Physical sciences articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Quantum metrology employs the properties of quantum states to further enhance the accuracy of some of the most precise measurement schemes to date. Here, a method for estimating the upper bounds to achievable precision in quantum-enhanced metrology protocols in the presence of decoherence is presented.

    • Rafał Demkowicz-Dobrzański
    • , Jan Kołodyński
    •  & Mădălin Guţă

  • Article |

    Insulators can be classified according to the kind of electronic interactions they are dominated by. Hellmannet al. used time- and angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy to determine the dominant interactions in a series of transition metal dichalcogenides.

    • S. Hellmann
    • , T. Rohwer
    •  & K. Rossnagel

  • Article |

    Recent observations have uncovered a cloud of ionized gas falling into the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. Murray-Clay and Loeb present a model that may explain these observations, in which the cloud is produced from the proto-planetary disc around a low-mass star orbiting the black hole.

    • Ruth A. Murray-Clay
    •  & Abraham Loeb

  • Article |

    Ultrathin inorganic materials hold promise for a variety of applications, including flexible electronics. This work presents a fabrication method that permits the synthesis of large and flexible freestanding layers of zinc selenide that display a high-photocurrent density.

    • Yongfu Sun
    • , Zhihu Sun
    •  & Yi Xie

  • Article |

    The spin Hall effect and its inverse allow conversion between charge and spin currents in both magnetic and nonmagnetic materials. Weiet al.observe an anomaly in the temperature dependence of the inverse spin Hall effect, which suggests that it can also be used as a sensor for very small magnetic moments.

    • D.H. Wei
    • , Y. Niimi
    •  & Y. Otani

  • Article |

    Methanol is an important industrial chemical and liquid fuel, and is usually produced by the syn-gas route from natural gas. Wuet al. develop a new catalytic process that directly converts ethylene glycol, derived from biomass or fossil fuels, to methanol in hydrogen using a Pd/Fe2O3co-precipitated catalyst.

    • Cheng-Tar Wu
    • , Kai Man Kerry Yu
    •  & Shik Chi Edman Tsang

  • Article |

    Frequency comb synthesizers are important for metrology, but they have been difficult to use as frequency rulers in the terahertz region due to their low power. Consolinoet al. phase-lock a quantum cascade laser to a free-space-propagating terahertz comb, demonstrating that they can overcome this limitation.

    • L. Consolino
    • , A. Taschin
    •  & P. De Natale

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Blind quantum computation is a protocol that permits an algorithm, its input and output to be kept secret from the owner of the computational resource doing the calculation. Morimae and Fujii propose a strategy for topologically protected fault-tolerant blind quantum computation that is robust to environmental noise.

    • Tomoyuki Morimae
    •  & Keisuke Fujii

  • Article |

    One of the obstacles to improving the efficiency of organic photovoltaic solar cells is the recombination of polaron pairs at the interface between donor and acceptor molecules. By doping cells with galvinoxyl radicals, Zhanget al. demonstrate a mechanism that overcomes this problem via a spin-flip process.

    • Ye Zhang
    • , Tek P. Basel
    •  & Z. Valy Vardeny

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Multi-partite entanglement is essential not only to understand large quantum ensembles but also to build useful quantum technologies. Armstronget al. demonstrate multimode entanglement of up to eight modes using programmable virtual networks based on linear optics that can be switched in real time.

    • Seiji Armstrong
    • , Jean-François Morizur
    •  & Hans-A. Bachor

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fibre-based technologies provide miniaturization, flexibility and the capability to access hard to reach areas. Čižmár and Dholakia exploit disorder in multimode fibres to enable a variety of imaging modalities, including bright- and dark-field microscopy and fluorescent imaging, using a single waveguide.

    • Tomáš Čižmár
    •  & Kishan Dholakia

  • Article |

    Charge stripe order has been predicted to be the ground state for the parent compounds of copper oxide superconductors. Using resonant X-ray diffraction, Schüßler-Lagenheineet al. probe the surface region of 12 percent doped La2−xSrxCuO4, and observe charge-stripe order.

    • H.-H. Wu
    • , M. Buchholz
    •  & C. Schüßler-Langeheine

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The optical transitions that occur in rare-earth-doped crystals offer promise for quantum information storage and processing. Kolesovet al.report the optical detection of a single praseodymium ion residing in a crystal host by using an excited-state absorption process to enhance its fluorescence yield.

    • R. Kolesov
    • , K. Xia
    •  & J. Wrachtrup

  • Article |

    The torque contributions exerted by spin-polarized currents on magnetic structures are not fully understood due to the difficulty in discerning their relative weight. Pollardet al. propose a novel method to directly determine the value of the competing spin transfer torques by in-situLorentz microscopy.

    • S.D. Pollard
    • , L. Huang
    •  & Y. Zhu

  • Article |

    Membrane-based technologies to separate oil–water mixtures are energy-intensive, suffer from fouling or cannot separate a wide range of mixtures. Now, a new membrane is reported that is superhydrophilic and superoleophobic, and can separate a range of oil–water mixtures with high efficiency, without an external energy source.

    • Arun K. Kota
    • , Gibum Kwon
    •  & Anish Tuteja

  • Article |

    The spectral position of Raman peaks is a useful diagnostic for determining the degree of strain and excess electronic charges present in graphene. This study demonstrates that these two contributions can be separated from each other and therefore be obtained at the same time.

    • Ji Eun Lee
    • , Gwanghyun Ahn
    •  & Sunmin Ryu

  • Article |

    Supramolecular interactions allow some small molecules to self-assemble into nanofibres and hydrogels in aqueous environments. Gaoet al.report a hydrogelator that forms fluorescent nanofibres within cells, leading to the visualization of their self-assembly at the endoplasmic reticulum.

    • Yuan Gao
    • , Junfeng Shi
    •  & Bing Xu

  • Article |

    Signal modulation is a mechanism which embeds an information-carrying signal into a carrier wave to broadcast information and is essential for high-speed communication. Zhonget al. report a flexible, transparent all-graphene modulator circuit performing quaternary modulation schemes with only two transistors.

    • Seunghyun Lee
    • , Kyunghoon Lee
    •  & Zhaohui Zhong

  • Article |

    Molybdenum disulphide offers some tantalizing advantages over graphene as a material with which to fabricate field-effect transistors. Kimet al. present a comprehensive study of field-effect transistors made from multilayer samples of MoS2and find that they can achieve high carrier mobilities.

    • Sunkook Kim
    • , Aniruddha Konar
    •  & Kinam Kim

  • Article |

    Singlet fission converts single singlet excitons into pairs of triplet excitons, and it has been proposed to give additional photocurrent to solar cells. Ehrleret al. use lead selenide nanocrystals of varying sizes to measure the triplet energy in pentacene photovoltaic cells, and achieve efficiencies approaching 5%.

    • Bruno Ehrler
    • , Brian J. Walker
    •  & Neil C. Greenham

  • Article |

    Metallic nanoantennas can be used to enhance and tailor the photoluminescence effects in small-scale devices. Huanget al.design combined nanoantenna electrodes for quantum well nanoscale light-emitting diodes, to both inject charge and control the electroluminescence properties.

    • Kevin C.Y. Huang
    • , Min-Kyo Seo
    •  & Mark L. Brongersma

  • Article |

    Understanding ultrafast demagnetisation is key to manipulating magnetic structures on fast timescales, yet laser sources limit the attainable spatial resolution. Here, a soft X-ray high harmonic source enables a high temporal and spatial resolution study of domain demagnetisation in [Co/Pt]30multilayer films.

    • Boris Vodungbo
    • , Julien Gautier
    •  & Jan Lüning

  • Article |

    Precise qubit manipulation is essential in quantum computation; however errors can occur from fluctuations in the magnetic field. Wanget al. propose a robust scheme for universal control of qubits in a semiconductor double quantum dot, cancelling leading orders of error in field gradient variation.

    • Xin Wang
    • , Lev S. Bishop
    •  & S. Das Sarma

  • Article |

    Chirality can be induced both by physical forces and by chemical induction processes. Here, a self-assembled system is reported in which chiral selection is controlled by the combined action of a chiral dopant and vortical stirring, which can act either constructively or destructively.

    • Núria Petit-Garrido
    • , Josep Claret
    •  & Francesc Sagués

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Along with its electronic characteristics, the spin properties of graphene have recently received increasing attention in the context of spintronic applications. Using microwave radiation, Maniet al. identify resistively detected spin resonance in monolayer and trilayer graphene sheets and extract the value for the Landé g-factor.

    • Ramesh G. Mani
    • , John Hankinson
    •  & Walter A. de Heer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Measuring the entanglement between down-converted photons is central to many quantum optical experiments, and is normally performed by scanning detectors stepwise across a plane. Edgaret al. use a CCD camera to measure the entire entangled light field, finding strong correlations in position and momentum.

    • M.P. Edgar
    • , D.S. Tasca
    •  & M.J. Padgett

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Optomechanical systems allow for the exploration of macroscopic behaviour at or near the quantum limit. Masselet al. use micromechanical resonators to study the hybridisation of one photonic and two phononic modes with phonon numbers down to 1.8, showing a coupling between all three degrees of freedom.

    • Francesco Massel
    • , Sung Un Cho
    •  & Mika A. Sillanpää

  • Article |

    Current-induced motion of magnetic nanostructures, such as skyrmions or domain walls, is envisioned as a promising scalable technology for information storage. Yuet al.demonstrate near-room-temperature motion of skyrmions with current densities orders of magnitude lower than previously reported in domain walls.

    • X.Z. Yu
    • , N. Kanazawa
    •  & Y. Tokura

  • Article |

    Coherent diffractive imaging exploits coherent X-ray sources to image objects from their diffraction patterns, but fails for decreasing coherence. Using partially coherent diffraction patterns, Clarket al. obtain three dimensional reconstructions of nanocrystals and determine the wavefield coherence.

    • J.N. Clark
    • , X. Huang
    •  & I.K. Robinson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Non-uniform light beams can create patterns in azo-polymer films by inducing mass transport, yet the process is not well understood. Using optical vortex beams, Ambrosioet al. observe the formation of spiral patterns that are surprisingly sensitive to the optical phase, which they explain with a new model.

    • Antonio Ambrosio
    • , Lorenzo Marrucci
    •  & Pasqualino Maddalena

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Quantum spin ice is a magnetic state of matter which can play host to monopole excitations. Using polarized neutron scattering, Changet al. show that the quantum spin ice material ytterbium titanate undergoes a Higgs transition of emergent magnetic monopoles from a Coulomb liquid to a ferromagnetic phase.

    • Lieh-Jeng Chang
    • , Shigeki Onoda
    •  & Martin Richard Lees

  • Article |

    Topologically protected states of matter are receiving widespread attention owing to their unusual electronic properties. Using numerical simulations, this study predicts that tin telluride is a physical realization of a new class of materials termed topological crystalline insulators.

    • Timothy H. Hsieh
    • , Hsin Lin
    •  & Liang Fu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Light-matter interactions are generally dominated by electric fields and electric-dipole transitions. This study, however, quantifies magnetic contributions to light emission and so exploits the strong natural magnetic-dipole transitions in lanthanide ions to measure optical-frequency magnetic fields.

    • Tim H. Taminiau
    • , Sinan Karaveli
    •  & Rashid Zia

  • Article |

    The Kondo coupling causes electron mass enhancement in rare earth materials, but not in otherd electron systems. Shimizu et al. report on the combination of frustrated spin liquid and strong Hund's coupling in a vanadium spinel as a mechanism for the microscopic origin of heavy dfermions in transition metals.

    • Yasuhiro Shimizu
    • , Hikaru Takeda
    •  & Hidenori Takagi

  • Article |

    Nacre is an organic–inorganic composite biomaterial, which consists of an ordered multilayer structure of crystalline calcium carbonate platelets separated by porous organic layers. Finnemoreet al. present a route to artificial nacre which mimics the natural layer-by-layer biosynthesis.

    • Alexander Finnemore
    • , Pedro Cunha
    •  & Ullrich Steiner

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Patchy colloids are colloidal particles with chemically or physically patterned surfaces that result in complex interactions arising between them. By means of numerical simulations, Romano and Sciortino show that suitably tailored patches can induce the crystallization of patchy colloids into specific crystal structures.

    • Flavio Romano
    •  & Francesco Sciortino

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Crystallization of noble metal atoms usually leads to the thermodynamically stable face-centred cubic phase. Sunet al. show that internal strain in silver nanoparticles leads to lattice distortion and a stable body-centred tetragonal phase.

    • Yugang Sun
    • , Yang Ren
    •  & Dean J. Miller

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The dynamics and structure of the glass transition in liquids is still debated. Using particle-level confocal microscopy, Leocmach and Tanaka investigate supercooled colloidal liquids and distinguish different scenarios for glassy slow dynamics, suggesting that local ordering may only play a minor role.

    • Mathieu Leocmach
    •  & Hajime Tanaka

  • Article |

    Controlling the behaviour of single molecules on electrode interfaces is crucial for the development of molecular spintronics. This study reports spin-polarized scanning tunnelling microscopy data of the spin-split molecular orbitals of a single-molecule magnet adsorbed on a cobalt surface.

    • Jörg Schwöbel
    • , Yingshuang Fu
    •  & Roland Wiesendanger

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