The physics desk
Physics from the quantum to the cosmos: particle physics, quantum computing, astrophysics, cosmology and the discoveries that change what is possible.
A Nature study from German teams films light-driven quantum jumps that skip the space in between, like an elevator going from floor 3 to floor 20.
The ACS Nano prediction for MnBi₂Te₄ points to ultrafast switching without the heat of electrical circuits, but no experiment has tested it yet.
Chinese astronomers say a sunlike star in a 73.5-year orbit tugs on a pulsar and its white dwarf partner, making the pulsar look like it is spinning down faster than it is.
Croatian physicists built an optical lattice out of laser interference in atomic gas and showed a beam can hold its shape inside it.
By decoding waves in light already collected at Hawaii's Mauna Loa Solar Observatory, researchers produced global estimates of the corona's field strength and direction, a step toward forecasting solar eruptions.
Bristol physicists used sound waves to collide two tiny polystyrene balls over and over, finding the charge grows like a capacitor filling up and then levels off.
Columbia and Chilean researchers rewrote Einstein's equations to look like plasma physics and found a process that moves energy from gravitational fields into matter.
German researchers cut the time of a single-qubit operation to a fraction of the usual speed by suppressing an overlooked error that appears when microwave pulses get strong.
Delft physicists found they could control the magnetism of an atom's nucleus with a scanning tunneling microscope, something they thought should not work.
A lithium niobate converter shifts 393 nm photons from trapped calcium ions to 1550 nm telecom light with 28.8% efficiency and very little noise, a step toward larger quantum networks.
The white dwarf J1328-1450 may preview the fate of our solar system: two concentric rings of vaporized planetary rubble, kept apart by two bodies that outlived their star.
A team from Sheffield, Newcastle and Bengaluru reports that spicules are warped three-dimensional sheets, with swirls wider than Great Britain driving their spin.
Sensors and nonlinear math show the hoop's orbit and wobble are coupled, not controlled separately, with the ankle and foot playing a bigger role than expected.
General Atomics physicists showed 'helicon' waves can be absorbed deep in the DIII-D tokamak's plasma and push electrons, a goal pursued since the 1980s.
Photoemission measurements of iron-doped niobium disulfide explain why the material's resistance switches with low current, a property prized for low-power spintronic memory.
A 12-hour microscope study in Nature Physics overturns the assumption that fibers form inside dense protein droplets, and shows fibers and glass are rival ways for droplets to age.
Japanese researchers used nitrogen-vacancy centers as atomic-scale sensors to measure several components of the stress around a dislocation for the first time.
Fuzhou University physicists watched a microwave superposition recover its coherence with one qubit nearby, then lose it for good when the environment grew to eight.
Japanese researchers used a stacked-foil filter to let a single camera see signals that normally require a beam blocker, opening a sharper view of laser-heated matter.
Harvard-Smithsonian astronomers modeled a cube 1.5 billion light-years wide, capturing helium reionization for the first time, to give JWST and Roman a map of what to expect.
Japanese physicists directly saw flux quanta created by absorbed light, a route to photon counters that skip the slow thermal wait of today's best detectors.
Nearby starburst galaxies with the fastest winds leaked the least ionizing light, suggesting young stars did the work before the first supernovae went off.
Singapore and Chinese physicists found that Smith-Purcell radiation is inherently chiral, and measured a record handedness of 0.87 in Nature Communications.
The films beat cubic boron nitride and conduct electricity more than 100 million times better than any earlier report at comparable bandgaps, according to a Nature paper.
A São Paulo and Beijing team says an 'Andreev qubit' produces an oscillating current that reveals its own state, removing the need for auxiliary qubits in quantum readout.
Alternating layers of barium and strontium titanate form regular stripes of electric-dipole whirlpools, a step toward putting exotic ferroelectric states on chip-industry silicon.
Quantum interference pins electrons in place inside Pd5AlI2 even though they have endless paths to escape, a trick previously seen only with light.
INRS researchers briefly switched off superconductivity with a laser and watched the pseudogap appear in its place, challenging the idea that it is a stepping stone to superconductivity.
Measurements across 13 silicate glasses show thermal conductivity tracks the speed of sound through the material, giving designers a shortcut for heat-managing glass in electronics.
A theoretical study finds a narrow loophole in the laws of thermodynamics that might let a rapidly rotating black hole divide into two smaller ones, leaving a possible gamma-ray signature.