Figure 1: Moore and his colleagues measured the momentum kick imparted by a single gas molecule on an optically levitated silica nanoparticle (center) [2]. Thanks to the isolation offered by setups ...

Conduction electrons typically whiz through crystals in broad energy bands. However, some arrangements of atoms conceivably engender so much destructive interference among the electrons’ wave packets ...

Zhou and his colleagues considered a well-established technique known as reconstruction of attosecond beating by interference of two-photon transitions (RABBIT). In RABBIT, a train of ...

Pairing superconducting qubits with microwave cavities could reduce the hardware requirements for quantum simulations of fundamental physics. Performing simulations of quantum systems on an ordinary ...

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 ...

Researchers observe atoms trapped in an optical lattice mimicking particles created in a strong electric field. In physics, you can get something from nothing. In a strong electric field, electrons ...

A new technique for generating solid fibers from a liquid jet is easier to model—and thus easier to control—than past methods. Transformed by light. These seven photos show a liquid streaming downward ...

A pattern of surface waves bestowed with fivefold symmetry hosts topological structures. Soon after quasicrystals made their debut in 1984, physicists realized that the ordered, nonrepeating ...

Researchers have proposed that long-range molecular dipole correlations alter water’s electrical properties when it’s confined in a gap a few nanometers wide. In 2018, researchers confined a film of ...

The shape of gold nanostructures changes depending on how they are imaged. This electron-microscope image shows a nanosized cube wrapped in a gold layer. The tiny package is the result of reactions ...