Articles

Grain boundaries in polycrystalline systems display complicated dynamics. Now, a general framework is presented that predicts the microscopic dynamics of both particles and dislocations underlying grain boundary migration in two-dimensional colloids.

A study of condensates that mimic biological ones within a reconstituted cytoskeleton reveals the mechanisms underlying the coarsening of the condensate.

BaTa₂S₅, which consists of alternating layers of TaS₂ and Ba₂TaS₄, is shown to host a triplet superconducting phase at high magnetic field. This triplet phase emerges from another—more conventional—superconducting state.

Operating cavity-based spectrometers at low temperature has several advantages, such as improved sensitivity. Now, a cavity-enhanced spectrometer is demonstrated down to 4 K.

Quantum computers often exhibit a bias in the type of error that is the most common or severe. Entanglement has now been demonstrated for qubits encoded with an error correction code that is designed to efficiently handle biased errors.

Self-testing makes it possible to certify quantum properties without having to trust measurement or communication devices. A protocol has now been developed that allows the self-testing of any quantum state or measurement.

Quantum fluctuations have been detected in a macroscopic, millimole-scale solid-state spin ensemble without the use of external excitations, enabling non-invasive quantum sensing techniques.

It is shown that an a.c. field exponentially extends the lifetime of a prethermal time crystal realized with nuclear spins in diamond, enabling a narrowband detection of magnetic fields.

Bosonic bunching of non-interacting atoms enhances atom–light scattering. An experiment now shows that attractive atomic interactions enhance this scattering further, while repulsive ones can completely suppress bosonic stimulation.

Fatigue failure refers to a material’s loss of rigidity after repeated application of stress or deformation. Simulations of model glasses now show that failure times display a power-law divergence and a strong dependence on annealing.

The formation of exciton crystals is challenging because excitons possess short lifetimes and exhibit weaker interactions than electrons. Now, an exciton Wigner crystal is observed in a moiré electron–hole bilayer.

Lattice gauge theories with non-local conservation laws are expected to thermalize locally. Using a Rydberg simulator, it is now shown that most charge patterns can remain effectively frozen, a phenomenon known as statistical localization.

The transition from laminar to turbulent flow is normally of a continuous nature. Now, simulations and experiments show that a discontinuous transition can be realized through the application of particular force fields.

Topological Kondo insulators have been suggested in three-dimensional bulk materials like SmB₆, but they have not been observed in two-dimensional materials. Now, this is achieved in a transition metal dichalcogenide moiré bilayer.

Complex-frequency waves compensate for optical losses, but their efficacy is limited in systems with extreme losses. Now, high-order virtual gain excitations have been shown to preserve loss compensation efficiency in plasmonic resonance systems.

Kelvin waves are elementary excitations of vortex lines, manifesting as propagating helical disturbances in rotational flows. Through spatiotemporal imaging, experimental verification of their dispersion relation has now been achieved.

Experimentally assessing entropy production in nanosystems is challenging. Now, the dissipation is visualized in a time-dependently driven non-Markovian quantum-dot blinking process in real time.

Quantum correlations enable some cryptographic protocols that are classically impossible. Now the security of an uncloneable encryption scheme using quantum systems has been proven.

Starfish embryos can form living chiral crystals. Now it is shown that these crystals can spontaneously, as well as inducibly, transition between two stable states: fluctuating and oscillatory.

Topological interface states typically support the propagation of a single state in each direction, which limits their applicability. Now, co-propagating states are achieved in a photonic topological insulator system.