Volume 6 Issue 7, July 2024

Condensed matter is one of the largest and most prolific areas of physics, but it looms small in the public imagination. In this Comment, historian Joseph D. Martin argues that its relationship with technology might be to blame.

Making physics more sustainable raises complex interdisciplinary questions. Answering them needs input from the humanities and social sciences.

Erica Goldman, Director of Day One and Policy Entrepreneurship at the Federation of American Scientists, discusses how scientists can go from communicating science to advocating for science and doing policy entrepreneurship.

50 years ago Roger Penrose described a set of aperiodic tilings, now named after him, that have fascinated artists, mathematicians and physicists ever since.

The understanding of fluid flows and their interaction with magnetic fields in planetary and stellar cores or accretion disks represents a challenge for geophysical and astrophysical research. This Review covers recent liquid-metal experiments on the underlying processes, such as convection, Alfvén waves, the magnetorotational instability and the dynamo effect.

A new class of septuple-layer 2D materials has been identified, with the first two members already synthesized: MoSi₂N₄ and WSi₂N₄. The possible variation of compositions and crystal structures make the new family of 2D materials very versatile and extremely attractive for research and applications.

Dipolar many-body systems provide a promising platform to study quantum phases and exotic phenomena such as dipolar liquids, dipolar solids and superfluids. This Review discusses dipolar many-body complexes and their interactions in 2D stacked transition metal dichalcogenide heterobilayers and offers insights into the unique properties of various exciton species.

This Perspective explores how the physical properties of these topological nanoscale systems, such as magnetic skyrmions and ferroelectric domain walls, can be leveraged for reservoir computing.