Browse Articles

Bacterial transport into micron-scale pores is crucial for microbial competition and community assembly, yet steric and hydrodynamic constraints limit passive entry. Here, the authors reveal that flagellated bacteria utilize a two-step facilitated-entry mechanism, significantly enhancing motile cell influx into confined spaces and conferring a competitive advantage over non-motile bacteria.

The search for non-trivial boundary states is central to the study of higher-order band topology. Transport studies in superconducting Josephson junctions fabricated from PdTe₂ reveal the presence of asymmetric edge states, establishing PdTe₂ as a quantum material with both higher order topology and superconductivity.

M₁₂X₁₂A₁₀ nanowires, self-assembled from M₆X₆A₆ clusters (M = Mn, Re; X = S, Se; A = Cl, Br), feature an intrinsic screw dislocation that breaks inversion symmetry. First-principles calculations reveal pronounced Rashba splitting in Re-based and strong Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interactions in Mn-based systems, enabling spintronic applications.

Low-dimensional electron gases can give rise to unusual light-matter interactions, but naturally occurring examples are rare. Here, the authors show that Raman spectroscopy reveals a unique fingerprint of the strongly anisotropic electron gas in the hyperbolic material MoOCl₂ through its interaction with lattice vibrations.

Asymmetric Fano line shapes are common in distributed resonators, but a unified model for precise parameter extraction is lacking. Here, the authors present a universal scattering model based on background channel interference, accurately fitting asymmetric spectra and enabling reliable quality-factor extraction across different resonator types.

Waves in systems with gain and loss usually pile up at a sample’s edges, and this skin effect normally changes drastically with boundary conditions. This study shows that a spatially varying imaginary potential pins localization to interior domain walls and unifies skin effects into electric and magnetic types with a sharp transition between them.

Bright, ultrashort, wavelength-tuneable X-ray pulses are fundamental for resonant imaging and spectroscopy, but are typically limited to large-scale facilities. The authors present a tabletop technique for generating bright, tuneable high-order harmonics in the extreme-ultraviolet to soft-X-ray range, enabling precise spectral control for advanced imaging and spectroscopy, with potential implications for fundamental physics and precision timekeeping.

Chiral magnets can host periodic spin textures called soliton lattices, but their formation in materials with anisotropic chirality has remained unclear. Here, the authors show that Mn_1.4PtSn supports a π-soliton ground state that condenses into a 2π soliton lattice under an out-of-plane field, revealing a generic route to chiral spin textures.

Topological-insulator-superconductor interfaces may host topological superconductivity, but the active layer is buried and difficult to probe. Here, the authors show that the thickness-dependent optical response can reveal potential signatures of two-dimensional topological superconductivity at the interface and link this response to quantum geometry.

The authors present an imaging technique that visualizes microenvironmental properties by directly localizing the three-photon annihilation of positronium. This method achieves sub-centimeter spatial resolution, yielding contrast maps consistent with prior lifetime studies.

In this study, the authors observe that a lateral asymmetric grating fabricated on top of a 2D tellurene induces a circular ratchet current in the chiral axis direction c. The developed theory demonstrates that the effect is caused by the combined action of the near-field diffraction and dc periodic electro static potential.

Understanding how high-temperature superconductivity emerges beyond high pressure is a central goal for newly discovered nickelate families. Using first-principles calculations, the authors show that applying in-plane compressive strain to bilayer nickelates alters their atomic and electronic structures, uncovering the fundamental physics of strain-induced superconductivity.

External pressure can drive a Mott insulator toward a metallic state by modulating the competition between kinetic energy and Coulomb interactions, yet the nature of this transition in cluster Mott insulators remains poorly understood. Using both molecular and atomic representations, the authors demonstrate that external pressure can similarly induce an insulator-to-metal transition in the cluster Mott insulator while preserving the intrinsic cluster character.

Ising machines (IMs) offer promising solutions for combinatorial optimization problems yet face challenges with imbalances in higher-order interactions when applied to Boolean Satisfiability (SAT) tasks. Here, the authors demonstrate that employing spin-sign-based interactions effectively mitigates these imbalances, enhancing performance and compatibility with analog hardware, thus advancing robust and scalable IM dynamics.

Trajectory reconstruction of elementary particles in future high-energy collider experiments is a highly complex combinatorial problem. A 1-Bit quantum filter, presented here, is a candidate to be applied in a Quantum-Classical workflow. Here we show the algorithm’s performance on quantum hardware and noise-free simulators.

Quasiprobability distributions, crucial in quantum optics and computation, challenge existing majorization frameworks due to their negative values and infinite domains. Here, the authors establish a novel majorization concept for such functions, offering four equivalent characterizations and extending applications to quantum resource theories, enhancing our understanding of quantum state transformations.

Entanglement entropy is a powerful tool for identifying quantum phases and phase transitions but calculating it in interacting fermionic systems remains challenging. Here, the authors introduce an efficient Monte Carlo method that reduces computational cost and reveals universal scaling across Gross-Neveu fermionic phase transitions.

Controlling the sign of mechanical interactions in passive lattices normally requires redesigning lattice connectivity. Here, rotating anisotropic cantilevers in a zigzag magnetoelastic lattice continuously tunes interaction signs, producing simultaneous wave frustration and topological edge states in a single static structure.

Vaccine prioritization must account for both direct protection and indirect transmission blocking. This study develops a non-Markovian epidemic framework that predicts final outbreak burden and dynamically allocates vaccines, showing when priority should shift between groups.

Laser-driven plasma waves could accelerate charged particles to very high energies, but trapping heavy ions in these waves is difficult. Using dense foam targets, we accelerated protons to 60 MeV, and simulations show that a moving bow wake at the laser front enabled the acceleration.