Volume 19 Issue 4, April 2023

Abbreviations Prevent Readability and dIminish infLuence (APRIL).

Tides not only affect ocean dynamics but also influence the Earth’s magnetosphere. Satellite observations have now revealed evidence of tidal effects in the Earth’s plasmasphere correlated with Moon phases.

Disturbances in the orientation of magnetization in a magnet can propagate as spin waves or magnons. A design that makes it possible to optically excite nanoscale spin waves offers a route to developing miniaturized spin-based devices.

Strongly laser-driven quantum correlated many-body systems lead to the generation of light with exotic quantum features — the quantumness of a many-body system is imprinted on the state of the emitted light.

Reconstructing the motional quantum states of massive particles has important implications for quantum information science. Motional tomography of a single atom in an optical tweezer has now been demonstrated.

Biomolecular condensates compartmentalize and concentrate cellular components without the delimitation of a lipid membrane. The protein VASP is now shown to condense, resulting in the reorganization of actin, a key component of the cell cytoskeleton.

By recovering energy from a relativistically accelerated electron beam in a multiturn configuration, a reduction of radiofrequency power has been demonstrated. This is a milestone toward more efficient and better performing accelerators.

The presence of small thermal regions in a many-body localized system could lead to its delocalization. An experiment with cold atoms now monitors the delocalization induced by the coupling of a many-body localized region with a thermal bath.

Lunar tides affect Earth’s oceans and its geomagnetic field. Multisatellite observations demonstrate that they also impact the plasmasphere.

The quantum critical behaviour of a two-impurity Kondo model variant is observed in a system of hybrid-semiconductor islands that could provide a scalable platform for solid-state quantum simulation

Adatoms on the surface of silicon can create two-dimensional superconductivity, the order parameter symmetry of which is currently not known. Now, evidence suggests it might be a topological chiral d-wave state.

Understanding the fundamental mechanisms of photocurrent generation is important for photodetector design. Now, the anisotropy of the thermal properties of Weyl semimetals is shown to generate circulating photocurrents.

In two-dimensional systems, swapping the position of two indistinguishable particles twice—braiding them—reveals their exchange statistics. Now, a Mach–Zehnder interferometer accomplishes this for anyonic fractional quantum Hall states.

Films of the correlated oxide NdNiO₃ form a metallic antiferromagnetic phase that can be identified using electrical currents, raising the prospect of applications in spintronics.

Engineering of the spin–orbit interactions in a magnetic multilayered structure makes it possible to coherently generate coherent spin waves using terahertz radiation, which could benefit the development of spintronic devices.

The concept of quasiparticles helps to describe various quantum phenomena in solids. It is now shown that certain properties of a classical system of hydrodynamically interacting particles can also be described by means of quasiparticles.

The ultrafast structural dynamics in 2D perovskites are an important part of their non-equilibrium properties. Now, their visualization reveals a light-induced reduction in the antiferro-distortion initiated by the electron–hole plasma.

Strongly driven light sources have become useful in many ways but are limited to classical emission. A quantum-optical theory now shows how non-classical states of light can be achieved from strongly-driven many-body systems, for example, non-coherent and correlated high-harmonic generation.

Dynamic and disordered media destroy the correlations that underlie many quantum measurement protocols and applications. However, coherently backscattered photons can remain partially correlated due to interference between scattering trajectories.

A tomography protocol that exploits the control offered by optical tweezers allows the reconstruction of motional states of a single trapped atom. This has implications for the study of non-classical states of massive trapped and levitated particles.

The protein VASP can undergo liquid–liquid phase separation. The interplay between the surface tension of the VASP droplet and actin polymerization controls the bundling of actin filaments, a necessary step for many cellular processes.

Biomolecular condensates play a role in cellular processes and their size affects reaction pathways. The size distribution is connected to varying contributions of nucleation and coalescence.

By combining energy recovery technology and a multi-turn accelerating scheme in a linear accelerator, high-power beams can be achieved with considerably reduced energy consumption.

Single-photon detection is fundamental in many fields, including quantum technologies. Silvia Butera captures the developments of this detector technology.