NEWSROOM

Researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China have demonstrated skin mode tunability in photonic Floquet lattices. A potential applied at one boundary isolates a skin mode at the opposite boundary, turning it into a self-healing state that recovers its profile after disturbance. The approach enables control of non-Hermitian wave dynamics for mode routing and optical switching. Published in PhotoniX.

Researchers at MPSD and the University of Oxford have discovered that mechanical strain induces chirality in non-chiral crystals, a phenomenon they term the piezochiral effect. Tensile or compressive strain creates left- or right-handed structures that can be reversed on demand. The work establishes a general route to control chirality and is accompanied by an open materials database. Published in Nature.

Researchers at Fudan University have mapped the extreme fluid acceleration of quark–gluon plasma in heavy-ion collisions using transport model simulations. Peak proper accelerations reach several hundred MeV, concentrated at the fireball edge. Acceleration may act as a thermodynamic control parameter influencing QCD phase structure and particle spin polarization. Published in Nuclear Science and Techniques.

Researchers at the University of Tokyo fabricated optical structures based on the “Smith hat,” the aperiodic monotile that solves the Einstein problem. Laser illumination of these nanostructures produced previously unobserved chiral diffraction patterns, revealing how aperiodicity and lack of mirror symmetry can twist light. The results open new directions for quasiperiodic optical devices. Published in Nature Communications.

JGU researcher Jairo Sinova and former Mainz-based scientist Libor Šmejkal receive the 2026 EPS Europhysics Prize of the European Physical Society together with Tomas Jungwirth

Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute examined around 25 billion ultracold neutrons and found no evidence of oscillation into mirror neutrons. The high-precision experiment largely rules out the hypothesis that neutrons disappear into a mirror world, a theoretical candidate for dark matter. The results set a new standard for such searches. Published in Physical Review Letters.