Nature Physics December Issue

If you are unable to see the message below, click here to view.

Advertisement A*STAR Research - Highlighting the best of research at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore's premier research organization Recent Highlights Physics: Photons in witness detection program | Droplet dynamics: Drops keep falling... | Fluid mechanics: A slippery slope Download the A*STAR Research app now! TABLE OF CONTENTS December 2015 Volume 11, Issue 12 Editorial Commentary Thesis Books and Arts Research Highlights News and Views Progress Article Letters Articles Corrigendum Futures Subscribe   Facebook   RSS   Recommend to library   Twitter   Advertisement Science Masterclass The 2015 meeting between Nobel laureates and young researchers in Lindau, Germany cast a spotlight on super-resolution microscopy, as discussed in depth in this Nature Outlook, as well as fields as diverse as memory formation and the Higgs bosons.  Access the Outlook free online.  Produced with support from: Mars, Incorporated     Editorial Top Forge ahead   p981 doi:10.1038/nphys3598 South Korea's march from fast follower to first mover in science and technology. Commentary Top Happy birthday BEC   pp982 - 983 Wolfgang Ketterle doi:10.1038/nphys3589 Bose-Einstein condensation in atomic gases was first observed in 1995. As we look back at the past 20 years of this thriving field, it's clear that there is much to celebrate. Thesis Top Non-optimal optimization   p984 Mark Buchanan doi:10.1038/nphys3586 Books and Arts Top Installation: Bird, plane, Aerocene   pp985 - 986 Abigail Klopper doi:10.1038/nphys3588 Research Highlights Top Precision measurements: Charge conservation | Self-assembly: Cubist architecture | Stellar astrophysics: Planet meets star | Topological insulators: Makes your head spin | Planetary science: Martian dune dynamics News and Views Top Ultracold atoms: Boltzmann avenged   p988 David Guery-Odelin and Emmanuel Trizac doi:10.1038/nphys3522 An experiment with cold atoms confined in an isotropic three-dimensional harmonic potential confirms the long-predicted non-damping oscillations of the breathing mode. See also: Letter by Lobser et al. Valleytronics: Could use a break   pp989 - 990 Francois Amet and Gleb Finkelstein doi:10.1038/nphys3587 Electric fields can controllably break the inversion symmetry of bilayer graphene, which can be harnessed to generate pure valley currents. See also: Letter by Shimazaki et al. | Letter by Sui et al. Thermoelectric materials: The anharmonicity blacksmith   pp990 - 991 Joseph P. Heremans doi:10.1038/nphys3542 Anharmonicity is a property of lattice vibrations governing how they interact and how well they conduct heat. Experiments on tin selenide, the most efficient thermoelectric material known, now provide a link between anharmonicity and electronic orbitals. See also: Article by Li et al. Biophysics: The expressionist movement   pp992 - 993 Andre Estevez-Torres doi:10.1038/nphys3496 Cells exploit chemical waves to map the space around them, but their dynamics is difficult to replicate. Using a set of genes to generate a travelling front of protein concentration outside a living cell constitutes a remarkable achievement. See also: Letter by Tayar et al. Nuclear astrophysics: Deep-sea diving for stellar debris   pp993 - 994 Friedrich-Karl Thielemann doi:10.1038/nphys3591 Deep-sea sediments reveal the production sites of the heaviest chemical elements in the Universe to be neutron star mergers - rare events that eject large amounts of mass - and not core-collapse supernovae. See also: Letter by Hotokezaka et al. Leo Philip Kadanoff: Maestro who connected physics on multiple scales   p995 Nigel Goldenfeld doi:10.1038/nphys3590 Ten years of Nature Physics: Reconnecting with two good friends   pp996 - 997 Ellen Zweibel doi:10.1038/nphys3575 Two observational studies published in Nature Physics provided early evidence for the mechanisms of magnetic reconnection in three dimensions and in a turbulent medium. Statistical physics: 90 years of the Ising model   p997 Andrea Taroni doi:10.1038/nphys3595 Progress Article Top Quantum transport in ultracold atoms   pp998 - 1004 Chih-Chun Chien, Sebastiano Peotta and Massimiliano Di Ventra doi:10.1038/nphys3531 Ultracold-atom experiments enable more flexibility in the study of quantum transport phenomena that are otherwise difficult to probe in solid-state systems. A survey of recent advances highlights the challenges and opportunities of this approach. Letters Top Three-stage decoherence dynamics of an electron spin qubit in an optically active quantum dot   pp1005 - 1008 Alexander Bechtold, Dominik Rauch, Fuxiang Li, Tobias Simmet, Per-Lennart Ardelt et al. doi:10.1038/nphys3470 The mechanisms of decoherence in solid-state spin qubits subject to low magnetic fields turn out to be more complex than previously expected as an additional fast relaxation stage has now been identified. Observation of a persistent non-equilibrium state in cold atoms   pp1009 - 1012 D. S. Lobser, A. E. S. Barentine, E. A. Cornell and H. J. Lewandowski doi:10.1038/nphys3491 A cold-atom experiment confirms Boltzmann/'s special case predicted more than a century ago: the /`breathe/' mode of a gas in a perfectly isotropic three-dimensional harmonic potential is never damped by elastic collisions. See also: News and Views by Guery-Odelin & Trizac Coherent long-range magnetic bound states in a superconductor   pp1013 - 1016 Gerbold C. Menard, Sebastien Guissart, Christophe Brun, Stephane Pons, Vasily S. Stolyarov et al. doi:10.1038/nphys3508 Magnetic atoms embedded in a niobium selenide superconductor are shown to give rise to a long-range coherent bound state extending tens of nanometres. Parity lifetime of bound states in a proximitized semiconductor nanowire   pp1017 - 1021 A. P. Higginbotham, S. M. Albrecht, G. Kirsanskas, W. Chang, F. Kuemmeth et al. doi:10.1038/nphys3461 Bound states in semiconductor-superconductor hybrids are shown to have parity lifetimes of over 10 milliseconds, suggesting that they could provide a platform for topological quantum computing. Long-distance transport of magnon spin information in a magnetic insulator at room temperature   pp1022 - 1026 L. J. Cornelissen, J. Liu, R. A. Duine, J. Ben Youssef and B. J. van Wees doi:10.1038/nphys3465 Although electron motion is prohibited in magnetic insulators, the electron spin can be transported by magnons. Such magnons, generated and detected using all-electrical methods, are now shown to travel micrometre distances at room temperature. Gate-tunable topological valley transport in bilayer graphene   pp1027 - 1031 Mengqiao Sui, Guorui Chen, Liguo Ma, Wen-Yu Shan, Dai Tian et al. doi:10.1038/nphys3485 Bilayer graphene can host topological currents that are robust against defects and are associated with the electron valleys. It is now shown that electric fields can tune this topological valley transport over long distances at room temperature. See also: Letter by Shimazaki et al. | News and Views by Amet & Finkelstein Generation and detection of pure valley current by electrically induced Berry curvature in bilayer graphene   pp1032 - 1036 Y. Shimazaki, M. Yamamoto, I. V. Borzenets, K. Watanabe, T. Taniguchi et al. doi:10.1038/nphys3551 Bilayer graphene can host topological currents that are robust against defects and are associated with the electron valleys. It is now shown that electric fields can tune this topological valley transport over long distances at room temperature. See also: Letter by Sui et al. | News and Views by Amet & Finkelstein Propagating gene expression fronts in a one-dimensional coupled system of artificial cells   pp1037 - 1041 Alexandra M. Tayar, Eyal Karzbrun, Vincent Noireaux and Roy H. Bar-Ziv doi:10.1038/nphys3469 When multicellular systems need to communicate over long distances, and signalling molecules are too slow to diffuse, travelling fronts of these molecules emerge-a phenomenon now reconstituted in a coupled array of artificial cells. See also: News and Views by Estevez-Torres Short-lived 244Pu points to compact binary mergers as sites for heavy r-process nucleosynthesis   p1042 Kenta Hotokezaka, Tsvi Piran and Michael Paul doi:10.1038/nphys3574 Stars could produce our heavy elements through a rapid neutron-capture process during a supernova or merger of binary stars, but which is it? A study of 244Pu reveals that a rare event with a high yield is more likely, favouring mergers. See also: News and Views by Thielemann Articles Top Probing the quantum vacuum with an artificial atom in front of a mirror   pp1045 - 1049 I.-C. Hoi, A. F. Kockum, L. Tornberg, A. Pourkabirian, G. Johansson et al. doi:10.1038/nphys3484 Using a superconducting circuit analogue of an atom in front of a mirror it is possible to shape the modes of the quantum vacuum and hide the atom from the vacuum fluctuations. Entanglement pre-thermalization in a one-dimensional Bose gas   pp1050 - 1056 Eriko Kaminishi, Takashi Mori, Tatsuhiko N. Ikeda and Masahito Ueda doi:10.1038/nphys3478 A theoretical study uncovers the role of entanglement in the relaxation dynamics of a one-dimensional Bose gas following coherent splitting, a relevant scenario for recent ultracold atom experiments. Resonant tunnelling between the chiral Landau states of twisted graphene lattices   pp1057 - 1062 M. T. Greenaway, E. E. Vdovin, A. Mishchenko, O. Makarovsky, A. Patane et al. doi:10.1038/nphys3507 For small twist angles, electrons can resonantly tunnel between graphene layers in a van der Waals heterostructure. It is now shown that the tunnelling not only preserves energy and momentum, but also the chirality of electronic states. Orbitally driven giant phonon anharmonicity in SnSe   pp1063 - 1069 C. W. Li, J. Hong, A. F. May, D. Bansal, S. Chi et al. doi:10.1038/nphys3492 Tin selenide is at present the best thermoelectric conversion material. Neutron scattering results and ab initio simulations show that the large phonon scattering is due to the development of a lattice instability driven by orbital interactions. See also: News and Views by Heremans Ferroelectricity in the multiferroic hexagonal manganites   pp1070 - 1073 Martin Lilienblum, Thomas Lottermoser, Sebastian Manz, Sverre M. Selbach, Andres Cano et al. doi:10.1038/nphys3468 A combination of nonlinear optical experiments, piezoresponse force microscopy and Monte Carlo simulations resolves the correlation between polarization, topology and temperature for the hexagonal manganite YMnO3-a persistent ferroelectrics puzzle. A density-independent rigidity transition in biological tissues   pp1074 - 1079 Dapeng Bi, J. H. Lopez, J. M. Schwarz and M. Lisa Manning doi:10.1038/nphys3471 Cells moving in a tissue undergo a rigidity transition resembling that of active particles jamming at a critical density-but the tissue density stays constant. A new type of rigidity transition implicates the physical properties of the cells. Corrigendum Top Corrigendum: Imaging molecular potentials using ultrahigh-resolution resonant photoemission   p1079 Catalin Miron, Christophe Nicolas, Oksana Travnikova, Paul Morin, Yuping Sun et al. doi:10.1038/nphys3577 Futures Top Water worlds   p1080 Norman Spinrad doi:10.1038/nphys3606 Fermi resolved. Top Natureevents is a fully searchable, multi-disciplinary database designed to maximise exposure for events organisers. The contents of the Natureevents Directory are now live. The digital version is available here. Find the latest scientific conferences, courses, meetings and symposia on natureevents.com. For event advertising opportunities across the Nature Publishing Group portfolio please contact natureevents@nature.com More Nature Events You have been sent this Table of Contents Alert because you have opted in to receive it. You can change or discontinue your e-mail alerts at any time, by modifying your preferences on your nature.com account at: www.nature.com/myaccount (You will need to log in to be recognised as a nature.com registrant) For further technical assistance, please contact our registration department For print subscription enquiries, please contact our subscription department For other enquiries, please contact our customer feedback department Nature Publishing Group | One New York Plaza, Suite 4500 | New York | NY 10004-1562 | USA Nature Publishing Group's worldwide offices: London - Paris - Munich - New Delhi - Tokyo - Melbourne San Diego - San Francisco - Washington - New York - Boston Macmillan Publishers Limited is a company incorporated in England and Wales under company number 785998 and whose registered office is located at Brunel Road, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. © 2015 Nature Publishing Group, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited. All Rights Reserved.