{"title":"Altermagnetic photonic crystals","authors":"Jianfeng Chen, Yidong Zheng, Zhi-Yuan Li, Cheng-Wei Qiu","doi":"10.1038/s41567-026-03405-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-026-03405-1","url":null,"abstract":"Altermagnetism is a magnetic phase that combines zero net magnetization with time-reversal-symmetry breaking and momentum-dependent spin splitting, but it has so far been confined to fermionic systems. Here we report a photonic platform capturing the symmetry features of altermagnetism. Using a magnetophotonic crystal with staggered magnetic bias and controlled structural variation, we observe momentum-dependent polarization splitting, spin–momentum locking and vanishing net magnetization in the photonic band structure. By solving Maxwell’s equations, we show that the momentum-dependent splitting is symmetry governed, rather than a consequence of the momentum-independent gyrotropic effect. These results demonstrate a photonic analogue of altermagnetic behaviour and provide a route towards spin-functional photonic devices without net magnetization.","PeriodicalId":19100,"journal":{"name":"Nature Physics","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":19.6,"publicationDate":"2026-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148693458","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nature PhysicsPub Date : 2026-07-31DOI: 10.1038/s41567-026-03380-7
Jeremy Levy, Chandralekha Singh, Jack Diab, Haiyue Huang, Aswini Ramankutty, Mamun Sarker
{"title":"What physics papers don’t tell you","authors":"Jeremy Levy, Chandralekha Singh, Jack Diab, Haiyue Huang, Aswini Ramankutty, Mamun Sarker","doi":"10.1038/s41567-026-03380-7","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41567-026-03380-7","url":null,"abstract":"Conventional physics publications systematically omit the failed experiments and informal collaborations that contribute to physicists’ knowledge. We propose an inverse seminar format to narrow the gap between published and actual physics.","PeriodicalId":19100,"journal":{"name":"Nature Physics","volume":"22 8","pages":"1170-1172"},"PeriodicalIF":18.0,"publicationDate":"2026-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148704560","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nature PhysicsPub Date : 2026-07-31DOI: 10.1038/s41567-026-03394-1
Peng Luo, Zixuan Lin, Yixing Cao, Kritika Jha, Sarah E. Wolf, Shivajee Govind, Juliana I. Bonilla-Lugo, Richard B. Stephens, Zahra Fakhraai
{"title":"Quantification of elastic barriers to rearrangement in molecular glasses","authors":"Peng Luo, Zixuan Lin, Yixing Cao, Kritika Jha, Sarah E. Wolf, Shivajee Govind, Juliana I. Bonilla-Lugo, Richard B. Stephens, Zahra Fakhraai","doi":"10.1038/s41567-026-03394-1","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41567-026-03394-1","url":null,"abstract":"The glass transition is marked by a rapid increase in the barriers for molecular rearrangement, and this leads to the vitrification of supercooled liquids. Recent theories suggested that at low temperature, molecular rearrangements generate elastic stresses that dissipate through the surrounding material and add a non-local contribution to relaxation barriers. However, it is difficult to experimentally measure this elastic contribution. Here we measure the elastic barriers by investigating the transformation of vapour-deposited stable glasses, influenced by distant boundaries of varying elasticity. Rigid boundaries preserve bulk super-Arrhenius dynamics in which both relaxation times and barriers increase on supercooling. By contrast, distant soft boundaries facilitate fast Arrhenius relaxations—even below the glass transition temperature—by allowing faraway stress dissipation. As such, the constant soft-substrate barrier is attributed to local interactions, whereas the differences between barriers on soft and rigid boundaries arise from non-local elastic barriers. Our results show that the rapid dynamical slowdown and vitrification of supercooled liquids are governed by the emergence and growth of elastic barriers, and provide a direct experimental basis for elasticity-based descriptions of the glass transition. Elastic stresses are believed to play a role in the vitrification process in glasses, but measuring them is challenging. Imposing elastic boundary conditions is now shown to provide a way to probe elastic effects within glassy samples.","PeriodicalId":19100,"journal":{"name":"Nature Physics","volume":"22 10","pages":"1633-1638"},"PeriodicalIF":18.0,"publicationDate":"2026-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.comhttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-026-03394-1.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148693433","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}
Nature PhysicsPub Date : 2026-07-30DOI: 10.1038/s41567-026-03384-3
Franklin J. Vivanco
{"title":"Rotation through sound","authors":"Franklin J. Vivanco","doi":"10.1038/s41567-026-03384-3","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41567-026-03384-3","url":null,"abstract":"Detecting quantized circulation in strongly correlated matter is challenging. Now it has been shown that phononic interferometry can reveal the quantized angular momentum of a strongly interacting rotating superfluid.","PeriodicalId":19100,"journal":{"name":"Nature Physics","volume":"22 8","pages":"1174-1175"},"PeriodicalIF":18.0,"publicationDate":"2026-07-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148704561","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nature PhysicsPub Date : 2026-07-30DOI: 10.1038/s41567-026-03321-4
{"title":"Long-lived phonons from resonators with reduced surface interactions","authors":"","doi":"10.1038/s41567-026-03321-4","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41567-026-03321-4","url":null,"abstract":"Using Brillouin-based phonon spectroscopy, surface interactions have been identified as the dominant source of phonon decoherence in crystalline media. When these interactions are reduced through chemical mechanical polishing, high-frequency bulk acoustic wave oscillators can be realized with record Q-factors and coherence times, suitable for use as long-lived solid-state quantum memories.","PeriodicalId":19100,"journal":{"name":"Nature Physics","volume":"22 9","pages":"1384-1385"},"PeriodicalIF":18.0,"publicationDate":"2026-07-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148910078","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nature PhysicsPub Date : 2026-07-29DOI: 10.1038/s41567-026-03355-8
Yolanda Shea, Peter Pilewskie, Rajendra Bhatt
{"title":"Standards in space","authors":"Yolanda Shea, Peter Pilewskie, Rajendra Bhatt","doi":"10.1038/s41567-026-03355-8","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41567-026-03355-8","url":null,"abstract":"Separating long-term trends in the Earth system from instrumental drift is challenging. Yolanda Shea, Peter Pilewskie, and Rajendra Bhatt describe the push for gold-standard references in space.","PeriodicalId":19100,"journal":{"name":"Nature Physics","volume":"22 7","pages":"1167-1167"},"PeriodicalIF":18.0,"publicationDate":"2026-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148612823","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nature PhysicsPub Date : 2026-07-28DOI: 10.1038/s41567-026-03393-2
Michael E. Ziebel
{"title":"Superconductivity with a squeeze","authors":"Michael E. Ziebel","doi":"10.1038/s41567-026-03393-2","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41567-026-03393-2","url":null,"abstract":"Heavy-fermion superconductivity has now been observed under pressure in the van der Waals metal CeSiI. This material will provide a new platform for studying the interplay of dimensionality and Kondo physics.","PeriodicalId":19100,"journal":{"name":"Nature Physics","volume":"22 9","pages":"1371-1372"},"PeriodicalIF":18.0,"publicationDate":"2026-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148910079","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nature PhysicsPub Date : 2026-07-28DOI: 10.1038/s41567-026-03377-2
E. S. Tikhonov, V. S. Khrapai
{"title":"Conductance measurements cannot distinguish crossed Andreev reflection from elastic co-tunnelling in normal–superconductor–normal junctions","authors":"E. S. Tikhonov, V. S. Khrapai","doi":"10.1038/s41567-026-03377-2","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41567-026-03377-2","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":19100,"journal":{"name":"Nature Physics","volume":"22 8","pages":"1198-1199"},"PeriodicalIF":18.0,"publicationDate":"2026-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148612668","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}