Applied physics articles within Nature Physics

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  • News & Views |

    Stable regions in four-dimensional phase space have been observed by following the motion of accelerated proton beams subject to nonlinear forces. This provides insights into the physics of dynamical systems and may lead to improved accelerator designs.

    • Giulio Stancari

  • Comment |

    Increasingly, physics graduates take jobs outside academia. Active teaching approaches lead to deeper conceptual understanding and a more varied skill set and are therefore more likely to prepare students for successful careers.

    • Jenaro Guisasola
    •  & Kristina Zuza

  • Perspective |

    Encouraging students to take ownership of their learning can improve their outcomes. This Perspective discusses ways to achieve this in the context of physics education and how digital technology can help Gen Z students in particular.

    • Nam-Hwa Kang

  • News & Views |

    When cracks creep forward in our three-dimensional world, they do so because of accompanying cracks racing perpendicular to the main direction of motion with almost sonic speed. Clever experiments have now directly demonstrated this phenomenon.

    • Michael Marder

  • Comment |

    Annually, the European Research Council (ERC) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) allocate resources to promote research excellence in Europe and the USA. We observe that European Union (EU)-based researchers rely strongly on United States (US) collaborations to secure top EU funding, while the reverse is much less common.

    • Sandeep Chowdhary
    • , Nicolò Defenu
    •  & Federico Battiston

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Colloidal aggregates are conventionally formed by particle aggregation under thermal fluctuation. Now the structure and mechanical properties of aggregates can be controlled by an active bath of swimming Escherichia coli.

    • Daniel Grober
    • , Ivan Palaia
    •  & Jérémie Palacci

  • Research Briefing |

    Using ‘momentum cooling’ in cyclotron-based proton therapy can increase proton transmission rates and thereby reduce treatment delivery times. This simple technique, which reduces the momentum spread of the proton beam without introducing substantial beam losses, enhances efficiency and has the potential to reduce costs, thereby advancing cancer treatment and improving patient outcomes.

  • Article
    | Open Access

    So far, a continuous time crystal has only been implemented on a quantum system. Optically driven many-body interactions in a nanomechanical photonic metamaterial now allow the realization of a classical continuous time crystal.

    • Tongjun Liu
    • , Jun-Yu Ou
    •  & Nikolay I. Zheludev

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Elastoviscoplastic fluids combine solid- and liquid-like behaviour depending on applied stress. Simulations of elastoviscoplastic fluids at high Reynolds number now show that plasticity plays a key role in the turbulent flows seen in these systems, leading for example to intermittency.

    • Mohamed S. Abdelgawad
    • , Ianto Cannon
    •  & Marco E. Rosti

  • Letter
    | Open Access

    Icephobic surfaces are helpful for increasing safety and sustainability in engineering applications. A study of the behaviour of supercooled droplets freezing on superhydrophobic surfaces now provides insights into ice-repellency mechanisms.

    • Henry Lambley
    • , Gustav Graeber
    •  & Dimos Poulikakos

  • Comment |

    The authority of science within society is contested by antiscientific movements. To restore trust, science education should involve students in the social processes of knowledge production.

    • P. Riccardi

  • News & Views |

    By recovering energy from a relativistically accelerated electron beam in a multiturn configuration, a reduction of radiofrequency power has been demonstrated. This is a milestone toward more efficient and better performing accelerators.

    • Peter Williams

  • Article |

    By combining energy recovery technology and a multi-turn accelerating scheme in a linear accelerator, high-power beams can be achieved with considerably reduced energy consumption.

    • Felix Schliessmann
    • , Michaela Arnold
    •  & Simon Weih

  • Article |

    Most temporal analyses of multivariate time series rely on pairwise statistics. A study combining network theory and topological data analysis now shows how to characterize the dynamics of signals at all orders of interactions in real-world data.

    • Andrea Santoro
    • , Federico Battiston
    •  & Enrico Amico

  • Article |

    The transition from a glassy to a liquid phase is normally assumed to take place cooperatively across the whole material. But now, experiments show that, under certain conditions, isolated regions of liquid can form in the glassy matrix first.

    • Ana Vila-Costa
    • , Marta Gonzalez-Silveira
    •  & Javier Rodriguez-Viejo

  • Perspective |

    Multiple scattering of light in complex and disordered media scrambles optical information. This Perspective showcases how this often detrimental physical mixing can be exploited to extract and process information for optical imaging and computing.

    • Sylvain Gigan

  • Comment |

    Across the world, decisions on investment and policy are made under the assumption of continuous economic expansion. Fundamental physical limits may soon put an end to this phase of development, as foreshadowed by the 1972 report The Limits to Growth.

    • Thomas W. Murphy Jr

  • News & Views |

    Originally suggested for the detection of gravitational waves, resonantly vibrating metal beams have been used in a recent laboratory experiment to measure Newton’s constant of gravitation and to verify Newton’s gravitational law.

    • Christian Rothleitner

  • Measure for Measure |

    The shift of the definition of the kilogram in 2019 away from an artefact to one relying on the Planck constant inspires technological innovation, as Naoki Kuramoto elucidates.

    • Naoki Kuramoto

  • Measure for Measure |

    Juris Meija takes a look at the tumultuous past of the atomic unit of mass from its beginnings as an idea to its most recent revisions in a hotel bar.

    • Juris Meija

  • News & Views |

    • Bart Verberck

  • News & Views |

    Acoustic waveguides have been used to implement the long-theorized phenomenon of non-Abelian braiding, in which abstract geometric constructions are used to generate transformations between different modes.

    • Yidong Chong

  • Article |

    Although it shows promise for applications, non-Abelian braiding is difficult to realize in electronic systems. Its demonstration using acoustic waveguides may provide a useful platform to study non-Abelian physics.

    • Ze-Guo Chen
    • , Ruo-Yang Zhang
    •  & Guancong Ma

  • Editorial |

    This month, we celebrate the discovery of electromagnetic rotation, the principle behind the electric motor.

  • News & Views |

    Introducing non-local effects to metamaterials increases the complexity of their dispersion relation, which allows carefully designed elastic structures to mimic the peculiar roton behaviour of correlated quantum superfluids.

    • Romain Fleury

  • Comment |

    Undergraduate labs are more effective and more positive for students if they encourage investigation and decision-making, not verification of textbook concepts.

    • Emily M. Smith
    •  & N. G. Holmes

  • Measure for Measure |

    The metric system is one of the enduring achievements of the French Revolution. Martin Milton recounts how it was also intended to unite nations.

    • Martin J. T. Milton

  • Comment |

    Muon colliders offer enormous potential for the exploration of the particle physics frontier but are challenging to realize. A new international collaboration is forming to make such a muon collider a reality.

    • K. R. Long
    • , D. Lucchesi
    •  & V. Shiltsev

  • Perspective |

    The interplay of topological properties and non-Hermitian symmetry breaking has been implemented for a range of classical-wave systems. Recent advances, challenges and opportunities are reviewed across the different physical platforms.

    • Corentin Coulais
    • , Romain Fleury
    •  & Jasper van Wezel

  • Measure for Measure |

    In first-century China, emperor Wang Mang standardized weights and measures in his newly established dynasty. Noa Hegesh tells the story of sound as the basis for this standardization.

    • Noa Hegesh

  • News & Views |

    An elegant experiment showing that acoustic waves are amplified after scattering by a rotating body demonstrates an effect predicted in 1971 by Yakov Zel’dovich. This result has implications for the understanding of scattering from black holes.

    • Bruce W. Drinkwater

  • Article |

    Acoustic waves that carry orbital angular momentum are amplified as they pass through an absorbing disk when the rotation rate exceeds the frequency of the incident wave, thus providing an experimental demonstration of Zel’dovich amplification.

    • Marion Cromb
    • , Graham M. Gibson
    •  & Daniele Faccio

  • Article |

    The relationship between the dynamics and spatial order of active matter gives rise to a rich phenomenology that is not fully understood. A study of bacteria swimming in a patterned liquid crystalline environment is a case in point, and provides a way to streamline the chaotic movements of swimming bacteria into polar jets.

    • Taras Turiv
    • , Runa Koizumi
    •  & Oleg D. Lavrentovich

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