## Viewpoints

### Trapped Ions Make Impeccable Qubits

November 24, 2014

Qubits based on trapped ions can be prepared and manipulated with record-breaking accuracy, offering a promising scalable platform for quantum computing.

### Time Trials for Fundamental Constants

November 17, 2014

Single-ion clocks yield new limits on how much the proton-to-electron mass ratio and the fine structure constant change over time.

### New Light Shed on Dark Photons

November 10, 2014

A search for a photonlike particle that could be related to dark matter has come up empty, putting new constraints on models that imagine a dark form of electromagnetism.

### Pushing on a Nonlinear Material

November 3, 2014

Experiments on a model “soil” give new insight into the elasticity of nonlinear materials.

## Synopses

### Observing the Precession of a Single Spin-5/2 Ion

November 25, 2014

Researchers observed the precession of an individual spin-5/2 ion in a quantum dot, a system that could store multiple bits for quantum computing.

### Beer Forms Sudsy Surprise

November 20, 2014

An investigation of the pub prank “beer tapping” provides a better understanding of gas-driven eruptions that occur in carbonated beverages, as well as in volcanic environments.

### Magnetoresistance That Doesn’t Stop

November 19, 2014

A near perfect balance between electrons and holes explains why ${\text{WTe}}_{2}$’s huge magnetoresistence doesn’t saturate at high fields, reaching 13 million percent at 60 tesla.

### Quantum Search Gets an Update

November 18, 2014

A well-known quantum search method, called Grover’s algorithm, has been modified to handle a wider variety of search problems.

## Focus

### Measuring the Spread of Ideas through the Physical Review

November 21, 2014

An automated analysis of the words in 117 years worth of the Physical Review selects scientific memes—significant ideas that emerge and spread through the literature.

### Using Plasma to Manipulate Light

November 14, 2014

The polarization of an intense laser beam can theoretically be controlled by mixing it with a second beam in a plasma.

## Notes from the Editors

### Blue Was the Hardest Color

October 13, 2014

The winners of the 2014 Physics Nobel Prize solved several major engineering problems over a period of decades before finally producing a useful blue LED.