A research team wanted to better understand how the forces between particles inside a material change. They discovered that by confining one-dimensional classical spin chains inside a mirror box cavity with light they could force these magnetic particles to organize and undergo a phase transition. Their work provides the simplest exactly solvable examples showing that light can create new phase transitions with materials.

Particle accelerators are expensive. Not just to build or to run, but also to predict the outcome of measurements obtained from them.

Predicting the outcomes of particle collisions is essential to understanding the measured results seen in colliders. These predictions use quantum field theory (QFT), the language that describes particle behaviour, and they have a major problem, according to Perimeter Research Faculty member Michael Borinsky.

Rather than converging toward Western managerial models, China’s leading universities appear to combine professional and political forms of authority as they navigate global academic competition and national strategic priorities, according to a study published in the journal Studies in Higher Education.

Antibodies are among the most powerful tools in modern medicine, but their binding regions rarely exist as a single fixed shape. Instead, they can sample multiple conformations that influence how they recognize targets and how they behave as therapeutic candidates. Capturing this structural heterogeneity is an important challenge for antibody design.