Discovery of an intrinsic non-Hermitian phase transition in a bulk condensed-matter system

September 10, 2026| Source: Science

Across regular phase transitions, systems remain in thermal equilibrium. However, when a system is driven far from equilibrium, non-Hermitian phase transitions may arise where the dynamical behavior—rather than steady properties—undergoes a qualitative change at a critical, so-called exceptional point. We experimentally realize a non-Hermitian phase transition in a bulk condensed-matter system. Optical excitation creates charge carriers in ferromagnetic europium monoxide. In a temperature-dependent interplay with the Hermitian transition to ferromagnetic order, a non-Hermitian change of the relaxation dynamics occurs, manifesting in our time-resolved reflection data as the transition from biexponential real to single-exponential complex decay. Our theory models this behavior and suggests that non-Hermitian phase transitions may generically emerge in bulk condensed matter.

Read the original source →

Global greenhouse gas cobenefits of US irrigated agriculture.

Land use and land conversion for agriculture contribute nearly a quarter of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, making the sector a key priority for emissions reductions. Crop yields are one factor that modulate agricultural land demand, with, all else equal, global land use change increasing with yield declines and decreasing with yield gains. Therefore, agricultural practices drive both direct, on-farm emissions, and indirect land use change emissions through yield effects. Here, we couple

Society & CultureSeptember 27, 2026

Cerebellar microcircuits enable robust evidence-based decisions through cortico-cerebellar coupling.

The cerebellum is increasingly implicated in perceptual decision-making, yet it remains unclear how the cerebellar cortex can support sparse evidence accumulation over behavioral time scales without assuming cortical-style dense local excitatory recurrence. We present a biologically constrained modeling framework showing that cerebellar microcircuits can implement graded accumulation and competition in the absence of such recurrence. In our model, type-II Purkinje-neuron excitability generates f

Society & CultureSeptember 25, 2026

Loss of neuronal population organization links pathology to behavior in a model of Alzheimer's disease.

Alzheimer's disease and related dementias are typically described at two levels: the accumulation of molecular pathology and the emergence of cognitive impairment. Understanding the relationship between pathology, often studied in animal models, and human cognition will require measurements spanning intermediate scales, including single neurons, neuronal populations, and distributed networks. Here we combine longitudinal measurements of behavior and neuronal population activity with fluid and hi

Society & CultureSeptember 22, 2026

Deconstruction of lysergic acid diethylamide.

Of the classic psychedelics, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) is perhaps the best-known, but its complex chemical architecture has limited synthetic investigations aimed at generating analogues with improved safety and efficacy profiles. Here, we systematically deconstruct the tetracyclic ergoline core of LSD to create 9 simplified ergoline analogues (i.e., ergologs) and evaluate them in pharmacological assays relevant to 5-HT2A, 5-HT2B, and 5-HT2C receptor function. Our work revealed the key mo

Society & CultureSeptember 15, 2026

A role for self-regulatory control in the absence of ingroup preference.

One of psychology's most ubiquitous findings is that of robust ingroup preference, an explicitly stated human preference for the groups to which we belong. The advent of implicit measures of social cognition introduced a paradoxical result: Compared to members of higher-status groups, members of lower-status groups often show no implicit ingroup preference, sometimes even showing outgroup preference, a result rarely observed on explicit measures. Prevailing theories have provided macro-level acc