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A charge injected into the edge of a correlated one-dimensional system can split into separate charge packages. Freulon et al. now study this electron fractionalization on the picosecond timescale using Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometry.

Charge transport is usually limited by collisions between the carriers, impurities and/or phonons. Collisions involving three bodies are generally much rarer. A study now reveals, however, that such supercollisions can play an important role in the properties of graphene.

Aversive long-term memory is formed after multiple conditioning sessions spaced by a rest interval. The authors identify specific dopaminergic neurons that display oscillatory calcium activity and are required during the rest interval to allow the formation of long-term memory in the mushroom body, the olfactory memory center.

Sensitive measurements of fluctuations in the current through carbon-nanotube-based quantum dots provide insight into the many-body physics of such systems.

Brain asymmetry is widespread across species, but its function remains poorly understood. Here, the authors show that the Netrin axon guidance pathway is involved in building an asymmetric neural circuit important for long-term memory in Drosophila.

A group of dopamine neurons that are distinct from those mediating aversive reinforcement is found to signal sugar reward in the fly brain, highlighting the evolutionarily conserved function of dopamine neurons in reward processing.

One of the many intriguing possibilities in strongly interacting quantum systems is the formation of emergent excitations with fractional charges. Here the authors show how the high-frequency noise emitted by a dc-biased quantum point contact can be used to demonstrate charge fractionalization.

Dirac fermion optics leverages p-n junctions and Klein tunnelling barriers present in materials to implement complex optical functions and devices, including reflectors, collimators, and Dirac fermion microscopes. Here, the authors fabricate Dirac fermion corner reflectors using bottom-gate-defined barriers in hBN-encapsulated graphene, and demonstrate high-frequency operation.

Observations of the Schwinger effect—the creation of matter by electric fields—have been hindered by the high required field strength. A mesoscopic variant of the Schwinger effect has now been realized in graphene transistors.

The Coulomb force between charges has a much greater influence on the electronic characteristics of 1D conductors than it does in 3D. Bocquillon et al. identify the separation of neutral and charged 1D edge modes, driven by Coulomb interactions in a quantum Hall system.

Long carrier lifetimes are beneficial for graphene-based optoelectronics, but carrier recombination processes in graphene possess sub-picosecond characteristic times. Here, the authors report carrier lifetimes ~30 ps at low energy in graphene/hBN Zener-Klein transistors, attributed to interband Auger processes.

Elementary excitations of electronic devices have potential use in quantum information but control and readout capabilities are not as developed as they are for more mature systems such as photonic qubits. Here the authors develop and demonstrate a tomographic protocol for electron and hole wavefunctions.

This study reports an anatomical and functional screen of mushroom body–extrinsic neurons in Drosophila and finds that MB-V2 cholinergic efferent neurons are essential for retrieval of aversive short- and long-term memory, but not for memory formation or consolidation. During memory retrieval, MB-V2 neurons reinforce the olfactory pathway involved in innate odor avoidance.

A material weakly linking two superconductors may itself exhibit superconductivity whilst its material properties strongly influence the nature of the supercurrent. Here, the authors identify a supercurrent with p-wave symmetry in such a Josephson junction made of topologically non-trivial material.