Browse Physics

Nanoscale crystals pass through narrow constrictions in carbon nanotubes by shuttling atoms from their back end to their front end, according to new experiments.

Firing projectiles at plates of glass or plastic shows that the number of resulting cracks is an indicator of the impact velocity and of material properties.

To make graphene behave more like a semiconductor, researchers propose vibrating the lattice in a specific rotating pattern.

Atom interferometry may enable ways to measure gravitational waves without the destructive influence of laser fluctuations.

Experiments probe how specific base-pair sequences within a DNA strand behave when the molecule is twisted.

A model describing the brain as a system close to a phase transition can capture the global dynamics of brain activity observed in fMRI experiments.

A modified form of Lagrange’s equations of motion will make it easier to account for energy loss in a mechanical system.

Experiments demonstrate the possibility of engineering stable, nanometer-scale magnetic structures in thin magnetic films by firing laser pulses at them.

Dynamical systems that maximize their future possibilities behave in surprisingly “intelligent” ways.

A magnetometer based on laser measurements of atomic energy levels can detect a magnetic field one hundred billion times smaller than the Earth’s.

A new standard for measuring the relative size of a quantum object could help in comparing different experiments at the quantum-classical boundary.

The composition of cells in tissues can be found using statistical fluctuations of cell types.

At the APS March meeting in Baltimore, William Phillips of the Joint Quantum Institute described the many ways that trapped atoms are being used to understand the physics of solids.

A study of the thermoelectric properties of the doped insulator, strontium titanate, shows that it superconducts with the lowest charge density ever observed.

Placing a water molecule inside a 60-carbon-atom cage creates a structure that can be guided by an electric field.

Shaken or stirred? Suspended beads stir themselves when shaken in a new experiment using magnetic levitation.

The so-far disappointingly short lifetime of spin-polarized currents in graphene may be the result of magnetic defects.

Germanium-76 is a rare example of a nucleus with a triaxial symmetry in its ground state.

Removing the charged layer around a particle allows detailed measurements of its motion in an electric field.

The LiHe van der Waals molecule has been produced and spectroscopically detected and its binding energy found to only suffice to stabilize a single rotationless vibrational state.