sven M. J. Rogge
    • , Michel Waroquier
    •  & Veronique Van Speybroeck

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