Physics articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Many discrepancies exist to question the nature of the candidate topological Kondo insulator, SmB6. Here, Jiao et al. observe in-gap states on well characterized (001) surfaces of SmB6, indicating a suppression of the Kondo effect at surface, which reconciles current discrepancies on this compound.

    • L. Jiao
    • , S. Rößler
    •  & S. Wirth

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Systems with Weyl excitations can display very interesting physical phenomena. Here the authors demonstrate that Weyl excitations exist generically in 3D systems of dipolar particles following angular momentum transfer, and discuss how to observe them in cold alkaline-earth-atom systems.

    • Sergey V. Syzranov
    • , Michael L. Wall
    •  & Ana Maria Rey

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The spin Seebeck effect enables thermal-to-electrical energy conversion but the power generated in thin films remains low. Here, Boonaet al. use composites of ferromagnetic conductors containing noble metal nanoparticles to show that the effect can enhance the transverse thermopower of bulk materials.

    • Stephen R. Boona
    • , Koen Vandaele
    •  & Joseph P. Heremans

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Scanning tunneling microscope (STM) is a powerful tool but local control of superconductivity with the STM tip is still lacking. Here, Geet al. show the use of an STM tip to control the local pinning in a superconductor through the heating effect, allowing to manipulate single superconducting vortex at nanoscale.

    • Jun-Yi Ge
    • , Vladimir N. Gladilin
    •  & Victor V. Moshchalkov

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Magnetic semiconductors provide control of spin states in addition to charge states realized in conventional semiconductors, yet currently limited to weak magnetism at low temperature. Liuet al. introduce oxygen into a ferromagnetic metallic glass, resulting in a Curie temperature above 600 K.

    • Wenjian Liu
    • , Hongxia Zhang
    •  & Na Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The performance of graphene field effect transistors is adversely affected by fluctuations in the electrical resistance at the graphene/metal interface. Here, the authors unveil the microscopic origin of such contact noise, highlighting the role of current crowding.

    • Paritosh Karnatak
    • , T. Phanindra Sai
    •  & Arindam Ghosh

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding of charge transfer dynamics is essential to the design of high-performance organic semiconductors for optoelectronic applications. Here, the authors show that excitons, polaron pairs and a long-lived vibrational mode are strongly coupled to each other up to 1 picosecond in polythiophene.

    • Antonietta De Sio
    • , Filippo Troiani
    •  & Christoph Lienau

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How water striders escape from danger by jumping vertically from the water surface without sinking is an open question in biomechanics. Yanget al. show that water strider species with varying leg lengths and body masses tune their leg movements to maximize jump speeds without breaking the surface of the water.

    • Eunjin Yang
    • , Jae Hak Son
    •  & Ho-Young Kim

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Whole-brain networks of long-range neuronal pathways are characterized by interdependencies between structural features. Here the author shows that module hierarchy and rich club features in these networks are structural byproducts (spandrels) of module and hub constraints, but not of wiring-cost constraints.

    • Mikail Rubinov

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Flexible approaches are required for building plasmomechanical devices for tunable optical devices. Here, Roxworthyet al. introduce a plasmonic-nanoelectromechanical systems device where gap plasmon resonators are embedded into arrays of moving silicon nitride nanostructures, yielding thousands of devices per chip.

    • Brian J. Roxworthy
    •  & Vladimir A. Aksyuk

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Internal solitary waves are widespread within oceans, lakes and the atmosphere but their origin is uncertain. Here we show a rare natural case of the birth of internal solitary waves arising from the head of a frontally-forced intrusion as observed in the Saguenay Fjord, Canada.

    • Daniel Bourgault
    • , Peter S. Galbraith
    •  & Cédric Chavanne

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Interatomic Coulombic decay (ICD) is a relaxation of an atom in a weakly bound environment by the transfer of excess energy to ionize the neighbouring atom. Here the authors observe intra-Rydberg ICD in neon clusters, which is a decay that involves the ionization of Rydberg atoms in the cluster.

    • K. Nagaya
    • , D. Iablonskyi
    •  & K. Ueda

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Thermodynamic observables develop power laws and singularities when approaching the Curie point of a ferromagnetic phase transition. Here, Saratz et al. demonstrate that topological excitations (that is, magnetic domains in Fe/Cu(100) films that even persist above the Curie point) remove those singularities compatibly with an avoided critical point.

    • N. Saratz
    • , D. A. Zanin
    •  & A. Vindigni

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A Type II Weyl fermion semimetal has been predicted in MoxW1−xTe2, but it awaits experimental evidence. Here, Belopolski et al. observe a topological Fermi arc in MoxW1−xTe2, showing it originates from a Type II Weyl fermion and offering a new platform to study novel transport phenomena in Weyl semimetals.

    • Ilya Belopolski
    • , Daniel S. Sanchez
    •  & M. Zahid Hasan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The measurement of high magnetic fields has been limited to sensitivities in the nanotesla range. Here, the authors report advances in high-field magnetometry based on nuclear magnetic resonance, achieving resolution in the order of picoteslas or one part per trillion in relative terms.

    • Simon Gross
    • , Christoph Barmet
    •  & Klaas P. Pruessmann

  • Article
    | Open Access

    There is no one theoretical model that can explain the stability of all known liganded gold clusters. Here, the authors present a grand unified model, inspired by the quark model of particle physics, which describes gold clusters as combinations of stable triangular Au3(2e) and tetragonal Au4(2e) ‘composite particles’ built from gold atom ‘elementary particles’.

    • Wen Wu Xu
    • , Beien Zhu
    •  & Yi Gao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Early stellarator designs suffered from high particle losses, an issue that can be addressed by optimization of the coils. Here the authors measure the magnetic field lines in the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator, confirming that the complicated design of the superconducting coils has been realized successfully.

    • T. Sunn Pedersen
    • , M. Otte
    •  & Sandor Zoletnik

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Knowing the photophysics of thermally-activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) is crucial when designing organic light emitting diodes. Here the authors show that spin orbit coupling in TADF materials is described by a second order vibronic coupling mechanism, and demonstrate the importance of resonance effects to achieve efficient TADF.

    • Marc K. Etherington
    • , Jamie Gibson
    •  & Andrew P. Monkman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Real-time quantum feedback control can be used to cool quantum systems to their motional ground states, but this has been so far achieved via classical probe fields. Here the authors report feedback cooling of a mechanical oscillator using a squeezed field, reporting higher cooling rate over classical light.

    • Clemens Schäfermeier
    • , Hugo Kerdoncuff
    •  & Ulrik L. Andersen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The efficient excitation of atoms using photons is a fundamental step in the control of photon-atom interaction and quantum information protocols. Here the authors show that photons with an exponentially rising envelope excite a single atom efficiently compared to a decaying temporal shape.

    • Victor Leong
    • , Mathias Alexander Seidler
    •  & Christian Kurtsiefer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Heterostructures of graphene and hexagonal boron nitride have great potential for high-mobility electronics, yet little is known about the electronic interaction between these two atomically thin materials. Here, the authors perform angle-resolved reflected-electron spectroscopy to unveil their interplay.

    • Johannes Jobst
    • , Alexander J. H. van der Torren
    •  & Sense Jan van der Molen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nonreciprocal components are widely used in optical circuits but the magneto-optic effects they are based on pose difficulties for on-chip integration. Here, Ruesink et al. propose an optomechanical scheme to break reciprocity without the need for magnetic fields.

    • Freek Ruesink
    • , Mohammad-Ali Miri
    •  & Ewold Verhagen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The two dimensional magnetoplasmon edge state has been observed for a long time, but its nature is yet to be uncovered. Here, Jin et al. report that such a state is actually topological protected, analogous to the chiral Majorana edge state in a p-wave topological superconductor.

    • Dafei Jin
    • , Ling Lu
    •  & Nicholas X. Fang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Describing thermodynamic processes, fluctuations of work are typically not considered bounded. Here the authors show that in some processes they diverge, making the processes unphysical, and construct a framework to quantify work extraction and work of formation of arbitrary quantum states with bounded fluctuations.

    • Jonathan G. Richens
    •  & Lluis Masanes

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Hybrid quantum systems combine efficient high-quality quantum dot sources with atomic vapours that can serve as precise frequency standards or quantum memories. Here, Portalupi et al. demonstrate an optimized atomic Cs-Faraday filter working with single photons emitted from a semiconductor quantum dot.

    • Simone Luca Portalupi
    • , Matthias Widmann
    •  & Ilja Gerhardt

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Generation of narrowband pure and storable single photons is an enabling step towards hybrid quantum networks interconnecting different systems. Here the authors report on a heralded single photon source based on a cold ensemble of atoms with controllable emission time and high photon shape tunability.

    • Pau Farrera
    • , Georg Heinze
    •  & Hugues de Riedmatten

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The development of single-molecule electronics calls for precise tuning of the electronic properties of individual molecules that go beyond two-terminal control. Here, Wickenburg et al. show gate-tunable switch of charge states of an isolated molecule using a graphene-based field-effect transistor.

    • Sebastian Wickenburg
    • , Jiong Lu
    •  & Michael F. Crommie

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In a future quantum internet, entanglement or a secret key should be efficiently provided between two points via intermediate nodes connected by optical channels. Here the authors derive general rate-loss trade-off for such protocols, that is applicable to any network topology.

    • Koji Azuma
    • , Akihiro Mizutani
    •  & Hoi-Kwong Lo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Silicon is a promising material for realization of quantum processors, particularly as it could be naturally integrated with classical control hardware based on CMOS technology. Here the authors report a silicon qubit device made with an industry-standard fabrication process on a CMOS platform.

    • R. Maurand
    • , X. Jehl
    •  & S. De Franceschi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The controlled motion of magnetic domain walls in nanowire conduits forms the basis of emerging memory and information processing devices. Here, the authors report a pulse-length dependent quasi-static velocity of current-driven chiral domain walls, showing that their inertia is tunable.

    • Jacob Torrejon
    • , Eduardo Martinez
    •  & Masamitsu Hayashi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding the decay of persistent current in superconducting rings remains obscure. Here, the authors show detailed agreement between measurements of the persistent current in isolated flux-biased rings and Ginzburg-Landau theory over a wide range of parameters, providing a quantitative picture of the free energy landscape.

    • I. Petković
    • , A. Lollo
    •  & J. G. E. Harris

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Functional behaviour can emerge in materials in which magnetic order is determined by the interplay of localised and itinerant magnetic interactions. Here the authors tune such magnetic order in a photovoltaic perovskite by tuning the electronic carrier concentration under visible light illumination.

    • B. Náfrádi
    • , P. Szirmai
    •  & E. Horváth

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Earthquakes have been theorised to produce gravity signals that may arrive before seismic waves, but until now they had not been detected. Montagneret al. have detected prompt gravity signals from the 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquake thus allowing an early warning of earthquakes before seismic wave arrival.

    • Jean-Paul Montagner
    • , Kévin Juhel
    •  & Philippe Lognonné

  • Article
    | Open Access

    'Atkins snowballs', solid layers of helium around an ion core in bulk superfluid He, have been investigated for simple ions but many properties remain unknown. Here, the authors show via photofragmentation experiments that a phase transition occurs in C60-doped He droplets depending on the number of He atoms.

    • M. Kuhn
    • , M. Renzler
    •  & P. Scheier

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The collective motion of microswimmers is determined by not only their direct interaction, but also the hydrodynamics forces mediated by the surrounding flow field. Here, the authors detail in simulation the spontaneous assembly and disassembly of magnetic microswimmers into various structures.

    • Francisca Guzmán-Lastra
    • , Andreas Kaiser
    •  & Hartmut Löwen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    One hypothesis for solar system formation is gas compression by a nearby supernova, whose traces should be found in isotopic anomalies. Here the authors show that this mechanism is viable only if the triggering event was a low-mass supernova, looking at short-lived 10Be and lack of anomalies in stable isotopes.

    • Projjwal Banerjee
    • , Yong-Zhong Qian
    •  & W C Haxton

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Quantum information processing requires long-storage time of quantum states, but this typically comes at the expense of their addressability. Here the authors developed a method that exploits interaction between Rydberg and ground states of an atom reporting fast state generation and long-term storage.

    • Lin Li
    •  & A Kuzmich

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Controlling elastic waves in medium is essential to many applications in mechanical to earthquake engineering. Ma et al. demonstrate selective suppression of different vibrational modes in a three-dimensional rod-shape structure, which shows fluid-like elasticity with only longitudinal waves propagating.

    • Guancong Ma
    • , Caixing Fu
    •  & Ping Sheng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In active matter, chemical energy is transformed into mechanical motion; theoretical descriptions of nematic liquids are useful in understanding such phenomena. Here, Zhang et al. model the dynamics of active nematic liquid crystals confined onto a spherical shell in systems that mimic cell motion.

    • Rui Zhang
    • , Ye Zhou
    •  & Juan J. de Pablo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Spin-polarized states arising from either Rashba splitting or topological effects are expected to produce current-induced spin polarization with different magnitude and sign. Here, Li et al. observe current-generated spin polarization in both Bi2Se3(111) and InAs (001) films, with opposite signs of the spin voltage.

    • C. H. Li
    • , O.M.J. van ‘t Erve
    •  & B. T. Jonker

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Studying long-range interactions in the controlled environment of trapped ultracold gases can help our understanding of fundamental many-body physics. Here the authors excite a gas of Rydberg atoms with a ps laser pulse, demonstrating behaviour consistent with many-body correlations beyond mean-field.

    • Nobuyuki Takei
    • , Christian Sommer
    •  & Kenji Ohmori

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The motion of particles in a quantum condensate state are described by a single macroscopic wave function, leading to a host of unusual properties. Here, the authors generate such a condensation of magnetically induced excitons, known as cyclotron magnetoexcitons, in a high-mobility quantum well.

    • L. V. Kulik
    • , A. S. Zhuravlev
    •  & S. Schmult

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding ultrafast dynamics of excited states of nitrogen-vacancy helps its manipulation for technological applications. Here the authors use polarization anisotropy spectroscopy and molecular dynamics to investigate sub-picosecond dephasing dynamics, identifying the origin of orbital averaging effects.

    • Ronald Ulbricht
    • , Shuo Dong
    •  & Zhi-Heng Loh

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ferroelectric vortex-type structures have only been seen in isolated films, leaving electrode effects unexplored. Here, Peters et al. show that the polarisation curling and formation of vortex and flux-closure structures is a generic effect appearing in ultrathin ferroelectric films.

    • Jonathan J. P. Peters
    • , Geanina Apachitei
    •  & Ana M. Sanchez

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding how surface Fermi arcs connect different Weyl nodes in presence of multiple Weyl-node pairs is intriguing yet unclear. Here, Kimet al. show that the winding of the Zak phase around each projected Weyl node manifests itself as a topological defect, leading to non-trivial surface as well as bulk Fermi arcs.

    • Kun Woo Kim
    • , Woo-Ram Lee
    •  & Kwon Park

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