Physics articles within Nature

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  • Research Briefing |

    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.

  • Research Briefing |

    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.

  • Article
    | Open Access

    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

  • Article |

    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

  • Article |

    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

  • News & Views |

    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

  • Article |

    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

  • Article
    | Open Access

    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

  • Article |

    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

  • Article
    | Open Access

    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

  • Research Briefing |

    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.

  • News & Views |

    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

  • Article |

    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

  • Article |

    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

  • Article |

    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

  • News & Views |

    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

  • Article |

    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

  • Article |

    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

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The realization of two-qubit entangling gates with 99.5% fidelity on up to 60 rubidium atoms in parallel is reported, surpassing the surface-code threshold for error correction and laying the groundwork for neutral-atom quantum computers.

    • Simon J. Evered
    • , Dolev Bluvstein
    •  & Mikhail D. Lukin

  • Research Briefing |

    Quantum electrodynamics, the archetypical theory of electromagnetic interactions, describes the behaviour of charged particles and photons using quantum field theory. Measuring the g factor of a bound electron in a hydrogen-like tin ion (118Sn49+) provides one of the most stringent tests so far of quantum electrodynamics in strong electric fields.

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Many different homogeneous metrics on Lie groups, which may have markedly different short-distance properties, are shown to exhibit nearly identical distance functions at long distances, suggesting a large universality class of definitions of quantum complexity.

    • Adam R. Brown
    • , Michael H. Freedman
    •  & Leonard Susskind

  • News & Views |

    Evolution by natural selection peerlessly describes how life’s complexity develops — but can it be explained in terms of physics? A new approach suggests it can.

    • George F. R. Ellis

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A high-precision, high-field test of quantum electrodynamics measuring the bound-electron g factor in hydrogen-like tin is described, which—together with state-of-the-art theory calculations—yields a stringent test in the strong-field regime.

    • J. Morgner
    • , B. Tu
    •  & K. Blaum

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Assembly theory conceptualizes objects as entities defined by their possible formation histories, allowing a unified language for describing selection, evolution and the generation of novelty.

    • Abhishek Sharma
    • , Dániel Czégel
    •  & Leroy Cronin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Asynchronous flight in all major groups of insects likely arose from a single common ancestor with reversions to a synchronous flight mode enabled by shifts back and forth between different regimes in the same set of dynamic parameters.

    • Jeff Gau
    • , James Lynch
    •  & Simon Sponberg

  • News & Views |

    Layers of a thin semiconductor material overlap in a particular pattern, giving rise to particle currents carrying a fraction of the charge of an electron — with potential for encoding quantum information.

    • Cécile Repellin

  • Research Briefing |

    Precise timekeeping is key to many technologies, motivating the search for more-stable reference oscillators for use as clocks. The resonant X-ray excitation of a long-lived nuclear state in scandium-45 makes it a potential reference oscillator for a nuclear clock that could surpass atomic clocks in stability and resilience against external perturbations.

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study reports the creation of a model thermodynamic engine that is fuelled by the energy difference resulting from changing the statistics of a quantum gas from bosonic to fermionic.

    • Jennifer Koch
    • , Keerthy Menon
    •  & Artur Widera

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Resonant X-ray excitation of the  45Sc nuclear isomeric state was achieved by irradiation of a Sc-metal foil with 12.4-keV photon pulses from a state-of-the-art X-ray free-electron laser, allowing a high-precision determination of the transition energy.

    • Yuri Shvyd’ko
    • , Ralf Röhlsberger
    •  & Tomasz Kolodziej

  • News & Views |

    An organic light-emitting diode has been integrated with an optically driven organic laser to produce laser light from electricity. The design bypasses many of the challenges posed by direct electrical input in such devices.

    • Stéphane Kéna-Cohen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Magnetically confined neutral antihydrogen atoms released in a gravity field were found to fall towards Earth like ordinary matter, in accordance with Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

    • E. K. Anderson
    • , C. J. Baker
    •  & J. S. Wurtele

  • News & Views |

    A nickel-based compound has shown evidence of a superconducting state at a temperature of 80 kelvin. The material bridges a gap between other nickelates and a notable class of superconductor containing copper.

    • Matthias Hepting

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