"Simulations fashioned from laser light and wisps of ultracold atoms might crack the hardest problems in the physics of solids. DARPA wants them in just over a year."...

""What are the prospects for CMMP [Condensed-Matter and Materials Physics] in the early part of the 21st century?" is the focus of a new study by a National Research Council committee. The answer can be found in a 216-page report that was released last week by the Committee on CMMP 2010 of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Research Council's Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences. "CMMP faces exciting scientific and technological opportunities" the report concludes, but then warns, "there are danger signs on the horizon." "...""One of the main findings of the report is the identification of six grand challenge areas in which CMMP research is poised to have a large and enduring impact in the next decade," the report states. Individual chapters describe each of these challenges: "How do complex phenomena emerge from simple ingredients?" "How will the energy demands of future generations be met?" "What is the physics of life?" "What happens far from equilibrium and why?" "What new discoveries await us in the nanoworld?" "How will the information technology revolution be extended?" "..."The report with the committee's full findings and recommendations may be viewed at: http://www7.nationalacademies.org/bpa/CMMP2010.html "

"It is experimentally demonstrated that a quantum state, destroyed by uncontrollable natural decoherence, can be purified by using results of projective measurement and converted into a desired target pure state. The physical system is a cluster of seven dipolar-coupled nuclear spins of single-labelled 13C-benzene in liquid crystal. 13C spin plays the role of a device for measuring the protons' 'cat' state, a superposition of states with six spins up (alive) and six spins down (dead). Information about the state, stored in the 13C spin, is used to bring the protons' subsystem into the target alive state, while the excess entropy produced by decoherence is transferred to the 'measuring device', the 13C spin."

"For the last few decades, advances in high field magnet technology have been such that they allow us to generate very high magnetic fields which have never before been available. Steady fields up to 45 T have been generated at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in the USA using a hybrid magnet combining a superconducting magnet and a water-cooled magnet . With a pulsed magnet, long-pulse fields up to 70–80 T have been generated non-destructively, having a long pulse duration of the order of 10–100 ms. This has been achieved in many laboratories worldwide. Destructive techniques such as flux compression or using a single-turn coil technique can give short pulse fields up to 300–1000 T or even higher. These methods are now available for practical use in solid state physics in several laboratories in the USA, Russia, Japan and Germany. A number of new large-scale facilities have been built or are under construction at institutions around the world. These high magnetic fields have been conveniently employed for a variety of solid state experiments. High magnetic fields are a rich source of interesting and novel science. A variety of intriguing new phenomena in the wide range of condensed matter science has been discovered using these high magnetic fields."....."We believe that this is a good time to publish a special issue focusing on the recent progress of the physics of highly correlated electron systems in high magnetic fields. The readers will be introduced to this fascinating new realm of high magnetic field physics. The articles below represent the first contributions and further additions will appear.