Communications Physics最新文献

Cellular scale search and funneling drive bacterial penetration of extreme confinements. 细胞规模搜索和漏斗驱动细菌渗透到极端的限制。

IF 5.5 1区物理与天体物理

Communications Physics Pub Date : 2026-08-14 DOI: 10.1038/s42005-026-02788-0

Pravin Subrahmaniyan, Sayak Mukhopadhyay, Romit Bishayi, Rachit Gupta, Abey J John, Jeevan Janeev, Nainika Chaubal, A Katiyar, T P Lele, Pushkar P Lele

{"title":"Cellular scale search and funneling drive bacterial penetration of extreme confinements.","authors":"Pravin Subrahmaniyan, Sayak Mukhopadhyay, Romit Bishayi, Rachit Gupta, Abey J John, Jeevan Janeev, Nainika Chaubal, A Katiyar, T P Lele, Pushkar P Lele","doi":"10.1038/s42005-026-02788-0","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s42005-026-02788-0","url":null,"abstract":"Bacterial transport into micron-scale rigid pores plays an important role in microbial competition and community assembly. As the spatial dimensions of the pore approach the width of a bacterium, steric and hydrodynamic constraints sharply limit passive entry. Here, we demonstrate that motile Escherichia coli overcome these barriers via a two-step facilitated entry mechanism: cells scan flat surfaces for target openings, then pivot into alignment with the aid of flagellar thrust to penetrate them. This process effectively transforms the openings of narrow microfluidic channels into wide, dynamic funnels, dramatically expanding the range of permissible cell orientations and lateral offsets for successful entry. The mechanism increases motile cell influx into extreme confinement by ~30-50 times relative to co-axial entry. The accompanying dimensionality reduction in target search also confers a decisive transport advantage on motile bacteria over non-motile ones. These findings establish reduced-dimensionality target search at the cellular scale, a phenomenon previously thought to be exclusive to molecular enzymes undergoing facilitated diffusion.","PeriodicalId":10540,"journal":{"name":"Communications Physics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2026-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13600348/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149036873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Exceptional points preceding and enabling spontaneous symmetry breaking. 在自发对称性破缺之前并使之成为可能的异常点。

IF 5.8 1区物理与天体物理

Communications Physics Pub Date : 2026-01-01 Epub Date: 2026-01-14 DOI: 10.1038/s42005-026-02491-0

Lewis Hill, Julius T Gohsrich, Alekhya Ghosh, Jacob Fauman, Pascal Del'Haye, Flore K Kunst

引用次数: 0

Non-Hermitian impurity problem. 非厄米杂质问题。

IF 5.5 1区物理与天体物理

Communications Physics Pub Date : 2026-01-01 Epub Date: 2026-03-14 DOI: 10.1038/s42005-026-02558-y

Emmanouil T Kokkinakis, Ioannis Komis, Konstantinos G Makris, Eleftherios N Economou

{"title":"Non-Hermitian impurity problem.","authors":"Emmanouil T Kokkinakis, Ioannis Komis, Konstantinos G Makris, Eleftherios N Economou","doi":"10.1038/s42005-026-02558-y","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s42005-026-02558-y","url":null,"abstract":"The problem of a single Hermitian impurity has long served as a cornerstone in condensed matter physics, offering fundamental insights into the mechanisms of Anderson localization. Yet, despite the increased interest in the spectral and localization properties of non-Hermitian lattices with defects, the non-Hermitian extension of the single impurity problem remains largely unexplored. In this work, we investigate the role of a single complex impurity in one-, two-, and three-dimensional infinite tight-binding lattices. Our study reveals a series of counterintuitive phenomena, including regions where localization vanishes and re-emerges as the impurity strength varies. Next, we study the corresponding finite-sized lattices, which are highly relevant to experimental realizations in readily accessible photonic platforms, revealing a variety of exotic features, such as scale-free localized states and peculiar cross-shaped localized eigenstates, whose profiles deviate from the conventional exponential localization. This work paves the way for future studies on transport phenomena in non-Hermitian disordered lattices.","PeriodicalId":10540,"journal":{"name":"Communications Physics","volume":"9 1","pages":"152"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13132722/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147811754","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Sequential buckling in fluid-filled cylindrical shells. 充液圆柱壳的顺序屈曲。

IF 5.5 1区物理与天体物理

Communications Physics Pub Date : 2026-01-01 Epub Date: 2026-03-31 DOI: 10.1038/s42005-026-02589-5

Shresht Jain, Finn Box, Martin Quinn, Chris Johnson, Draga Pihler-Puzović

{"title":"Sequential buckling in fluid-filled cylindrical shells.","authors":"Shresht Jain, Finn Box, Martin Quinn, Chris Johnson, Draga Pihler-Puzović","doi":"10.1038/s42005-026-02589-5","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s42005-026-02589-5","url":null,"abstract":"From oil drums to flying rockets, cylindrical shells are valued for their load-carrying capacity. When sufficiently compressed, they buckle, with the phenomenon taking many forms, from periodic diamond-shaped buckles to localized elephant footing. The precise physical mechanisms of buckling are different, for example, in empty shells and shells with a solid core. However, despite the abundance of liquid-filled shells in industry and everyday life, their buckling is largely overlooked. Here, we compress beverage cans and identify a sequential buckling instability that localizes circumferential rings above a critical level of compression. Combining measurements of the anisotropic material properties of the shell with modelling based on the nonlinear Swift-Hohenberg equations, we demonstrate that fluid-filled shells can support a multiplicity of localized solutions, which are induced by the nonlinear hoop stress of the shell and sequentialize through homoclinic snaking. This establishes a rare link between idealized mathematical studies of pattern formation and physical realizations of spatially-localized buckling phenomena. These findings serve as a blueprint for exploring localized patterns induced by material nonlinearities, near-incompressibility and pressurization in other physical systems.","PeriodicalId":10540,"journal":{"name":"Communications Physics","volume":"9 1","pages":"114"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13098793/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147764796","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Experimental evidence for granular shear-flow instability in the Epstein regime. Epstein状态下颗粒剪切流动不稳定性的实验证据。

IF 5.5 1区物理与天体物理

Communications Physics Pub Date : 2026-01-01 Epub Date: 2026-02-12 DOI: 10.1038/s42005-026-02531-9

Holly L Capelo, Jean-David Bodénan, Martin Jutzi, Jonas Kühn, Clément Surville, Lucio Mayer, Maria Schönbächler, Yann Alibert, Nicolas Thomas, Antoine Pommerol

引用次数: 0

Phase retrieval via gain-based photonic XY-Hamiltonian optimization. 基于增益的光子xy -哈密顿优化相位恢复。

IF 5.5 1区物理与天体物理

Communications Physics Pub Date : 2026-01-01 Epub Date: 2026-02-03 DOI: 10.1038/s42005-026-02525-7

Richard Zhipeng Wang, Guangyao Li, Silvia Gentilini, Davide Pierangeli, Marcello Calvanese Strinati, Claudio Conti, Natalia G Berloff

{"title":"Phase retrieval via gain-based photonic XY-Hamiltonian optimization.","authors":"Richard Zhipeng Wang, Guangyao Li, Silvia Gentilini, Davide Pierangeli, Marcello Calvanese Strinati, Claudio Conti, Natalia G Berloff","doi":"10.1038/s42005-026-02525-7","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s42005-026-02525-7","url":null,"abstract":"Phase-retrieval from coded diffraction patterns (CDP) is important to X-ray crystallography, diffraction tomography and astronomical imaging, yet remains a hard, non-convex inverse problem. We show that CDP recovery can be reformulated exactly as the minimization of a continuous-variable XY Hamiltonian and solved by gain-based photonic networks. The coupled-mode equations we exploit are the natural mean-field dynamics of exciton-polariton condensate lattices, coupled-laser arrays and driven photon Bose-Einstein condensates, while other hardware such as the spatial photonic Ising machine can implement the same update rule through high-speed digital feedback, preserving full optical parallelism. Numerical experiments on images, two- and three-dimensional vortices and unstructured complex data demonstrate that the gain-based solver consistently outperforms the state-of-the-art Relaxed-Reflect-Reflect (RRR) algorithm in the medium-noise regime (signal-to-noise ratios 10-40 dB) and retains this advantage as problem size scales. Because the physical platform performs the continuous optimisation, our approach promises fast, energy-efficient phase retrieval on readily available photonic hardware.","PeriodicalId":10540,"journal":{"name":"Communications Physics","volume":"9 1","pages":"85"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12984011/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147467136","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Amorphous metal oxide mixtures for high-Q integrated nonlinear photonics. 用于高q积分非线性光子学的非晶金属氧化物混合物。

IF 5.5 1区物理与天体物理

Communications Physics Pub Date : 2026-01-01 Epub Date: 2026-05-07 DOI: 10.1038/s42005-026-02665-w

Alexa R Carollo, Atasi Dan, Haixin Liu, David R Carlson, Jennifer A Black, Scott B Papp

{"title":"Amorphous metal oxide mixtures for high-Q integrated nonlinear photonics.","authors":"Alexa R Carollo, Atasi Dan, Haixin Liu, David R Carlson, Jennifer A Black, Scott B Papp","doi":"10.1038/s42005-026-02665-w","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s42005-026-02665-w","url":null,"abstract":"Choice of material is ubiquitous in integrated photonics to design device properties, whereas changing material composition is much less common. With phase matching as an additional objective, constraints in depositing and patterning thin films limit the use of integrated nonlinear photonics to only select materials. Here, we explore an amorphous metal oxide mixture of titania (TiO2) and tantala (Ta2O5) in which material composition is a tool to enhance and customize photonics properties. In particular, the inclusion of titania reduces the oxygen-defect density in a tantala film, while maintaining a comparable Kerr nonlinear index. With ion-beam sputtering at room temperature, we deposit a thick, ultralow-loss titania-tantala film, and we nanopattern it to create microresonator frequency combs. Titania-tantala microresonators offer lower loss, higher index of refraction, and reduced optical absorption and photorefractive effects. Specifically, the titania-tantala mixture enables microresonator quality factor up to 107 and a direct factor of 1.7 reduction in optical absorption. This, along with its large transparency window, high nonlinearity, and low processing temperature requirement, positions titania-tantala as a leading material for integrated nonlinear photonics. Our work demonstrates that composition in metal-oxide mixtures is a design parameter alongside the nanofabrication process and photonics design for integrated nonlinear photonics.","PeriodicalId":10540,"journal":{"name":"Communications Physics","volume":"9 1","pages":"236"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13364719/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148444805","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

The microscale organization of directed hypergraphs. 有向超图的微观组织。

IF 5.5 1区物理与天体物理

Communications Physics Pub Date : 2026-01-01 Epub Date: 2026-01-07 DOI: 10.1038/s42005-025-02472-9

Quintino Francesco Lotito, Alberto Vendramini, Alberto Montresor, Federico Battiston

{"title":"The microscale organization of directed hypergraphs.","authors":"Quintino Francesco Lotito, Alberto Vendramini, Alberto Montresor, Federico Battiston","doi":"10.1038/s42005-025-02472-9","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s42005-025-02472-9","url":null,"abstract":"Many real-world systems exhibit higher-order interactions beyond pairwise links. Such interactions are modeled by undirected hypergraphs where edges can connect any number of vertices, but without capturing the directional nature of many real-world interactions. Directed hypergraphs overcome this limitation by distinguishing source and target sets within each hyperedge, enabling analysis of directional information flow. Here, we provide a framework to characterize the structural organization of directed higher-order networks at their microscale. We extract the fingerprint of a directed hypergraph, capturing the frequency of hyperedges with a certain source and target sizes, and use this information to compute differences in higher-order connectivity patterns among real-world systems. Then, we investigate the overlap among sources and targets to reveal recurring sets of co-sending and co-receiving nodes. We define reciprocity in hypergraphs using exact, strong, and weak definitions to quantify the extent to which hyperedges are reciprocated. Finally, we extend motif analysis to identify recurring interaction patterns and extract the building blocks of directed hypergraphs. We validate our framework on empirical datasets, including Bitcoin transactions, metabolic networks, and citation data, revealing structural principles behind the organization of real-world systems.","PeriodicalId":10540,"journal":{"name":"Communications Physics","volume":"9 1","pages":"43"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12915522/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146225418","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Ultra-compact plasma photocathode in a hybrid wakefield accelerator. 混合尾流场加速器中的超紧凑等离子体光电阴极。

IF 5.5 1区物理与天体物理

Communications Physics Pub Date : 2026-01-01 Epub Date: 2026-08-17 DOI: 10.1038/s42005-026-02814-1

Patrick Ufer, Alastair Nutter, Susanne Schoebel, Thomas Heinemann, Brant Bowers, Finn-Ole Carstens, Yen-Yu Chang, Sébastien Corde, Jurjen Pieter Couperus Cabadağ, Alexander Debus, Andreas Döpp, F Moritz Foerster, Max F Gilljohann, Ahmad Fahim Habib, Stefan Karsch, Alexander Knetsch, Olena Kononenko, Maxwell LaBerge, Alberto Martinez de la Ossa, Richard Pausch, Ross Rudzinsky, Andrew Sutherland, Thomas Wilson, Arie Irman, Ulrich Schramm, Bernhard Hidding

{"title":"Ultra-compact plasma photocathode in a hybrid wakefield accelerator.","authors":"Patrick Ufer, Alastair Nutter, Susanne Schoebel, Thomas Heinemann, Brant Bowers, Finn-Ole Carstens, Yen-Yu Chang, Sébastien Corde, Jurjen Pieter Couperus Cabadağ, Alexander Debus, Andreas Döpp, F Moritz Foerster, Max F Gilljohann, Ahmad Fahim Habib, Stefan Karsch, Alexander Knetsch, Olena Kononenko, Maxwell LaBerge, Alberto Martinez de la Ossa, Richard Pausch, Ross Rudzinsky, Andrew Sutherland, Thomas Wilson, Arie Irman, Ulrich Schramm, Bernhard Hidding","doi":"10.1038/s42005-026-02814-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s42005-026-02814-1","url":null,"abstract":"Plasma-based particle accelerators, realized by driving plasma waves with either an intense laser pulse or particle beam, offer accelerating fields orders of magnitude higher than conventional accelerators. This enables sources of highly relativistic electron beams with significantly reduced spatial and economic footprints. However, optimizing beam quality and brightness remains the key challenge for demanding applications such as free-electron lasers. The plasma photocathode is a method for generating high-quality beams directly within plasma waves - but hitherto was exclusively realizable using the high-current drive beams from the kilometer-scale conventional accelerator at SLAC. Here we show implementation of a plasma photocathode in a millimeter-scale, purely plasma-based hybrid wakefield accelerator, powered by a 150 TW laser system. Its operation at high plasma densities enables exploitation of micrometer-scale source sizes and rapid acceleration through high-field gradients, which increases the potential output beam quality substantially. This high-density plasma photocathode can be implemented at state-of-the-art laser-plasma accelerators worldwide, and opens the door for high-quality beam production.","PeriodicalId":10540,"journal":{"name":"Communications Physics","volume":"9 1","pages":"273"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13481246/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148789146","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Efficient spin-orbit torque switching in a magnetic insulator via ultrathin Pt and light metal overlayers. 通过超薄铂和轻金属层实现磁绝缘体的高效自旋轨道转矩开关。

IF 5.5 1区物理与天体物理

Communications Physics Pub Date : 2026-01-01 Epub Date: 2026-02-10 DOI: 10.1038/s42005-026-02539-1

Stefano Fedel, Can O Avci

{"title":"Efficient spin-orbit torque switching in a magnetic insulator via ultrathin Pt and light metal overlayers.","authors":"Stefano Fedel, Can O Avci","doi":"10.1038/s42005-026-02539-1","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s42005-026-02539-1","url":null,"abstract":"Spin-orbit torques (SOTs) are essential for electrically controlling magnetic order in spintronic devices. Platinum (Pt) is ubiquitous for SOT generation due to its strong bulk spin Hall and interfacial Rashba-Edelstein effects. Here, we revisit this established viewpoint by investigating ultrathin Pt films interfaced with a typical magnetic insulator, terbium iron garnet. We find that few-atom-thick, nanogranular Pt exhibits exceptionally efficient SOT-induced switching that cannot be explained by these conventional mechanisms. This enhancement is attributed to the granular morphology of sputtered Pt, which activates two complementary mechanisms: enhanced spin-orbit scattering at grain boundaries, leading to an increased effective spin Hall angle, and localized current density amplification due to non-uniform conduction paths. Furthermore, adding a titanium (Ti) or manganese (Mn) overlayer to thin Pt enhances the switching efficiency, indicating an active contribution from light metals via orbital current generation. These findings uncover key SOT pathways in ultrathin heterostructures and provide insights for optimizing spin-orbitronic device performance and enabling energy-efficient magnetic switching.","PeriodicalId":10540,"journal":{"name":"Communications Physics","volume":"9 1","pages":"99"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13002463/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147497744","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0