Research Highlight |
Featured
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News |
Quantum-computing approach uses single molecules as qubits for first time
Platforms based on molecules manipulated using ‘optical tweezers’ might be able to perform complex physics calculations.
- Davide Castelvecchi
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News |
Big Bang observatory tops wish list for big US physics projects
Report also supports projects of unprecedented scale to study dark matter, neutrinos and the Higgs boson.
- Davide Castelvecchi
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Research Briefing |
Probing single electron spins with an atomic force microscope for quantum applications
Electron spin resonance is a standard method for studying the structure of chemical compounds, and it can also be used to control quantum spin states. Combining electron spin resonance with atomic force microscopy allows single spins to be manipulated in single molecules — with potential applications in quantum computing and elsewhere.
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Article |
Logical quantum processor based on reconfigurable atom arrays
- Dolev Bluvstein
- , Simon J. Evered
- & Mikhail D. Lukin
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Nature Podcast |
The world’s smallest light-trapping silicon cavity
Researchers exploit intermolecular forces to carve a nanoscale hole, and investigating whether poverty can be reduced without increasing emissions.
- Nick Petrić Howe
- & Shamini Bundell
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Article
| Open Access
Single-molecule electron spin resonance by means of atomic force microscopy
By using a pump–probe atomic force microscopy detection scheme, electron spin transitions between non-equilibrium triplet states of individual pentacene molecules, as well as the ability to manipulate electron spins over tens of microseconds, is demonstrated.
- Lisanne Sellies
- , Raffael Spachtholz
- & Jascha Repp
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Article
| Open Access
Self-assembled photonic cavities with atomic-scale confinement
Silicon photonic nanocavities based on surface forces and conventional lithography and etching are developed, demonstrating pioneering technology that integrates atomic dimensions with the scalability of planar semiconductors.
- Ali Nawaz Babar
- , Thor August Schimmell Weis
- & Søren Stobbe
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News |
IBM releases first-ever 1,000-qubit quantum chip
The company announces its latest huge chip — but will now focus on developing smaller chips with a fresh approach to ‘error correction’.
- Davide Castelvecchi
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News |
Gravitational waves from giant black-hole collision reveal long-sought ‘ringing’
Researchers find massive merger’s signature aftershocks hidden in 2019 data from LIGO and Virgo detectors.
- Davide Castelvecchi
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Research Highlight |
The hunt for dark-matter particles ventures into the wild
Sensors deployed at magnetically quiet rural sites looked for axions and ‘hidden photons’ — with no luck yet.
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Nature Video |
Super hot plasma made easy with stabilising fibres
Carbon fibre blocks could make it easier to create uniform high temperature plasma for manufacturing and research.
- Shamini Bundell
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Article |
Evidence for chiral supercurrent in quantum Hall Josephson junctions
Ultra-narrow quantum Hall Josephson junctions defined in encapsulated graphene nanoribbons exhibit a chiral supercurrent, visible up to 8 T.
- Hadrien Vignaud
- , David Perconte
- & Benjamin Sacépé
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Nature Podcast |
Why COP28 probably won’t keep the 1.5 degree dream alive
We discuss the challenges of the upcoming climate-change conference, and a way to make stable plasma using hairy blocks.
- Nick Petrić Howe
- & Shamini Bundell
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Article |
Exploring large-scale entanglement in quantum simulation
On a 51-ion quantum simulator, we investigate locality of entanglement Hamiltonians for a Heisenberg chain, demonstrating Bisognano–Wichmann predictions of quantum field theory applied to lattice many-body systems, and observe the transition from area- to volume-law scaling of entanglement entropies.
- Manoj K. Joshi
- , Christian Kokail
- & Peter Zoller
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News |
The most powerful cosmic ray since the Oh-My-God particle puzzles scientists
Scientists spot a particle of intense energy, but explaining where it came from might require some new physics.
- Gemma Conroy
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News & Views |
Magnetic hopfion rings in new era for topology
A curious topological structure known as a hopfion ring has been induced in a magnetic material. The first of its kind in 3D, the ring is a tantalizing prospect for several branches of computing development.
- Hanu Arava
- & Charudatta M. Phatak
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Article
| Open Access
Hopfion rings in a cubic chiral magnet
Transmission electron microscopy is used to observe three-dimensional topological solitons known as hopfions that in a chiral magnet are found to form rings around skyrmion strings, and a nucleation protocol for these rings is provided.
- Fengshan Zheng
- , Nikolai S. Kiselev
- & Rafal E. Dunin-Borkowski
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Research Briefing |
Divide and conquer: exploiting entropy to grow nanoscale barrier materials
The full promise of materials structured at the nanoscale can be realized only if they can be manufactured more efficiently and at the sizes required for device integration. An innovative method takes advantage of thermodynamic and kinetic effects to control the growth of stacked 2D nanosheets that can be used for practical applications from the nanoscale to the macroscale.
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News |
‘Electrocaloric’ heat pump could transform air conditioning
Heat pumps are ubiquitous in the form of air conditioners. Scientists just invented one that avoids harmful refrigerant gases.
- Davide Castelvecchi
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Nature Careers Podcast |
Scientific illustration: striking the balance between creativity and accuracy
A misleading image in a medical textbook could have life and death implications, but some disciplines can deploy myth and metaphor to convey their science through art.
- Julie Gould
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News |
Why superconductor research is in a ‘golden age’ — despite controversy
Last week’s retraction dealt a blow to the search for room-temperature superconductivity, but physicists are optimistic about the field’s future.
- Davide Castelvecchi
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Research Briefing |
Laser-induced vibrations probe microscale metamaterials without contacting them
Advanced materials engineered at the microscale have the potential to achieve unparalleled mechanical performance under extreme conditions. A laser-based characterization method enables the fast measurement of extreme properties in these materials, by extracting them from the sample’s vibrational ‘fingerprint’, without touching or permanently deforming the structure.
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Article
| Open Access
Kinetic magnetism in triangular moiré materials
Minimization of kinetic energy leads to ferromagnetic correlations between itinerant electrons in MoSe2/WS2 moiré lattices even in the absence of exchange interactions.
- L. Ciorciaro
- , T. Smoleński
- & A. İmamoğlu
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Article |
Quantum gas mixtures and dual-species atom interferometry in space
Using upgraded hardware of the multiuser Cold Atom Lab (CAL) aboard the International Space Station (ISS), Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs) of two atomic isotopes are simultaneously created and used to demonstrate interspecies interactions and dual species atom interferometry in space.
- Ethan R. Elliott
- , David C. Aveline
- & Jason R. Williams
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Article |
Continuous symmetry breaking in a trapped-ion spin chain
A one-dimensional trapped-ion quantum simulator with up to 23 spins is used to demonstrate a continuous symmetry-breaking phase that relies on long-range interactions.
- Lei Feng
- , Or Katz
- & Christopher Monroe
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Article |
Imaging inter-valley coherent order in magic-angle twisted trilayer graphene
Scanning tunnelling microscopy imaging of the correlated phases of magic-angle twisted trilayer graphene shows marked signatures of interaction-driven spatial symmetry breaking.
- Hyunjin Kim
- , Youngjoon Choi
- & Stevan Nadj-Perge
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Career Feature |
The future is quantum: universities look to train engineers for an emerging industry
With quantum technologies heading for the mainstream, undergraduate courses are preparing the workforce of the future.
- Sophia Chen
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News & Views |
Flat bands find another dimension for exotic physical phases
Experiments reveal flat bands in the relationship between the energy and the momentum of electrons in a 3D solid. Such behaviour is indicative of unusual physical phenomena, and has previously been seen only in 2D materials.
- Xingjiang Zhou
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Article |
Observing the primary steps of ion solvation in helium droplets
The initial steps of the ion solvation process are observed for the solvation of a single sodium ion in liquid helium, opening possibilities for benchmarking theoretical descriptions of ion solvation.
- Simon H. Albrechtsen
- , Constant A. Schouder
- & Henrik Stapelfeldt
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Article
| Open Access
Neural landscape diffusion resolves conflicts between needs across time
Behavioural and electrophysiological studies in simultaneously thirsty and hungry mice reveal a neural basis for resolving conflicts between needs, in which choices are guided by a persistent and distributed neural goal state that undergoes spontaneous transitions between goals.
- Ethan B. Richman
- , Nicole Ticea
- & Liqun Luo
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Article |
Three-dimensional flat bands in pyrochlore metal CaNi2
Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy of CaNi2 shows a band with vanishing dispersion across the full 3D Brillouin zone that is identified with the pyrochlore flat band as well as two additional flat bands that arise from multi-orbital interference of Ni d-electrons.
- Joshua P. Wakefield
- , Mingu Kang
- & Joseph G. Checkelsky
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Article |
Aspartate all-in-one doping strategy enables efficient all-perovskite tandems
AspCl doping in Sn–Pb perovskite solar cells improves their performance and stability.
- Shun Zhou
- , Shiqiang Fu
- & Weijun Ke
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Book Review |
The ‘brazen’ science that paved the way for the Higgs boson (and a lot more)
Fundamental physics has progressed in leaps and bounds in the past century — driven by strong characters and often a complete disregard for health and safety, as a spirited history shows.
- Tara Shears
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News |
Asteroid sampler’s hypersonic return thrilled scientists: here’s what they learnt
The re-entry of the OSIRIS-REx sample canister is the most closely observed of its type in history.
- Alexandra Witze
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Spotlight |
Keeping secrets in a quantum world
Cryptographers are preparing for new quantum computers that will break their ciphers.
- Neil Savage
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Article
| Open Access
Neural signal propagation atlas of Caenorhabditis elegans
Measurements of signal propagation in more than 23,000 pairs of neurons from nematode worms show that predictions of neural function made on the basis of anatomy are often incorrect, in part owing to the effects of extrasynaptic signalling.
- Francesco Randi
- , Anuj K. Sharma
- & Andrew M. Leifer
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Research Briefing |
Large-scale nanowire camera with a single-photon sensitivity
Superconducting detectors are a leading technology for the detection of single photons, but have been limited in the number of pixels that they can offer. A 400,000-pixel superconducting nanowire single-photon detector camera provides an improvement by a factor of 400 compared with the current state of the art.
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News & Views |
Magnetic atoms push interactions to new lengths for quantum simulation
Lasers, and a cold ensemble of magnetic atoms, have been used to mimic a complex quantum system characterized by long-range interactions — an essential ingredient for realizing realistic models of many quantum materials.
- P. Blair Blakie
- & Barbara Capogrosso-Sansone
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Article |
Dipolar quantum solids emerging in a Hubbard quantum simulator
The realization of dipolar quantum solids with an ultracold gas of magnetic atoms in an optical lattice ushers in quantum simulation of many-body systems with long-range anisotropic interactions.
- Lin Su
- , Alexander Douglas
- & Markus Greiner
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Article |
A superconducting nanowire single-photon camera with 400,000 pixels
The development of a 400,000-pixel superconducting nanowire single-photon detector array is described, improving the current state of the art by a factor of 400 and showing scalability well beyond the present demonstration.
- B. G. Oripov
- , D. S. Rampini
- & A. N. McCaughan
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Article |
Remarkable heat conduction mediated by non-equilibrium phonon polaritons
Measurements of thermal transport along 3C-SiC nanowires with and without a gold coating on the end(s) suggest that thermally excited surface phonon polaritons can be used in nanostructures to substantially enhance thermal conductivity.
- Zhiliang Pan
- , Guanyu Lu
- & Deyu Li
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News & Views |
Searching for phase transitions in the dark
An electrically insulating quantum material turns metallic when placed between two semi-reflecting mirrors — even if there is no illumination between them. This discovery paves the way for engineering other phase transitions.
- Edoardo Baldini
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Article |
Orbital multiferroicity in pentalayer rhombohedral graphene
Orbital multiferroicity reported in pentalayer rhombohedral graphene features ferro-orbital-magnetism and ferro-valleytricity, both of which can be controlled by an electric field.
- Tonghang Han
- , Zhengguang Lu
- & Long Ju
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Article
| Open Access
Measurement-induced entanglement and teleportation on a noisy quantum processor
Measurement-induced phases of quantum information have been observed in a system of 70 superconducting qubits.
- J. C. Hoke
- , M. Ippoliti
- & P. Roushan
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Article |
Coherent nanophotonic electron accelerator
A scalable nanophotonic electron accelerator with a high particle acceleration gradient and good beam confinement achieves an energy gain of 43%.
- Tomáš Chlouba
- , Roy Shiloh
- & Peter Hommelhoff
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Article |
Cavity-mediated thermal control of metal-to-insulator transition in 1T-TaS2
Cavity-mediated thermal control of metal-to-insulator transition is achieved by embedding the charge density wave material 1T-TaS2 into cryogenic tunable terahertz cavities.
- Giacomo Jarc
- , Shahla Yasmin Mathengattil
- & Daniele Fausti
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Article |
High-fidelity gates and mid-circuit erasure conversion in an atomic qubit
This study reports gates between qubits encoded in the nuclear spin state of Yb atoms trapped in optical tweezers, reaching very high fidelity and demonstrating mid-circuit conversion of errors into erasure errors.
- Shuo Ma
- , Genyue Liu
- & Jeff D. Thompson
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Article
| Open Access
Erasure conversion in a high-fidelity Rydberg quantum simulator
Erasure conversion and detection are used in a Rydberg quantum simulator to create Bell states with high fidelity, competitive with other state-of-the-art platforms.
- Pascal Scholl
- , Adam L. Shaw
- & Manuel Endres
Why coffee particles clump and make a mess during grinding
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