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New simulations link unusual particle diffusion to yielding in soft jammed matter

Soft materials such as colloidal suspensions, emulsions, foams and gels often display complex and unusual behaviors compared with ordinary solids or liquids. From a mechanical point of view, for instance, they can resist deformation like solids, but they can also start to flow like liquids when a sufficiently strong external drive is applied. This transition from solid-like to liquid-like behavior, known as “yielding,” is central to the physics of soft amorphous materials and to many industrial and biological processes.

Some of these systems are also athermal: They are made of particles large enough that thermal motion plays no role in their dynamics. Their microscopic motion is therefore governed mainly by mechanical driving and interactions with neighboring particles, making their behavior even more unusual and intriguing.

A new study published in Communications Physics, establishes a connection between the mechanical yielding of soft athermal matter and a distinctive form of microscopic dynamics: Fickian yet non-Gaussian diffusion (FnGD). This phenomenon, also referred to as Brownian yet non-Gaussian diffusion, was first reported in 2009 and has since been identified in a variety of molecular systems, as well as in thermal and active soft matter, especially for particles moving in heterogeneous environments.

Dual findings reveal how to control coherence in plasmonic nanolasers

Researchers at the University of Eastern Finland have uncovered two complementary mechanisms that govern coherence in miniaturized lasers composed of metallic nanoparticle arrays incorporated into an optical gain material, also known as plasmonic lattice lasers.

In one study, published in Laser & Photonics Reviews, they showed that these nanostructures can generate phase-locked ultrafast laser pulse modulation through the synchronization of multiple lasing modes. In a second study, published in ACS Nano, they demonstrated that structures supporting lasing modes with different topologies and polarizations can sustain independent channels without mutual coherence.

Together, these findings establish a unified physical picture of coherence formation in plasmonic lasers and provide new design principles for nanoscale photonic devices.

Sliding droplets point to charging mechanism beyond mobile ions

Whether on a windowpane at home or during the industrial cleaning of computer chips: droplets sliding over solid surfaces become electrically charged. Yet the physical mechanism behind this charging remains a subject of debate. This charging is usually attributed to the exchange of charged particles (ions) at the interface between the droplet and the surface.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research have now investigated two different types of liquids—so-called polar and nonpolar liquids—in both their liquid and frozen states. The researchers discovered that there is apparently at least one additional effect behind droplet charging. The findings are published in the journal Nature Physics.

When droplets glide across surfaces, they usually become positively charged and leave a negatively charged trail on the surface. This process is known as slide electrification. The resulting electric charges influence the movement of droplets on various surfaces. On a windowpane, for example, this contributes to droplets occasionally getting stuck. During the cleaning of computer chips in industrial manufacturing processes, this can even damage sensitive components. Therefore, understanding which fundamental processes contribute to droplet charging is of great interest.

Hot electrons reveal electronic collisions may raise resistance in twisted graphene

When a material heats up, its electrical resistance often rises. The harder question is what, exactly, is getting in the way. The electrons carrying the current may be scattered by vibrations of the material’s atomic lattice, known as phonons. They may also collide with one another. Frustratingly, a conventional temperature test warms the electrons and the lattice together, so the effects arrive tangled in the same resistance measurement.

Researchers from the Institute for Functional Intelligent Materials (I-FIM) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) have now pulled those effects apart in twisted bilayer graphene, a material made by stacking two sheets of graphene at a slight angle. In a paper published in Nature Communications on Aug. 13, 2026, the researchers used terahertz radiation to warm the electrons while keeping the surrounding lattice almost unchanged. The material’s resistance climbed by several kilohms in devices twisted close to the so-called magic angle, revealing a strong electronic contribution even in regimes often associated with phonons.

“Conventional transport measurements heat the electrons and the lattice together, so their fingerprints are superimposed,” said assistant professor Denis Bandurin, a principal investigator at I-FIM, who led the study. “We wanted to separate those two temperatures and ask what the electrons themselves were doing.”

Mobile trap transports 92 antiprotons by road and stores them for over a month in world first

In March 2026, scientists succeeded in transporting antiprotons by road for the first time in a purpose-built trap loaded on a truck. The BASE collaboration, which realized this experiment at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva under the lead of Professor Dr Stefan Ulmer and Dr Christian Smorra from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU), now presents its findings and experiences from this pioneering experiment in the journal Nature. Among other things, they report that it was possible to store antiprotons in a mobile transport vessel for more than a month for the first time ever.

Comparing protons—the positively charged components of an atomic nucleus—with antiprotons—their antimatter counterparts—is one of the most promising methods for seeking differences between matter and antimatter. Any identified difference in their mass or magnetic moment could point to the potential origin of the matter-antimatter asymmetry that can be observed in the cosmos.

So-called ultra-high-vacuum Penning traps enable high-precision measurements of the protons and antiprotons confined in them. The BASE (Baryon Antibaryon Symmetry Experiment) research collaboration designed and now operates a trap of this kind—known as BASE-STEP—at CERN, or more precisely, the “Antimatter Factory” (AMF) there. The AMF is the only facility worldwide where low-energy antiprotons can be produced, stored and studied.

New method reveals how virus particles can build themselves, molecule by molecule

Oxford University researchers have captured the step-by-step assembly of individual virus-like particles, revealing how simple molecular interactions can reliably build these complex biological structures. The results were published today (September 16) in Nature.

Thinking outside the binding site: Drug molecule makes a square peg fit a round hole

A square peg doesn’t fit a round hole. But what if the peg could change the shape of the hole? A newly developed drug molecule can do something surprisingly similar when binding to its target protein, according to a University at Buffalo-led study published Tuesday (Sept. 15) in Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

The molecule, an inhibitor designed to block activity, initially clashed with a flexible loop in the structure of a protein implicated in cancer and known as p38 delta. This clash would normally hinder binding, but it instead caused the loop to change shape and wrap around the molecule, creating an unusually snug fit.

The molecule represented a 12,000-fold improvement in selectivity for p38 delta and was 110-fold more potent than previously available compounds.

Circular Rydberg atoms set three records, staying stable for 11 milliseconds

Rydberg atoms are considered promising building blocks for quantum computers and their precursors, quantum simulators. Researchers at the 5th Institute of Physics of the University of Stuttgart have achieved record values for the lifetime, size, and storage time of circular Rydberg atoms, a special form of Rydberg atom in which electrons move in a stable circular orbit around the nucleus. The findings were published in Nature Communications.

Quantum simulators replicate quantum systems for research purposes and are the precursors to future quantum computers. “One major challenge in developing high-performance quantum simulators was that Rydberg atoms are highly sensitive and remain stable for only a short time. We overcame this challenge and increased the stability of the atoms by a factor of 20,” says Professor Dr. Tilman Pfau, head of the 5th Institute of Physics.

Rydberg atoms are important building blocks for neutral-atom quantum technologies, which use neutral (i.e., uncharged) atoms that can be trapped and controlled with laser light. They are several thousand times larger than ordinary atoms and can therefore interact with one another over unusually long distances of about 5 µm. Although this is only about one-tenth the thickness of a human hair, it is a huge distance in the tiny world of atoms.

Webb measures extreme gas outflows from distant ‘dead’ galaxies

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have measured the most powerful gas outflow ever recorded from a “dead” galaxy outside our cosmic neighborhood and found that even outflows this extreme may not be enough to permanently shut down star formation.

Studying 23 massive, quiescent galaxies from roughly 11–13 billion years ago, researchers traced neutral gas being blown outward using a specific absorption signature in their light, detecting outflows in many of them. Their paper was published in Astronomy & Astrophysics on Aug. 14.

Compact optical screen could pave the way for cheaper infrared cameras

New research led by the ARC Center of Excellence for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems (TMOS) at the University of Melbourne demonstrates a new way to make invisible infrared light visible without relying on the expensive detector technology used in today’s infrared cameras.

Infrared is a type of light our eyes can’t see, but it carries information about heat and objects in the environment. It is widely used for environmental monitoring, industrial inspection, medicine and security.

However, technologies such as infrared cameras remain expensive because they rely on specialized detectors that are costly to manufacture and often require cooling.

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