Volume 16
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No. 12 December 2020
Gifts from ShibaThis month, two scanning tunnelling microscopy studies report advances in our understanding of Yu–Shiba–Rusinov bound states. Our cover comes from Olof Peters et al., who used microwave radiation to enable photon-assisted tunnelling processes, thereby allowing more detailed scrutiny of these impurity states. Haonan Huang et al. showed tunnelling between two such states, a technique that can probe and enhance the impurity state lifetime.
See Franke et al. and SeeAst et al.
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No. 11 November 2020
Entanglement unscrambledHigher-dimensional entanglement between two photons can be preserved for a photon passing through a complex medium by applying an appropriate scrambling operation on the entangled partner that does not enter the complex medium.
See Malik
See Forbes
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No. 10 October 2020
Smells like teen physicsThe number 15 is created by quantum imaging, self-assembly of green-fluorescent-protein-active Escherichia coli bacteria, self-assembly of polystyrene beads and with a quantum gas microscope.
See Feature and Editorial
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No. 9 September 2020
Braided anyonsAn interferometer device is used to detect the quantum-mechanical phase that is gained when two anyons are braided around each other. The fractional value of the phase proves that these quasiparticles are neither bosons nor fermions.
Manfra, Article
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No. 8 August 2020
Chasing Majorana rainbowsThe interface between a quantum Hall state and a superconductor hosts topological modes. Here, interference between two such modes turns an electron into either a hole or an electron depending on the phase difference along the interference path.
Zhao, Article
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No. 7 July 2020
Indirect-drive fast ignitionExperiments realizing the indirect-drive fast ignition scheme for inertial confinement fusion are reported. Enabled by a tightly compressed target, an increase of neutron yield is observed.
See Zhang et al.
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No. 6 2 June 2020
Turbulence in starfish egg cellsActivity in certain living systems can lead to swirling flows akin to turbulence. Here, the authors connect the dynamics of topological defects in starfish oocyte membranes to vortex dynamics in 2D Bose–Einstein condensates.
See Tan et al.
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No. 5 May 2020
A liquid of magnetic multipolesA detailed neutron-scattering study reveals a quantum spin liquid behaviour in Ce2Sn2O7 originating from its higher-order magnetic multipolar moments acting on the geometrically frustrated pyrochlore lattice.
See Sibille et al.
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No. 4 April 2020
Glassy learningThe physics that underlies the glass transition is both subtle and non-trivial. A machine learning approach based on graph networks is now shown to accurately predict the dynamics of glasses over a wider range of temperature, pressure and density.
See Bapst et al.
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No. 3 March 2020
Oddly synchronisedAn experiment with three alternating-current generators demonstrates converse symmetry breaking — a phenomenon whereby the system achieves frequency synchronization when its component systems are tuned asymmetrically.
See Nishikawa et al.
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No. 2 2 February 2020
Charge on the bouncing barrierIn our understanding of planetary formation, it is still unclear how millimetre-sized dust grains grow into centimetre-sized aggregates. Microgravity experiments now show that electrical charging of the grains leads to the formation of larger clumps.
See Steinpilz et al.
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No. 1 January 2020
Light-induced anomalous Hall effectA transient topological response in graphene is driven by a short pulse of light. When the Fermi energy is in the predicted band gap the Hall conductance is around two conductance quanta. An ultrafast detection technique enables the measurement.
See Cavalleri et al.