The inaugural PRX Perspective offers an informative, inspiring, and forward-looking view on the vibrant field of active matter.

Dosing cesium atoms on the surface of CsV${}_3$Sb${}_5$ suppresses the charge-density wave that typically coexists with its superconductivity, paving the way to understanding the interplay between these two phenomena.

A technique for timing the photoemission from a molecule shows an attosecond-scale delay of the electron wave packet from opposite ends of the molecule, thus demonstrating a new tool for exploring photoelectron dynamics.

Optical microscopy reveals that blue phases—molecularly ordered liquids—consist of filaments with vortexlike cross sections known as skyrmions, whirls in a material, with possible information-storage applications.

A method for analyzing networks can distinguish between two commonly conflated mechanisms for generating connections between nodes, thus improving understanding of how various networks form.

Density matrix exponentiation may offer a natively quantum approach to programming quantum computers. A new experiment presents the first demonstration of the protocol in a superconducting quantum processor.

The statistics of ratios between successive energy levels in certain quantum systems can reveal additional, possibly hidden, symmetries as well as distinguish between regular and chaotic behavior.

Quantum information processing can provide a significant competitive advantage for any system that must adapt to its environment, an enhancement that scales without bound.

Using superconducting circuits, an experiment demonstrates a set of universal gates for quantum computing with microwave photon qubits, which could find use in future distributed quantum networks.

In dark-matter detectors, three processes that arise from interactions with high-energy particles mimic sought-after signals, explaining observed excesses and requiring mitigation to discover low-mass dark matter.

Gradually adding metadata to a complex network causes a crossover in the ability to infer properties and make predictions about that network.

The success of recurrent neural networks owes much to gating, a multiplicative interaction that controls the flow of information. New models lead to a comprehensive theory of gating that can help engineers and neuroscientists.

By leveraging fluorescence from a single molecule, new microscopy techniques provide direct visualizations of charge oscillation and redistribution within the excited molecule.

Ultrafast pulses from an infrared laser reduce the effective repulsion between electrons in a high-temperature superconductor, showcasing a new way to manipulate electronic interactions using light.

New measurements of herbertsmithite isolate the role of spins on the vertices of its triangular kagome atomic lattice to its quantum spin-liquid ground state.

A new way to stabilize highly entangled spin-squeezed states for precision sensing is simpler to implement and exhibits an unusual sensitivity to the number of spins as well as emergent slow timescales.

A doped quantum spin-liquid candidate transitions from one regime of superconductor electron pairing to another as pressure increases, thus widening the potential hosts of unconventional superconductivity.

Evidence of the Kondo effect—a hallmark of interacting electrons—in a transition-metal oxide provides new insight into the rich electronic behavior of these materials and a new platform for studying correlated physics.

A class of observables known as partial spectral form factors can efficiently measure signatures of chaos in existing quantum simulators, opening the door to future insights into chaos and thermalization.

Complete characterization of certain quantum materials requires knowledge of the complex wave functions that describe electrons in the solid. A new measurement methodology provides deep insights into that information.

A cloud of cold atoms can coherently control the vibrations of a millimeter-scale membrane.

A new theoretical framework for classifying superconducting nodes—key observational markers of how the constituent electrons pair up—can offer deeper understanding into unconventional superconductivity.

Neutron-scattering experiments reveal two types of spin excitations and an unusual temperature effect in a transition-metal ferromagnet—direct evidence for the coexistence of and interplay between localized and itinerant electrons.

Experiments show that the unconventional superconductor CeRh${}_2$As${}_2$ may host a “quadrupole density wave”—a theorized complex ordering pattern among free electrons that has not yet been observed.

Below the critical temperature of crystallographic phase transitions, new collective vibrations—such as a structural analog to Leggett’s mode in multiband superconductors—emerge as remnants of the broken symmetry.

Experiments reveal a strong connection between room-temperature resistive switching and a temperature-dependent insulator-to-metal transition in V${}_3$O${}_5$, making it a new material for potential neuromorphic computing applications.

A mathematical model of a qubit coupled to a heat bath of oscillators provides insight into how to improve the detection of low-energy photons from quantum circuits.

A mathematical analysis of dihedral liquid crystals shows that certain defects have braiding properties analogous to those of anyons, thus offering a roadmap for creating anyonic behavior in soft-matter systems.

Unconventional antiferromagnets exhibit spin-dependent ohmic and tunneling transport effects that are crucial for information readout in spintronics devices and that, so far, were reserved exclusively to ferromagnets.

X-ray diffraction reveals a novel high-symmetry arrangement of atoms in tin selenide upon excitation with an ultrafast optical laser, a useful insight for tuning material properties with light.

Topological properties of iron chalcogenides provide a way to distinguish the ways in which their electrons form superconducting pairs, offering a possible path to classifying topological superconductors.

The maximum entropy principle has the potential to describe persistent fluid vortices but has only roughly matched experiment. A new study shows an exact match to vortex dynamics in a 2D Bose-Einstein condensate.

Quantum error correction can mitigate quantum computation errors but can be faulty itself. A new parity measurement scheme—crucial to any quantum error correction—proves to be fault tolerant.

The first successful attempt at creating Weyl and nodal-line phases in a semimetal—two purely quantum collective states of electrons—paves the way for a new generation of electronic devices.

A new way of measuring thermal transport in putative quantum spin liquids provides a clearer test for identifying this exotic state by better distinguishing signs of anyons and phonons.

After being pushed in one direction, the average momentum of a Bose-Einstein condensate is seen to slow and return to its original value.

In a laser-wakefield particle accelerator, changing the shape of the laser’s electric field provides a novel way to control the accelerated electron pulses.

Measurements of the Seebeck effect—a voltage induced by a temperature gradient—in a cuprate confirm fundamental differences in the electronic states of the enigmatic strange metal and pseudogap phases.

A mathematical analysis provides new, tighter bounds on the rate at which observables can change in an open quantum system, differentiating the influence from quantumlike and classical-like processes.

Quantum metrology methods are well suited when measuring a single parameter, but more than one remains challenging. A new tool for benchmarking the precision of multiple parameter measurements could help further development.

Two research teams have created arrays containing two different neutral atoms, a promising platform for quantum computing.

Experiments show that rapidly modulating the potential of a trapped quantum gas—a promising technique for quantum technologies—generates little heat, permitting collective behavior among the atoms.

A new framework for designing precise and dramatic shape changes in networks provides a tool for creating mechanical devices that adapt their shapes in response to a changing environment.

Computational simulations show that a “mystery” phase that arises when certain liquid-crystal films solidify arises from the relative ordering of the twofold and sixfold molecular axes of these crystals.

An analysis of neural network models with biophysically realistic descriptions of synaptic connections shows that irregular neuronal activity—observed in experiments—emerges naturally from interactions between cells.

A proposal for swapping the roles of space and time in modern quantum simulators leads to new insights into how quantum entanglement behaves on either side of the spacetime divide.

A new approach to modeling electronic properties of materials offers systematically improvable, accurate predictions while also avoiding scaling limitations that have hampered other techniques.

A new analysis uses a concrete metric to show that a quantum circuit outperforms the best classical methods when simulating the low-energy states of a quantum many-body system.

Spin pairs near a diamond impurity show an unprecedented protection against dephasing and loss of quantum information, suggesting a novel and abundant source of robust quantum bits.

Intermediate, nonreactive atom-molecule complexes last for a surprisingly long time.

A new framework for studying Hilbert space fragmentation—the emergence of disconnected regions in the abstract vector space of quantum physics—may shed light on why some quantum systems fail to thermalize.

A minimal model of cell growth and division not only explains universal scaling behavior in protein concentration fluctuations but also identifies specific cell-to-cell variations.

Random walkers (such as particles, cells, or animals) that interact attractively or repulsively with their own paths exhibit memories that aid the exploration of their domains.

A waveguiding mechanism completely removes the cladding layers that are part of today’s photonic circuits, like building highways without median strips for light.

Interactions between light and multilevel atoms in a cavity can lead to dark subradiant states, which suppress emission into the cavity—a useful behavior for many quantum technologies.

Nickel and oxygen play equally important roles in the electronic properties of low-valence nickelate superconductors, a finding that could help understanding the superconducting state of these materials.

Acoustic waves control a nuclear spin by using a single atomic impurity in diamond as an interface, demonstrating an approach for coupling mechanics to long-lived quantum memories.

Experiments provide the first characterization of how optical phonons in a 2D crystal can emit light, which could benefit applications such as midinfrared optoelectronics and thermal management.

A model-independent analysis of neutron star data, including new radius measurements and the likely formation of a black hole in the GW170817 event, provides stringent constraints on the behavior of ultradense matter.

A machine-learning agent learns how to control a quantum system—a key element of any quantum technology without any prior knowledge—by studying how a real quantum system responds to various actions.

Two distant magnets “communicate” their collective dynamics to one another via the lattice vibrations of an intermediary crystal, a demonstration of a process that is promising for some quantum information transfer.

New realistic models of twisted bilayer graphene avoid a key limitation of other models, allowing for exact simulations of hundreds of electrons over a wide range of temperatures.

The charge carriers in high-temperature superconductors pair up, despite a mutual Coulomb repulsion. A new analysis of the two-carrier wave function provides new insights into the pairing mechanism.