Browse Physics

A phenomenon called capillary fracturing determines how fluids drain into tightly packed porous granular media.

Colliding matter waves from a Bose-Einstein condensate violate a relation called the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality, proving that such interactions must be considered quantum mechanically.

A new model for DNA-covered nanoparticles predicts their stable crystal structures and may one day help in finding the optimal building blocks for self-assembling materials.

Models show how the length of filaments in cells can be tightly controlled by balancing continual growth with shrinkage caused by molecular motors.

Theorists obtain a general theorem that predicts the number of Goldstone modes generated by spontaneous symmetry breaking in nonrelativistic systems.

The compressibility of a gas of repulsive fermions has been measured with a novel imaging technique.

A new baryon has been discovered by the CMS collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider.

A new resonant emission component from solitons that had been ignored has now been identified and studied.

Gaskets and other seals can stop leaks even if the leak-preventing surfaces have just 42 percent of their area in contact at the microscopic scale, according to computer simulations.

Raman spectroscopy probes the effects on the electronic properties of double-layer graphene when the layers are counterrotated.

Singly ionized helium-6 is an ideal atom for testing the quantum mechanical response of electrons to a decaying nucleus.

An optomechanical system in which light and matter exchange roles promises new kinds of quantum states.

A random laser formed from shaken grains can be partially manipulated by varying the amount of shaking, according to new experiments.

Majorana’s geometrical representation of quantum spin as points on a sphere offers an intuitive approach to understanding quantum systems with multiple components.

Mysterious ripples on stalactites are explained by a theory that includes the dripping water’s fluid dynamics. The results could help researchers reconstruct ancient precipitation records.

Microscopic distribution of alloy constituents explains the puzzling magnetic anisotropy in (Ga,Mn)As films.

The gravitational version of the Aharonov-Bohm effect, where particles are affected by the gravitational potential in the absence of a force, could be demonstrated in a lab-scale experiment using ultracold atoms.

A scanning probe technique helps identify and characterize defects in a carbon nanotube.

New experiments on an organic ferroelectric verify that its electric polarization is driven primarily by an electron shift, rather than the ion shift that characterizes most other ferroelectrics.