Physicists with the U.S. Department of Energy have discovered a new phase of matter—and, with apologies to George R. R. Martin, it's something of "a song of ice and fire." The new phase comes in the ...

Phase transitions, shifts between different states of matter, are widely explored physical phenomena. So far, these transitions have primarily been studied in three-dimensional (3D) and ...

The melting of materials seems like a simple phenomenon. However, when their thickness is reduced to just a few atoms, established rules waver. In this two-dimensional mode, new states emerge between ...

An exotic state of matter has been found lurking within a previous exotic state that was discovered in a magnetic compound last decade. Now, they have found the opposite: a half-ice, half-fire phase, ...

Physicists have taken a gemstone better known for engagement rings and turned it into a laboratory for one of the strangest ideas in modern physics, a phase of matter that repeats in time instead of ...

Quantum phase transitions and topological phases constitute a vibrant domain within condensed matter physics. Unlike classical transitions driven by thermal fluctuations, quantum phase transitions ...

In 1935, Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger, two of the most prominent physicists of the day, got into a dispute over the nature of reality. Einstein had done the math and knew that the universe ...

Attempts to understand quantum phase transitions in open systems usually rely on real‑time Lindbladian evolution, which tracks how a quantum state changes as it relaxes toward a steady state. This ...

The neurons of our brain may not exist in a single state of matter, new research suggests. As detailed in a study, published in the journal Communications Physics, researchers have found signs that ...