Research articles

Rare-earth elements find a broad range of applications due to their unique magnetic, catalytic, and phosphorescent properties, but their efficient extraction poses challenges. Using Dysprosium as a representative example, this study introduces a framework incorporating tailored magnetic separation, revealing enhanced extraction kinetics through solutomagnetic convection with potential environmental implications.

The hybrid behavior of strongly interacting light and matter in cavities can be engineered by tailoring the cavity parameters, but simulating such systems is hard due to the complexity of the matter and quantum light. In this work, the authors derive an effective ab-initio theory reducing the light description to a single degree of freedom while ensuring finite light-matter coupling even in macroscopic systems.

In confined environments, such as soil and the gut, flow constrains the spatial organization of bacterial communities, impacting their ecological success. Here, the authors reveal that in a community of mixed motile and non-motile Escherichia coli in channels under Poiseuille flow, the motile bacteria induce segregation of non-motile cells, leading to asymmetric biofilm formation, with implications for understanding bacterial colonization dynamics.

Spin orbit torque (SOT) can be used as a tool for magnetisation switching in ferromagnetic materials and can be used to control the properties of devices such as magnetoresistive random-access memory. Here, the authors experimentally report an all-oxide heterostructure device that achieve room temperature SOT-induced magnetisation switching. Using DFT calculations they identify the Rashba-Edelstein effect as playing an important role in the observed properties.

Symmetry-protected topological phases are special states of matter that rely on symmetries to exhibit unique, robust properties. This work explores how these properties can reappear even when the symmetry seems broken at small scales, using a model system where quantum fluctuations effectively “restore" the symmetry and revive topological behavior.

Carbon exhibits several known allotropes and the amorphous equivalents exhibit an even wider range of structural variations that can be difficult to identify due to their lack of crystallinity. Here, the authors report large-scale machine-learned molecular dynamics simulations that maps the hidden topological orders of amorphous carbon as a function of temperature and density.

Finding molecular ground state energies variationally is a key subroutine in many chemistry applications on quantum computers. The authors introduce ExcitationSolve, a gradient-free optimizer that unlocks quantum-aware techniques exploiting analytic energy properties for excitation operators, enabling fast convergence to physically plausible solutions.

Polar metals uniquely integrate ferroelectricity with metallic conductivity. In the topological phase of Pb1-xSnxTe epilayers, terahertz spectroscopy reveals that bismuth doping provides a powerful route to tune both carrier density and the ferroelectric transition.

Collective migration of epithelial sheets is strongly modulated by physical confinement. This study shows that adhesive micropillars impose a critical length scale below which coordinated motion is lost, giving rise to slower, more diffusive, and spatially uncorrelated migration.

Two-dimensional chiral superfluids couple to the geometry of the background substrate. As a consequence of this coupling, the authors demonstrate that thermal fluctuations of the substrate shape lead to a softening of vortex interactions, connecting the onset of the superfluid transition to the mechanical stability of the surface.

Quantum machine learning models often struggle with scalability and efficient training. Here, the authors introduce a semi-quantum restricted Boltzmann machine, which requires fewer hidden units than its classical counterpart, offering a practical path for early quantum generative modeling.

Energy-resolved optical experiments of ultrafast magnetization dynamics indicate a complex interplay between the spin and band structure dynamics and the magneto-optical signal. In this paper, the authors demonstrate that the spin dynamics are intrinsically energy-dependent and that the magneto-optical response is determined by nonequilibrium hole dynamics on early timescales.

This work concerns the study of bosonic code-state engineering for fault-tolerant continuous-variable quantum computing. The authors present an analytical framework for decomposing quantum circuits into primitive operations, which are called quantum lattice gates, exploiting the full nonlinearity of the Josephson-junction potential in superconducting circuits.

Pattern formation in miscible fluid systems is typically driven by reaction-diffusion processes or thermal gradients. This study demonstrates pattern formation in an isothermal miscible fluid system composed of protein and sugar solutions, resulting from the interplay of Marangoni effects, evaporation, and airflow.

The authors introduce a computational paradigm termed “entropy computing” to solve combinatorial optimization problems using an open quantum system, where engineered dissipations are employed to stabilize the system state to the ground state of a desired Hamiltonian and show that it can be realized on photonic hardware. Finally, they experimentally show its strong performance on max-cut related problems.

Quantum dots are tiny electronic devices that can isolate a fixed number of particles, serving as building blocks for quantum technologies. The authors find that in a chain of four dots, electrons can tunnel directly between the ends without occupying the middle dots, even when the system lacks symmetry, enabling robust long-range transport.

Efficient free-space-to-fiber coupling of cylindrical vector beams (CVBs) is crucial for high-capacity optical communications, yet remains constrained by low coupling efficiency and poor dynamic adaptability in conventional methods. The authors address this issue by introducing a twisted moiré transformation approach that develops ring radius adjustable perfect CVBs using paired meta-devices

Thermalization in quantum many-body systems can unfold across space in surprising ways. The authors reveal nonequilibrium regimes in a driven-dissipative quantum chain, including a spatially emergent prethermal domain and a nonthermal condensate destabilized by quantum fluctuations, with broad implications for driven quantum platforms

Since superconductivity has been observed in bilayer La3Ni2O7 and trilayer La4Ni3O10 under high pressure, there have been efforts to expand the high-Tc nickelate family by synthesising new materials. In this study, the authors stabilised a Sr alternative and co-substituted in YySr3-yNi2-xAlxO7-δ. They found that different dopants significantly affect the physical properties- substituting Sr at Y site greatly enhances conductivity, while substituting Al at the Ni site reduces it.

Kagome materials have become a popular platform to investigate a range of competing quantum phases, such as the interplay between superconductivity and charge density waves (CDW). Here, the authors use x-ray diffraction, scanning tunneling microscopy and resonant elastic x-ray scattering to investigate the evolution of CDW ordering as a function of temperature in canted antiferromagnetic kagome FeGe. They find for post-annealed samples that the long-range CDW orders persist even as the structural modulations are suppressed although observations are highly dependent on the sample growth condition.