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Imaging individual atoms in an optical lattice with single-site resolution has so far only been possible for bosonic species, but thanks to electromagnetically-induced-transparency cooling fermionic species can now also be imaged.
Transistors rely on electrical gates to control conductance but this is challenging on the atomic-scale. It is now shown that individual charged atoms can be used to electrostatically gate a single-molecule transistor with sub-ångström precision.
Small distinctive patterns or ‘motifs’ are more prevalent in real systems than they are in randomly generated networks. It now seems that these motifs emerge naturally according to a principle that favours interconnections biased towards stability.
The evidence for a time-reversal symmetry-breaking phase in high-temperature cuprate superconductors has been contradictory. But these observations are consistent with a theory predicting fractional vortices that form ‘necklaces’.
A foreground galaxy cluster is magnifying a more distant blazar by gravitationally bending the emitted radiation. Using such a lens, it is possible to resolve a jet close to the central supermassive black hole as being the source of the gamma rays.
Reducing the signal-to-noise ratio is a never-ending challenge for many types of experiments. Now, improved ratios are reported for nuclear magnetic resonance set-ups combining an external high-Q resonator and a low-Q input coil.
Terahertz radiation is used to directly probe magnetotransport in metallic multilayers on the timescale of electron momentum scattering—the fundamental conditions of Nevill Mott’s model of spin-dependent conduction in metals.
The general theory of relativity, tested time and time again, is a cornerstone of modern physics — but marrying it with quantum mechanics remains a major challenge.
Quantum many-body systems are often so complex as to be intractable. An algorithm that finds the ground state of any one-dimensional quantum system has now been devised, proving that the many-body problem is tractable for quantum spin chains.
A niobium titanite nitride-based superconducting nanodevice — a Cooper-pair transistor — has a remarkably long parity lifetime, exceeding one minute close to absolute zero.
The history of the fierce opposition met by Einstein's theory of relativity in the 1920s teaches us that public controversies about science are not necessarily settled by sound scientific reasoning.
Certain nodes are influential in spreading information — or infection — across a network. But these nodes need not be those with the most connections, and topology can play a key role, as a 2010 paper in Nature Physics established.
