Browse Physics

Measurements with live retinal rod cells reveal their capacity for detecting the statistical properties of different light sources.

Magnetic interactions between atoms contribute to sliding friction.

The properties that characterize topological insulators, such as symmetry protected surface states, also appear in materials with quasiperiodic order.

Fluidlike folding instabilities of solid surfaces complicate the machining of metals to perfection

Numerical simulations are revealing general properties of jammed states of matter.

Experimentalists simulate the effects of spin-orbit coupling in ultracold Fermi gases, paving the way for the creation of new exotic phases of matter.

Two separate experiments have demonstrated the fast transport of trapped ions using trapping potentials that trace out the path for the ions to follow.

Drug gradients may give bacteria an evolutionary boost towards antibiotic resistance.

Two collaborations at the Tevatron have combined data from their searches for the Higgs boson and report evidence of a new particle decaying into heavy quark pairs. This could be the first experimental evidence that the same mechanism that gives mass to the carriers of the weak force also underlies the mass of quarks.

A laboratory analog of solar plasma offers a new tool in the search for the origin of coronal heating.

Experiments show that the times required to cross the barrier for the folding and unfolding of different nucleic acids are consistently about a few microseconds, despite many orders of magnitude differences in rate coefficients.

Experimental measurements with an x-ray laser test models of how ions behave in plasmas, like those found in stars and laser fusion research.

Experiments on electron transport across single molecules show evidence of enhancement of the current at higher temperatures due to suppression of destructive quantum interference.

The combination of the Josephson effect and topological order provides a testing ground for the emergence of Majorana fermions in solid-state systems.

Observations of the way light scatters from large astrophysical bodies provides independent confirmation of the standard model of cosmology.

A newly predicted state of matter is a simple theoretical example of a phase that conducts electricity but is not smoothly connected to our conventional model of metals.

Experiments demonstrate a new way to prevent light from retracing its steps, which could potentially be integrated with other components on a chip to process optical information.

A new approach to finding the electronic potentials in density-functional theory—one of the most important computational tools in condensed matter and quantum chemistry—is proposed.

The explanation for why helium doesn’t solidify at low temperatures may be more complicated than previously thought.

Radiation pressure and thermal effects come together in a new technique for manipulating particles inside a hollow-core photonic crystal fiber.