Issues
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Cover Image
Cover Image
cover: As quantum computation and other quantum applications speed toward real-world uses, understanding the underlying physics is important for overcoming the technologies’ performance challenges. On page 26, Christopher Anderson and David Awschalom explore progress on and opportunities for quantum systems based on solid-state defects. And on page 34, José Aumentado, Gianluigi Catelani, and Kyle Serniak discuss one of the primary limits on superconducting qubit performance. (Image courtesy of Peter Allen.)
Readers' Forum
Physicists need to be talking about nuclear weapons
Revisiting science and colonialism
Malaysian physics in the 1970s
Correction
Search and Discovery
Uranus’s hidden polar cyclone, revealed
Microwave observations peer into the atmospheric dynamics of the oddball seventh planet.
Understanding how metal-nitride ferroelectrics switch their polarization
Transmission electron microscopy images and first-principles calculations suggest that the atoms adopt a disordered but low-energy configuration that facilitates the switching.
Issues and Events
ITER appears unstoppable despite recent setbacks
Repairs could take up to two years, but project officials believe they can perform them in parallel with the machine’s assembly. Regulatory concerns are unresolved.
Tidal turbine development ebbs and flows
The renewable energy technology can benefit remote coastal communities that want to reduce carbon emissions.
Articles
Embracing imperfection for quantum technologies
Solid-state spin qubits unlock applications in nanoscale quantum sensing and are at the forefront of creating distributed, long-distance entanglement that could enable a quantum internet.
Quasiparticle poisoning in superconducting quantum computers
Recent research has uncovered new insights into how some errors in superconducting qubits are generated and the best ways to mitigate them.
Advances in solar telescopes
Even as our understanding of the Sun has grown, many fundamental questions remain—some of which have big implications for life on Earth.
Books
Celebrating Emmy Noether
The Philosophy and Physics of Noether’s Theorems: A Centenary Volume, James Read and Nicholas J. Teh, eds.
Exploring complex systems through applications
When Things Grow Many: Complexity, Universality and Emergence in Nature, L. S. Schulman
New Products
Quick Study
Electrons see the guiding light
To accelerate electrons to multi-GeV energies with lasers, keep the bright light tight.