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Without key cell cycle control genes, SAR11 cells experience aneuploidy and growth inhibition when exposed to changes in nutrients, carbon sources or temperature stress, a vulnerability that may represent an evolutionary trade-off for adaptation to oligotrophic environments.

The second sound is an entropy oscillation propagating with constant pressure. Here the authors demonstrate the variation of the second sound wave in the crossover from the Bose-Einstein condensate to the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer superfluid using 6Li.

By coupling two quantum dots via a superconductor-semiconductor hybrid region in a 2D electron gas, the authors achieve efficient splitting of Cooper pairs. Further, by applying a magnetic field perpendicular to the spin-orbit field, they can induce and measure large triplet correlations in the Cooper pair splitting process.

DC-powered microwave amplifiers approach the quantum noise limit by using the interaction between microwave radiation and inelastic Cooper-pair tunnelling across a voltage-biased Josephson junction.

Disorder leads to localization of electrons at low temperatures, changing metals to insulators. In a superconductor the electrons are paired up, and scanning tunnelling microscopy shows that the pairs localize together rather than breaking up and forming localized single electrons in the insulating state.

Thermoelectricity due to the interplay of the nonlocal Cooper pair splitting and the elastic co-tunneling in normal metal-superconductor-normal metal structure is predicted. Here, the authors observe the non-local Seebeck effect in a graphene-based Cooper pair splitting device.

Controllable detection of singlet and triplet Cooper pair splitting via crossed Andreev reflection is demonstrated in spin-polarized quantum dots on a superconducting nanowire platform with strong spin–orbit coupling.

Quantum phase transitions are most commonly found to occur at zero temperature. Cuevaset al.present numerical evidence confirming that a quantum phase transition can also occur at finite temperature, provided strong disorder is present.

By pushing scanning tunnelling spectroscopy down to millikelvin temperatures, it is now possible to image a heavy fermion superconductor and measure the superconducting gap symmetry, with gap nodes in unexpected momentum-space locations.

Although quantum phase transitions are attracting increasing attention as the conceptual link between conventional and exotic states of quantum matter—having been implicated, for example, in the properties of high-temperature superconductors—there are few model systems in which they can be studied and understood. Now it is revealed that placing simple elemental chromium under pressure suppresses its normal magnetic state and gives direct experimental access to the underlying quantum phase transition responsible for these changes.

One of the most counterintuitive fundamental properties of quantum mechanics is non-locality, which manifests itself as correlations between spatially separated parts of a quantum system. Although experimental tests of non-locality (Bell inequalities) have been successfully conducted with pairwise entangled photons, similar demonstrations using electrons have so far not been possible. The realization of a Y-shaped tunable Cooper pair splitter, to split entangled electrons on demand, brings this one step closer.

The pseudogap state in the cuprate superconductors shows signs of electronic pair formation above the superconducting temperature. Is it just a ‘precursor’ state or a separate (and competing) state? In fact, both interpretations seem to be correct.

Electronic devices operating at the nanoscale can exhibit unique electrical and thermal phenomena that can affect overall performance and so it is necessary to understand and control these types of fluctuations. Here, the authors theoretically and experimentally investigate quantum phase slips which can proliferate at low-temperatures in miniaturised superconducting devices and determine how this impacts on the resultant transport properties.

The realization of cold and dense electron–hole systems by optical excitation is hindered by the heating caused by particle recombination. Now, cold and dense electron–hole systems have been observed in heterostructures with separated electron and hole layers.

Scanned Josephson tunnelling microscopy is used to image Cooper pair tunnelling from a superconducting microscope tip to the quantum condensate of Bi₂Sr₂CaCu₂O_8+x, thus revealing the spatially modulated density of Cooper pairs predicted from several theories of the cuprate pseudogap phase.

Superconducting spintronics has the potential to enhance device functionality by realising spin polarised supercurrents with greater coherence and reduced dissipation. Here, using ferromagnetic resonance, the authors investigate the temperature dependence of the Gilbert damping for the Fe layer of Nb/Fe/Nb and Nb/Cr/Fe/Cr/Nb stacks and the impact superconducting spin triplets have on the spin pumping behaviour.

Guided by density functional theory, a commercially viable refractory alloy is developed, which exhibits excellent room-temperature ductility and strength, and high strength at elevated temperatures.

Magnetic molecules deposited on a metallic substrate constitute a method to engineer the spin properties of the molecule and has potential application in low-power information storage devices. Here, the authors investigate a superconductor/molecule/normal metal heterostructure and demonstrate spin-ordering and proximity induced superconducting properties at the metallo-molecular interface.

Quarks in the interior of hadrons make up most of ordinary matter, yet their observation is not possible, and their properties can only be probed indirectly. Adopting an analogy between physics of superinsulators and high energy physics, the authors present direct observations of the interior of electric mesons made of Cooper pairs by standard transport measurements.

The authors present experimental evidence of three-dimensional superinsulation in a nanopatterned slab of NbTiN. In the electric Meissner state, they find polar nematic order arising from ferroelectric alignment of short electric strings excited by external electromagnetic fields.

The BCS-BEC crossover is typically observed using ultracold atomic systems but recent experiments suggest investigations may also be possible using strongly correlated systems. Here, the authors use FeSe_1−xS_x to investigate the evolution of the superconducting state in the BCS-BEC crossover regime observing multiband nature of the BCS-BEC crossover with a suppression of the nematic order upon S-substitution.

The ALICE Collaboration provides details on the microscopic mechanism that ends up creating antideuteron in high-energy proton–proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider.

Examples of materials with non-trivial band topology in the presence of strong electron correlations are rare. Now it is shown that quantum fluctuations near a quantum phase transition can promote topological phases in a heavy-fermion compound.

Identifying jets originating from heavy quarks plays a fundamental role in hadronic collider experiments. In this work, the ATLAS Collaboration describes and tests a transformer-based neural network architecture for jet flavour tagging based on low-level input and physics-inspired constraints.

Estimates from the Global Burden of Disease study reveal declines in chronic respiratory disease mortality between 1990 and 2023—especially during the COVID-19 pandemic—but the burdens on people affected remain substantial.

Using torque magnetometry, the thermodynamic signatures of bosonic Landau level transitions are observed in a layered superconductor, owing to the formation of Cooper pairs with finite momentum.

Spin correlation experiments are demonstrated in an electron entangler device based on the ‘splitting’ of Cooper pairs from a superconductor, which can potentially be used to investigate many fundamental phases and processes related to the electron spin.

The mechanism of high-temperature superconductivity remains a subject of debate. Krasnov et al.describe a technique for measuring the spectra of bosons generated during the formation of Cooper pairs in a cuprate, the results of which suggest that the process is governed by electron–electron interactions.

Pearl inductance in thin films of YBCO enables terahertz superinductance and achieves impedance surpassing the quantum resistance limit, promising advancements in quantum and photonic technologies.

Vortex dynamics and mutual friction in quantum fluids are intimately connected to the fundamental properties of superfluids. Here, the authors reveal previously unexplored mechanisms underlying the mutual friction coefficients in ultracold Fermi superfluids in the unitary limit, suggesting bound quasiparticles within the vortex core play a significant role.

A superconducting layer placed between two ferromagnetic insulators can drive an antiferromagnetic exchange coupling between them. Here, the authors demonstrate that such an exchange coupling promotes non-volatile bistable memory states and repeatable “absolute” switching in GdN/V/GdN, where the device exhibits a superconducting transition only when the two ferromagnets have anti-parallel magnetization.

The authors propose that when an intervalley coherent (IVC) state is subjected to a static magnetic field, it develops an oscillating orbital magnetization at microwave frequency, an effect analogous to a Josephson oscillation in momentum space. The effect could provide an experimental diagnostic for identifying the IVC state.

Chiral superconductors are very rare topological materials. Here, the authors report spontaneous magnetic fields inside the superconducting state and low temperature linear behavior in the superfluid density in LaPt₃P, suggesting a chiral d-wave singlet superconducting state.

Due to their small size, atomic-scale Josephson junctions are vulnerable to thermal fluctuations. Escribano et al. show that introducing a delayed feedback element, a common method to mitigate thermal noise, induces spontaneous oscillations that enhance capabilities of Josephson microscopy.

Pairing interaction appears at room temperature in traditional superconductors with a Cooper instability in the Fermi sea. Here, Maier et al.report that in the pseudogap phase of cuprate, where this instability is absent, superconductivity arises from an increase in the strength of the spin fluctuation pairing interaction as the temperature decreases.

Reanalysis of radiometric data from Cassini indicates that Titan does not contain a subsurface ocean, as strong tidal dissipation observed in its gravity field is not consistent with the presence of a liquid layer.

Coherently projecting a quantum state may allow it to be probed from a distance. This is now demonstrated for a Yu–Shiba–Rusinov state using a quantum corral.