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Diamond colour centres are of interest for solid-state quantum technologies but obtaining an efficient spin-photon interface remains challenging. Here, the authors use resonant excitation under magnetic fields to optically access the electronic spin sublevels of silicon-vacancy centres in diamond.

An electrically pumped polariton laser is constructed using a quantum well microcavity, and its polaritonic nature is demonstrated unambiguously by using a magnetic field to probe the part-light, part-matter character of the system.

The spins of single molecules and defect centres possess properties which can be strongly influenced by their material contacts in electrical junctions. Here, the authors study the coupling between cobalt hydride complexes and a Rh(111) contact, mediated through a hexagonal boron nitride layer.

Spin-spin correlation is fundamental to many material properties but challenging to measure in nanomagnetic systems. Muenkset al. show that correlations between a localized spin and the electrons of its hosting bath can be quantified when coupled to another spin by an asymmetry in the differential conductance.

Semiconductor qubit architectures based on direct qubit coupling suffer from wiring fan-out and crosstalk as they scale up. Here the authors propose an architecture based on conveyor-mode shuttling of electron spins that tackles these issues and validate it numerically on quantum dot spin qubits in Si/SiGe.

Excitons, quasi-particles of bound electron-hole pairs, are at the core of the optoelectronic properties of layered transition metal dichalcogenides. Here, the authors unveil the presence of interlayer excitons in bulk van der Waals semiconductors, arising from strong localization and spin-valley coupling of charge carriers.

Cooper pairs that form with finite centre-of-mass momentum are rare. Now there is evidence that this can happen below the Pauli limit in a bilayer material.

A prerequisite for using domain walls in logic or sensing devices is a thorough knowledge of the properties and precise control. Here the authors monitor the domain wall motion in curved nanowires by stroboscopic imaging and find a regime of oscillating velocity and spin structure below the Walker breakdown.

GaAs quantum dots emitting at the near-red part of the spectrum usually suffers from excess charge-noise. With a careful design of a n-i-p-diode structure hosting GaAs quantum dots, the authors demonstrate ultralow-noise behaviour and high-fidelity spin initialisation close to rubidium wavelengths.

Phonons are quanta of the vibrations of the lattice in solids. They can carry angular momentum and allow an emergent chirality. This Perspective defines various types of chiral phonon and classifies the previously observed manifestations of them.

Measuring nuclear radii with different methods (e.g. electron scattering, laser spectroscopy) often leads to inconsistencies. Carbon isotopes provide exceptional accuracies among elements in the second row, facilitating nuclear structure theory benchmarks. Here, the authors provide laser spectroscopic measurements of the nuclear charge radius of ¹³C, improving previous uncertainties.

Heralded entanglement between two independently trapped single rubidium atoms is generated over long telecom fibre links using quantum frequency conversion in an important step towards the realization of large-scale quantum network links.

Using upgraded hardware of the multiuser Cold Atom Lab (CAL) aboard the International Space Station (ISS), Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs) of two atomic isotopes are simultaneously created and used to demonstrate interspecies interactions and dual species atom interferometry in space.

The efficiency of quantum state readout is one of the factors that determine the performance of point defects in semiconductors in practical applications. Here the authors demonstrate photo-electrical readout for silicon vacancies in silicon carbide, providing an alternative to optical detection.

An important source of loss in solar cells is the recombination of the photogenerated charge carriers before they are extracted from the device. Chang et al. now show that such recombination can be reduced in organic solar cells by increasing the separation between donors and acceptors.

Hybrid quantum systems combine efficient high-quality quantum dot sources with atomic vapours that can serve as precise frequency standards or quantum memories. Here, Portalupi et al. demonstrate an optimized atomic Cs-Faraday filter working with single photons emitted from a semiconductor quantum dot.

Quantum spin Hall edge states are protected by time-reversal symmetry and are expected to disappear in a strong magnetic field. Here, the authors use microwave impedance microscopy and find, surprisingly, edge conduction in mercury telluride quantum wells that survives up to 9 T with little change.

An unidentified defect in diamond is used to demonstrate optical spin polarization and readout with high contrast.

Topological insulators are characterized by quantized topological invariants. Here, the authors report an insulator state showing spectral bands without quantized indices, yet robust boundary states in a photonic setup.

The spin state of a single electron is shown to control the transmission of single photons through a nanophotonic waveguide, thus realizing a spin-based photonic switch.

WebSpontaneous translational symmetry breaking is experimentally observed in a dipolar Bose–Einstein condensate of dysprosium atoms, whereby an instability causes a spontaneous transition from an unstructured superfluid to an ordered arrangement of droplet crystals, which is surprisingly long-lived.

NASA’s Cold Atom Lab has operated on the International Space Station since 2018 to study quantum gases and mature quantum technologies in Earth’s orbit. Here, Williams et al., report on a series of pathfinding experiments exploring the first quantum sensor using atom interferometry in space.

Point defects in solids have potential applications in quantum technologies, but the mechanisms underlying different defects’ performance are not fully established. Nagy et al. show how the wavefunction symmetry of silicon vacancies in SiC leads to promising optical and spin coherence properties.

A quantum memory based on a rubidium atom shows a record-long storage time of 100 ms with a readout efficiency of 22%. The photonic qubit is transferred between a basis with strong light–matter coupling and a basis with low decoherence.

Strong coupling between a gated semiconductor quantum dot and an optical microcavity is observed in an ultralow-loss frequency-tunable microcavity device.

Noble metals dominate the field of photosensitizers and luminophores. Now, an approach incorporating cyclometalating and carbene functions into Fe^III complexes has been shown to enable dual emission from the opposing ligand-to-metal and metal-to-ligand charge-transfer states. The latter shows an exceptionally long lifetime of 4.6 ns and is quenched by oxygen and other quenchers.

Dissipation of the sensor is a limiting factor in metrology. Here, Pfender et al. suppress this effect employing the nuclear spin of an NV centre for robust intermediate storage of classical NMR information, allowing then to record single-spin NMR spectra with 13 Hz resolution at room temperature.

Ultracold ensembles are promising sources for precision measurements when their quantum state can precisely be prepared. Here the authors achieve a quantum state engineering of Bose-Einstein condensates in space using NASA’s Cold Atom Lab aboard the International Space Station making a step forward towards space quantum sensing.

Non-reciprocal transport in a homogeneous material enables controllable current rectification, but is usually very small. Yet, artificially breaking inversion symmetry in topological insulator nanowires yields a giant magnetochiral anisotropy rectification.

Superconducting qubits are promising for quantum information processing, yet maintaining their coherence for long periods is hard. Bernon et al.characterize the coherence of cold atom superposition states trapped on superconducting atom chips and show that such long-lived ensembles are a viable alternative.

Spin defects in two-dimensional materials potentially offer unique advantages for quantum sensing in terms of sensitivity and functionality. Here, the authors demonstrate the use of spin defects in hexagonal boron nitride as sensors of magnetic field, temperature and pressure, and show that their performance is comparable or exceeds that of existing platforms.

Atom interferometers can be useful for precision measurement of fundamental constants and sensors of different type. Here the authors demonstrate a compact twin-lattice atom interferometry exploiting Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) of 87 Rb atoms.

In a radiative Auger process, an excited electron relaxes by concomitant emission of a redshifted photon and energy transfer to another electron. Measuring radiative Auger processes in a quantum dot with single-photon resolution enables determination of the energy of single-electron levels as well as their lifetimes.

To realize scalable quantum information networks, it will be important to develop techniques for storage and retrieval of light at the single photon level. Quantum interfaces between light and matter have been demonstrated, but mainly with atomic gases that involve sophisticated schemes to trap the atoms. This paper demonstrates a potentially more practical approach; coherent and reversible mapping of a light field with less than one photon per pulse onto an ensemble of ∼10⁷ atoms naturally trapped in a solid state medium. The state of the light is mapped onto collective atomic excitations on an optical transition and stored for a pre-programmed time up of to one microsecond before being retrieved again.

Defects in silicon carbide have recently been proposed as bright single-photon sources. It is now shown that they can be used as sources of single electron spins having long coherence times at room temperature.

The application of quantum dots for quantum communication is limited by the wetting layer, which is inherent to the Stranski–Krastanov growth method. Here, the authors advance this method by decoupling the quantum dot and wetting layer states, which modifies their excitonic properties.

The bicyclic azetidines, a class of potent, well-tolerated antimalarial compounds that is active against multiple stages of the Plasmodium life-cycle, has been discovered following screens against libraries of compounds reminiscent of natural products.

The lipid kinase phosphatidylinositol-4-OH kinase (PI(4)K) is identified as a target of the imidazopyrazines, a new antimalarial compound class that can inhibit several Plasmodium species at each stage of the parasite life cycle; the imidazopyrazines exert their inhibitory action by interacting with the ATP-binding pocket of PI(4)K.

Damaged erythrocytes accumulate in various pathological conditions, such as hemolytic anemia, anemia of inflammation, and sickle cell disease. In mice challenged with damaged erythorcytes, a monocyte subset migrates to the liver (but not to the spleen), and this subset differentiates into a transient macrophage population that removes the damaged erythrocytes, thus preventing organ damage.