Nature PhysicsPub Date : 2026-08-28DOI: 10.1038/s41567-026-03414-0
Andrew Leifer, Thierry Emonet, Andrea Liu, Sidney Robert Nagel
{"title":"American science needs an executive branch constrained by checks and balances","authors":"Andrew Leifer, Thierry Emonet, Andrea Liu, Sidney Robert Nagel","doi":"10.1038/s41567-026-03414-0","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41567-026-03414-0","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":19100,"journal":{"name":"Nature Physics","volume":"22 9","pages":"1364-1365"},"PeriodicalIF":18.0,"publicationDate":"2026-08-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148910093","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 : 2026-08-27DOI: 10.1038/s41567-026-03406-0
Baolong Zhang, Ruihuan Duan, Sobhan Subhra Mishra, Sambhu Jana, Jonghyeon Kim, Thomas Tan Caiwei, Yi Ji Tan, Wenhao Wang, Pang Teng Chen Ietro, Zheng Liu, Ranjan Singh
{"title":"Electric-field control of coherent ferron oscillations","authors":"Baolong Zhang, Ruihuan Duan, Sobhan Subhra Mishra, Sambhu Jana, Jonghyeon Kim, Thomas Tan Caiwei, Yi Ji Tan, Wenhao Wang, Pang Teng Chen Ietro, Zheng Liu, Ranjan Singh","doi":"10.1038/s41567-026-03406-0","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41567-026-03406-0","url":null,"abstract":"Ferrons are collective excitations of electric polarization in ferroelectrics and constitute the electric analogue of magnons. Although recent studies have inferred ferron behaviour through electrical transport measurements, their non-equilibrium dynamics, coherent radiation and direct electrical control remain unexplored. Here we demonstrate real-time far-field generation, detection and non-volatile electric-field control of coherent ferron oscillations in layered ferroelectric NbOX2 (where X = I, Br or Cl). By utilizing the coupling between soft phonons and ferroelectric order, we observed multiple giant ferronic modes that generated intense narrowband terahertz radiation with emission efficiencies up to five orders of magnitude higher per unit thickness than state-of-the-art semiconductor terahertz emitters. We further demonstrate direct non-volatile electric-field switching of ferron oscillations, in which the switched state persists even after the electric field is removed, thereby establishing dynamic control of coherent ferronic states. The observation of electrically tunable ferron modes enables both light- and field-driven control of quantum order, with direct implications for ultrafast photonics, coherent on-chip terahertz technologies and next-generation wireless communication systems. Understanding the non-equilibrium dynamics of ferrons—collective excitations of electric polarization—is crucial for device applications. Now electric-field control of coherent ferron oscillations is demonstrated in a layered ferroelectric.","PeriodicalId":19100,"journal":{"name":"Nature Physics","volume":"22 10","pages":"1624-1632"},"PeriodicalIF":18.0,"publicationDate":"2026-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148853581","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 : 2026-08-24DOI: 10.1038/s41567-026-03426-w
Ashley Rich, Ziqi Lu, Alessandro De Simone, Lucas Garcia, Jacqueline Janssen, Kazunori Ando, Jianhong Ou, Massimo Vergassola, Kenneth D. Poss, Stefano Di Talia
{"title":"Decaying and expanding Erk gradients process memory of skeletal size during zebrafish fin regeneration","authors":"Ashley Rich, Ziqi Lu, Alessandro De Simone, Lucas Garcia, Jacqueline Janssen, Kazunori Ando, Jianhong Ou, Massimo Vergassola, Kenneth D. Poss, Stefano Di Talia","doi":"10.1038/s41567-026-03426-w","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-026-03426-w","url":null,"abstract":"Amputated salamander limbs or fish fins precisely regenerate to their pre-injury size, providing a paradigm for positional memory. Although this phenomenon has been appreciated for centuries, how position-dependent cues control tissue growth remains unresolved. Here we quantify extracellular signal-regulated kinase (Erk) activity in whole populations of osteoblasts during zebrafish fin regeneration. We show that Erk activity scales with the amount of amputated tissue, predicts the likelihood of osteoblast cycling and predicts the size of regenerated skeletal structures. We find that osteoblast Erk activity depends on fibroblast growth factor receptor signalling and organizes into millimetre-long gradients spanning from the distal tip to the amputation site. Mathematical modelling suggests gradients are established by acute, distally restricted deposition of ligand, whose activity is long-lived and transported by tissue growth. This mechanism is supported by the observed scaling of the expression of essential epidermal ligand Fgf20a with extents of amputation. Our work provides evidence that the localized, scaled expression of pro-regenerative ligands instructs long-range signalling and cycling to control size in regenerating appendages.","PeriodicalId":19100,"journal":{"name":"Nature Physics","volume":"38 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":19.6,"publicationDate":"2026-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148853582","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 : 2026-08-24DOI: 10.1038/s41567-026-03365-6
Ryuichi Ohta
{"title":"Sound protection for electron spins","authors":"Ryuichi Ohta","doi":"10.1038/s41567-026-03365-6","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41567-026-03365-6","url":null,"abstract":"Solid state electron spins have important practical advantages for quantum technologies, but fluctuations in their host material cause decoherence. Now, it has been shown that sound waves can extend the coherence of diamond silicon vacancy spins.","PeriodicalId":19100,"journal":{"name":"Nature Physics","volume":"22 9","pages":"1373-1374"},"PeriodicalIF":18.0,"publicationDate":"2026-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148910082","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 : 2026-08-24DOI: 10.1038/s41567-026-03425-x
Laurens J. M. Westenberg, Lumen Eek, Jort D. Verbakel, Kevin Vonk, Stijn J. H. Borggreve, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Paul de Boeij, Rodrigo Arouca, Cristiane Morais Smith, Pantelis Bampoulis
{"title":"Real-space imaging of moiré-confined excitons in twisted bilayer MoS2","authors":"Laurens J. M. Westenberg, Lumen Eek, Jort D. Verbakel, Kevin Vonk, Stijn J. H. Borggreve, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Paul de Boeij, Rodrigo Arouca, Cristiane Morais Smith, Pantelis Bampoulis","doi":"10.1038/s41567-026-03425-x","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41567-026-03425-x","url":null,"abstract":"Twisted two-dimensional semiconductors generate a moiré landscape that confines excitons—bound electron–hole pairs—into programmable lattices, and this offers opportunities for efficient light sources, sensing and information processing. However, the real-space imaging of confined excitonic species within a moiré unit cell remains challenging; existing claims are mainly inferred from spatially averaged far-field signals that are intrinsically insufficient to resolve nanometre-scale variations. Here we resolve the site-selective confinement of moiré excitons in a 2° twisted bilayer MoS2 with nanometre resolution using room-temperature photocurrent atomic force microscopy. We show that direct and indirect excitons localize at different stacking registries of the moiré, with contrast governed by alignment between site-selective generation and confinement minima. A Wannier-based effective moiré-exciton model captures the measured energies and the moiré-induced localization of the exciton wavefunction. These species-specific, unit-cell-resolved measurements constrain the microscopic models of moiré excitons, provide benchmarks for excitonic order and establish a device-compatible route to engineering excitonic lattices in van der Waals heterostructures. Moiré excitons have been widely observed in twisted two-dimensional semiconductors but have not been directly imaged at room temperature. Now, this is achieved using photocurrent atomic force microscopy.","PeriodicalId":19100,"journal":{"name":"Nature Physics","volume":"22 10","pages":"1594-1599"},"PeriodicalIF":18.0,"publicationDate":"2026-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148853583","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 : 2026-08-21DOI: 10.1038/s41567-026-03428-8
{"title":"Antidots measure anyonic charge in graphene","authors":"","doi":"10.1038/s41567-026-03428-8","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41567-026-03428-8","url":null,"abstract":"Anyons are fractionally charged quasiparticles of the quantum Hall effect, and could one day power topological quantum computers. Trapping and measuring anyons remains difficult, but quasiparticle charges have now been measured using a gate-defined antidot in bilayer graphene. For hole-conjugate states, the parity of downstream integer edge modes sets the observed charge.","PeriodicalId":19100,"journal":{"name":"Nature Physics","volume":"22 10","pages":"1541-1542"},"PeriodicalIF":18.0,"publicationDate":"2026-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149177711","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 : 2026-08-21DOI: 10.1038/s41567-026-03410-4
Hai-En Tsai
{"title":"Electrons surf farther on plasma waves","authors":"Hai-En Tsai","doi":"10.1038/s41567-026-03410-4","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41567-026-03410-4","url":null,"abstract":"The energy gain of laser wakefield accelerators is tied to the distance over which electrons are accelerated. Now this limitation can be overcome with flying-focus laser pulses, allowing electrons to surf the plasma wave over longer distances.","PeriodicalId":19100,"journal":{"name":"Nature Physics","volume":"22 9","pages":"1377-1378"},"PeriodicalIF":18.0,"publicationDate":"2026-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148910084","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 : 2026-08-18DOI: 10.1038/s41567-026-03378-1
A. Be’er, E. D. Neimand, Y. Agarwal, D. Corbett, D. J. G. Pearce, G. Ariel, V. Yashunsky
{"title":"Irreversibility and symmetry breaking in the creation and annihilation of defects in active living matter","authors":"A. Be’er, E. D. Neimand, Y. Agarwal, D. Corbett, D. J. G. Pearce, G. Ariel, V. Yashunsky","doi":"10.1038/s41567-026-03378-1","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41567-026-03378-1","url":null,"abstract":"Active living matter continuously creates and annihilates topological defects with underlying dynamics that are not fully understood. Here we show that the process of defect creation and annihilation involves spontaneous spatial mirror-symmetry breaking. We investigate these dynamics in two active living systems—swarming bacteria and human bronchial epithelial cells. Despite their distinct evolutionary origins, biological functions and physical scales, both systems exhibit half-integer defects, consistent with the nematic phase. However, in contrast to active nematic theory, we find that the creation and annihilation of defect pairs break mirror symmetry with respect to the line connecting the defects. We propose that this phenomenon stems from a dualism between nematic structural organization and generated polar forces, which are intrinsic to living systems. Furthermore, the estimation of entropy production reveals that creation and annihilation are not reverse processes. Our findings emphasize the role of defect-mediated dynamics in non-equilibrium biological systems as a major source of entropy production and may challenge conventional nematic models. Creation and annihilation of topological defects are prevalent in active materials. It is now shown that in living systems with nematic order, polar propulsion breaks mirror symmetry during these processes.","PeriodicalId":19100,"journal":{"name":"Nature Physics","volume":"22 10","pages":"1663-1671"},"PeriodicalIF":18.0,"publicationDate":"2026-08-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148769258","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 : 2026-08-14DOI: 10.1038/s41567-026-03412-2
Mario Di Luca, Emily Hajigeorgiou, Zekang Zhou, Tevž Lotrič, Tengyan Feng, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Steven H. Simon, Mitali Banerjee
{"title":"Quantum Hall antidot as a fractional coulombmeter","authors":"Mario Di Luca, Emily Hajigeorgiou, Zekang Zhou, Tevž Lotrič, Tengyan Feng, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Steven H. Simon, Mitali Banerjee","doi":"10.1038/s41567-026-03412-2","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41567-026-03412-2","url":null,"abstract":"The ability to detect the fractionally charged quasiparticles that arise in the fractional quantum Hall regime is of fundamental importance for probing their quantum properties. Although electronic interferometers have successfully probed their statistical properties, interpreting the results is often complicated by bulk–edge interactions. Antidots—tunable hills in the potential landscape in the device—are particularly valuable in this context, as they overcome the geometric limitations of conventional interferometer designs and act as controlled impurities. Here we demonstrate a method for extracting the charge of quasiparticles as they tunnel through an antidot. To accomplish this, we employ a gate-defined bilayer-graphene antidot operating in the Coulomb-dominated regime to study quasiparticle tunnelling in both integer and fractional quantum Hall states and we report direct measurements of fractional charge. Our derived theoretical model indicates that the differences in the measured charges may be attributed to variations in edge re-equilibration arising from a different parity of downstream integer edge modes. The simplicity and tunability of this design open a pathway to extending antidot-based charge measurements to other van der Waals materials and establishing antidots as a broadly applicable platform for studying topological materials. A transport technique that allows the measurement of the effective charge of fractional quantum Hall states as they tunnel through a controlled impurity is demonstrated.","PeriodicalId":19100,"journal":{"name":"Nature Physics","volume":"22 10","pages":"1587-1593"},"PeriodicalIF":18.0,"publicationDate":"2026-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.comhttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-026-03412-2.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148728842","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 : 2026-08-13DOI: 10.1038/s41567-026-03413-1
Marius Millot, Federica Coppari, Amy Lazicki, Yong-Jae Kim, Otto L. Landen, Vladimir A. Smalyuk, Peter M. Celliers, Jon H. Eggert
{"title":"Diamond melting in shock compression experiments at 1 TPa pressures","authors":"Marius Millot, Federica Coppari, Amy Lazicki, Yong-Jae Kim, Otto L. Landen, Vladimir A. Smalyuk, Peter M. Celliers, Jon H. Eggert","doi":"10.1038/s41567-026-03413-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-026-03413-1","url":null,"abstract":"Carbon’s abundance, strong covalent bonding and relevance to inertial confinement fusion and planetary science have motivated extensive investigation of its phase diagram at terapascal pressures. However, the melting curve and the existence of phases beyond diamond remain uncertain. Here we resolve the discrepancy between experiments and theoretical simulations of the melting temperature of diamond and show that the diamond structure persists up to 1 TPa. This contradicts a previous report of a transition to the BC8 phase, which density functional theory predicts to be the thermodynamically stable phase of carbon above pressures around 1 TPa. We combine optical velocimetry, pyrometry and X-ray diffraction to probe microcrystalline diamond under nanosecond shock compression. Shock temperature and reflectivity measurements reveal changes in thermodynamic and optical properties, along with a decrease in X-ray diffraction intensity. These results provide evidence for shock-induced melting with a slight decrease in melting temperature with increasing pressure near 7,300 K. Our work delivers atomic-scale benchmarks for quantum simulations of condensed matter at extreme conditions, with implications for planetary interiors. Our improved understanding of diamond melting might also be relevant for achieving higher energy gain in laser-driven nuclear fusion.","PeriodicalId":19100,"journal":{"name":"Nature Physics","volume":"42 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":19.6,"publicationDate":"2026-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148728843","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}