When intense quantum light knocks electrons out of atoms, the statistics of the light can be transferred to the electrons. Strong-field ionization—a process in which intense laser light strips ...

The creation of modern quantum mechanics was a messy business in which many of the participants did not grasp the significance of their own discoveries. The wave nature of electrons is revealed in ...

Figure 1: Will two objects fall at the same rate in a vacuum? Galileo was the first to test this equivalence principle, and he was followed by many others, including the Apollo astronauts. Now, the ...

Particle physicists are faced with a growing list of “anomalies”—experimental results that conflict with the standard model but fail to overturn it for lack of sufficient evidence. For their study of ...

Superconductivity, magnetism, and other forms of interacting electron behavior—bilayers of graphene seem to have it all. Researchers are now using this pristine material to unlock the secrets of ...

A new state of matter involving twisting magnetic moments has been observed for the first time, possibly opening up novel applications in information technology. Theory had anticipated that chiral ...

A ring of optical fiber can be made to host phenomena that originated in the realm of high-energy physics. Yang and his colleagues achieved their feat using a platform based on fiber ring resonators, ...

The demonstration that ions can be precisely manipulated in a trap containing integrated photonics paves the way for a large-scale trapped-ion quantum processor. Figure 1: Mordini and colleagues ...

Top quarks and antiquarks have been detected in heavy-ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider, showing that all six quark flavors were present in the Universe’s first moments. The ATLAS ...

Two studies find that fundamental quantum constraints rule out a previously proposed neutrino-laser scheme. In last year’s proposal of a neutrino laser, the researchers sought to exploit the same ...

A laser-fusion scheme has achieved ignition—an important step on the road to energy production. Figure 1: Artist’s rendering of NIF’s laser beams entering through openings on either end of a hohlraum ...

Experiments suggest that hydrogen bonding explains why a wet surface can have nearly twice as much friction as a dry surface. Record bonding. Experiments have probed the friction between a silicon ...