In loop quantum cosmology (LQC), the initial singularity is replaced by a quantum bounce, leading to a universal postbounce evolution characterized by three distinct epochs: bouncing, transition, and slow-roll inflation, before the hot big-bang universe starts. While the generic nature of inflation in the presence of an inflaton field in LQC is well established, the subsequent reheating phase—the process that thermalizes the universe and marks the beginning of the hot big bang—has remained unexplored in this quantum gravitational framework. This paper presents the first comprehensive integration of the (generalized) reheating mechanism into the LQC paradigm. Using the power law plateau potential and comparing predictions with the latest Planck 2018 and ACT 2025 data, we demonstrate that the inclusion of a reheating phase with a generic equation of state is fully consistent with the cosmological constraints. In addition, using the observational data for the amplitude and spectral index of the scalar perturbations and the tensor-to-scalar ratio, we also constrain the total number of e-folds from the bounce to the present day and find a lower bound, which is less constrained than that obtained previously from the fitting of the high-$l$ cosmic microwave background temperature power spectrum (TT), the polarization data (TT, TE, EE), and the low-$l$ polarization data (lowP). We also show that at the horizon crossing, there exist six independent algebraic equations, which uniquely determine six physical parameters, once the amplitude and the power spectral index of the pivot mode of the scalar perturbations are provided. Three of the six parameters form a complete set of the initial conditions at the horizon crossing and uniquely determine the entire evolution of the universe, including both the pre- and postbounce phases, through the modified Friedmann and Klein-Gordon equations of LQC. This is sharply in contrast to the case without considering the reheating phase.

Energy transfer and light emission behavior at subwavelength scales are governed by near-field interactions between an emitter and its surrounding refractive-index environment, which can modify emission at the nanoscale and influence the far-field response in devices such as solar cells and light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Here, we analyze light emission in a spherical structure using a classical point dipole model with emphasis on how near-field interactions affect the spontaneous emission rate, as quantified by the Purcell factor. The system is studied under two refractive-index configurations: (1) an abrupt transition from an inner sphere to the surrounding medium and (2) a gradual transition with a graded refractive index, considered for both nonabsorbing and absorbing surrounding media. Our findings show that, within the fixed-amplitude dipole considered here, even a strong increase in near-field absorption does not lead to a comparable reduction in the far-field emission. In this model, the source supplies the additional power required to compensate for such near-field losses. This distinction between near-field enhancement and radiated power to the far field is important, for example, in studies of photon recycling in semiconductors and other optoelectronic devices, where both near-field absorption and radiative emission are present. An abrupt transition in the refractive index produces repeated peaks in the Purcell factor as a function of the inner sphere radius, whereas a graded refractive index smooths these peaks. In a graded system, with increasing grading thickness, the Purcell factor converges to the refractive index of the inner sphere when the grading thickness reaches the order of the wavelength. This behavior indicates that, even when the inner sphere has a higher refractive index than the surrounding medium, the emission is not limited by the surrounding refractive index. Thus, a graded refractive-index profile provides a viable strategy for mitigating reflection losses in emission. These insights are valuable for designing photon out-coupling and photon-recycling schemes and offer a pathway for improving the performance of optoelectronic devices, including solar cells and LEDs.

The $(1+1)$-dimensional ${\mathbb{Z}}_2$ gauge theory is the simplest model that allows for quantum simulation to probe the fundamental aspects of a gauge theory coupled with dynamical fermions. To reliably benchmark such a system, it is crucial to understand the nonunitary quantum dynamics arising from effective non-Hermitian evolution and postselected monitoring protocols. This work focuses on the postselected non-Hermitian filtering dynamics of a ${\mathbb{Z}}_2$ gauge theory, where the non-Hermitian terms are associated with local and nonlocal gauge-invariant operators naturally present in the theory. We interpret the resulting dynamics as postselected filtering, where different operator sectors are coupled to loss channels with different rates. This gives a unified framework for both the local electric flux and particle-number terms and the nonlocal mesonic hopping term. Tensor network calculations are performed to probe the effect of the filtering for larger lattice sizes (up to 256-site systems). Using matrix product state calculations, the dynamics of entanglement entropy are studied as a function of the filtering rate and the coupling constant. We find that, under both local and nonlocal filtering, the late-time saturation value of the bipartite entanglement entropy remains independent of system size, providing no evidence of a measurement-induced phase transitionlike phenomenon in the postselected dynamics across the range of filtering strengths, evolution times, and system sizes considered here.

Molecular dynamics simulations of two-dimensional (2D) diplon crystals (electrons on helium films) reveal a melting crossover from first order to continuous as film thickness $d$ grows relative to lattice constant $a$. At small $d/a$, hysteresis persists at $N=40000$ alongside a strong Binder-cumulant anomaly. At large $d/a$, hysteresis vanishes and orientational correlations decay algebraically with ${\eta }_6=0.31\pm 0.04$, near the Kosterlitz-Thouless-Halperin-Nelson-Young bound of 1/4, consistent with continuous melting within the investigated system sizes and numerical resolution; disclination unbinding limits any hexatic phase to $\mathrm{\Delta }T/T_{\mathrm{m}}<0.5\%$. The diplon system thus tunes 2D melting, relevant to electrons-on-helium quantum computing.

Diffusion-based large language models have recently attracted significant interest as a promising class of nonautoregressive generative models. However, their applications to quantum many-body systems remain largely unexplored. We introduce M-Diffushadow, a multimodal diffusion language model for quantum many-body systems. In M-Diffushadow, we adopt a full attention mechanism alongside iterative decoding, which better aligns with the physical characteristics of quantum systems and thereby enables a more faithful modeling of such systems. As a multimodal approach, M-Diffushadow enables bidirectional cross-modal inference, reconstruction from partially observed multimodal records, and fully joint generation without prior measurement outcomes, aligning naturally with realistic experimental constraints where measurement access is limited or incomplete. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the framework on the one-dimensional transverse-field Ising model (TFIM), where generated data accurately reproduce ground-state energies and correlation functions across different phases. We further provide an additional numerical example on the XXZ spin chain to support the applicability of M-Diffushadow beyond the original TFIM benchmark. M-Diffushadow shows the potential to capture and analyze the complex quantum phenomena in quantum many-body systems.

We develop an algorithm to automatically design photonic gates and circuits that is based on a combination of optimization and pruning methods. It starts with a general ansatz for optical circuits with tunable parameters that are then subjected to optimization. The algorithm simplifies the final circuit by pruning its unnecessary elements following predefined criteria. We demonstrate the algorithm by producing both approximate and numerically exact implementations of the cnot gate and Deutsch-Jozsa, Grover, and Fourier transform two-qubit quantum circuits. All implementations of the different gates and circuits can be integrated into larger quantum information protocols.

We consider physics behind the FLASH modality of cancer radiation treatment, where extremely short treatment times are achieved with ultrahigh dose rates maintaining the conventional antitumor effectiveness and yet substantially reducing damage to normal tissues (sparing effect). The difference in responses between normal and tumor tissues is attributed here to the structure transformation rates related to their morphologies: ordered in the normal tissues versus disordered in tumor tissues. Correspondingly different are nonequilibrium charge densities accumulated in the two phases under ionizing radiation. In normal tissues, it is high enough to form a classical electron-hole liquid (EHL). The low EHL diffusivities slow down the generation of biologically active free radicals, hence sparing effect. To the contrary, a disordered tumor tissue renders efficient energy relaxation channels forming free radicals. We describe the FLASH thresholds for doses and dose rates.

Reflection and transmission (tunneling) reveal the wave nature of ultracold matter when scattered from an impurity and are of great importance in atomtronics technology. Using the time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation (GPE), we investigate the trapping, reflection, and transmission of a bright soliton in an ultracold-atom gas propagating through a one-dimensional waveguide with a contact defect. This allows us to analyze the dynamics of the scattering as a function of soliton velocity $v$, the strength of the contact impurity $V_0$, and the intensity of the attractive nonlinear coupling $g<0$. We evolve the GPE numerically with the contact defect modeled as a $\delta$ sequence for the Dirac delta function. We find a universal behavior in terms of $v/V_0$ and $\left|g\right|/V_0$, thus reducing the dimension of the parameter space. Our analysis identifies four distinct regions of nonlinear coupling $\left|g\right|/V_0$ that govern scattering dynamics, delimited by $\left|g\right|/V_0\approx 2$, 4, and 6. Particularly, we observe distinct parameter dependent onsets between the soliton character and highly radiative-dispersive wave packets for the scattering products. To quantify the nature of the scattering products, we use the differential and Fisher information-theoretical measures to determine the degree of localization of the scattering products. The implications of these findings are discussed in the context of both fundamental quantum mechanics and potential experimental setups.

Tailoring light beams in terms of intensity, phase, and polarization distribution has recently garnered significant attention. This work considers vector beams obtained by the natural conical diffraction phenomenon, occurring when a focused light beam travels along one of the optic axes of a biaxial crystal. If a cascade of several aligned biaxial crystals is used, in its sharpest plane this phenomenon usually gives rise to a concentric ring pattern with spatially varying linear polarization, thus covering the equator of the Poincaré sphere. Here, we propose smart arrangements of conical diffraction cascades based on Fibonacci and degenerate sequences leading to vectorial beams addressing multiple areas of the Poincaré sphere. The present approach is based on the concept of path interference and enables a clear spatial separation between regions exhibiting distinct polarization states (linear, elliptical, circular).

The high-extinction cross-polarization measurement of a paraxial laser beam results in a Hermite-Gaussian (${\text{HG}}_{11}$)-like four lobes with a dark-centered cross pattern. The azimuthally spin-separated mode pattern is understood to result from the spin-orbit interaction of light. The perfect dark region at the beam center, due to extreme cross-polarization extinction (EXE), is used here to accurately determine the on-axis residual polarization of the laser beam and, using it, the residual elliptical birefringence of optical crystals. By propagating the laser beam through uniaxial optical crystals with their optic axis cut either parallel or perpendicular to the beam propagation direction and performing the EXE measurement, we demonstrate a simple approach to precisely quantify the residual elliptical birefringence of crystals, which are otherwise assumed to be absent, to a high degree of extinction of 1 part in ${10}^{-8}$. The experimental results are interpreted using Jones-matrix-based calculations for a paraxial laser beam and upon its propagation through the optical crystals. The high sensitivity and high accuracy of the EXE technique make it well suited for measuring and characterizing anisotropy and its dispersion of monolayers, ultrathin films, and two-dimensional materials.

In an open quantum ring (OQR), an asymmetric ring-to-electrode configuration, where the upper and lower arms have unequal lengths, generates antiresonances in the junction transmission spectrum around the doubly degenerate eigenenergies of the isolated ring Hamiltonian. The asymmetric OQR also gives rise to a net circular current transmission within the ring, specifically around these doubly degenerate eigenenergies. We investigate the system-size scaling properties of the transmission within the ring and the overall junction transmission of an OQR. Ballistic transport refers to the unhindered flow of charge carriers within a conductor, where transmission is independent of the system size. Here, we find beyond-ballistic behavior, characterized by an anomalous increase of the transmission with increasing system size, near both the degenerate and nondegenerate eigenenergies of the ring Hamiltonian, depending on the ring-to-electrode configuration. This phenomenon is unique to OQRs and is associated with the quantum interference effect between two counterpropagating electronic waves with nearly equal and opposite momenta. Consequently, there is no equivalent phenomenon in open quantum junctions with linear conductors.

By systematically introducing small symmetry-violating terms into quantum gates, we examine whether such perturbations can reproduce the tomographic noise patterns observed on actual quantum hardware. This study fits into the broader context of quantum computing and quantum information processing, where realistic noise modeling remains essential for understanding device behavior. Our analytical framework mirrors Qiskit's tomography procedures and shot model, using transparent noise control. Our results show that weak generator perturbations can reproduce average deviations in Pauli transfer matrices (PTMs) with high fidelity (given the recorded hardware noise characteristics). These findings suggest that symmetry-violating generators provide a phenomenological model for relevant classes of hardware noise. This approach offers a reproducible analytic baseline for testing noise hypotheses and calibrating simplified models against experimental data. Beyond this descriptive role, the appearance of stable symmetry-violating perturbations in the fitted models supports their use as a phenomenological description. Because the analytical framework isolates these violations at the generator level, it links native-generator perturbations to reconstructed PTM signatures. As a result, the model not only reproduces experimental process tomography data but also tests which PTM structures can be reproduced and at what perturbation magnitude, providing information for calibration, simulation, and the development of symmetry-sensitive mitigation and error-correction strategies. The present analysis is restricted to single-qubit gates.

We investigate magnetotransport in a time-reversal symmetry-broken, untilted Weyl semimetal in the simultaneous presence of momentum-space Berry curvature and skyrmion-induced emergent magnetic fields ${\mathbf{B}}_{\mathrm{emer}}$. Using a semiclassical Boltzmann approach incorporating Berry-curvature corrections and intervalley scattering, we analyze the longitudinal magnetoconductivity and planar Hall conductivity in this mixed-topology regime. In the absence of ${\mathbf{B}}_{\mathrm{emer}}$, increasing intervalley scattering drives a strong sign reversal of the longitudinal magnetoconductivity. A finite ${\mathbf{B}}_{\mathrm{emer}}$ introduces an additional shift of the parabolic magnetic-field dependence, leading to a weak sign-reversal regime without altering the curvature. The coexistence of these effects naturally produces a strong-and-weak sign-reversal regime, demonstrating that intervalley scattering and real-space topology control distinct geometric features of the response. The emergent field further induces asymmetry in the angular dependence of both longitudinal and planar Hall conductivities. We show that a finite planar Hall response can arise solely from ${\mathbf{B}}_{\mathrm{emer}}$ when its direction is varied, providing a transport signature of real-space topology. Our results establish that the skyrmion-induced emergent field acts as an independent topological tuning parameter, revealing measurable consequences of the interplay between real- and momentum-space Berry curvature in Weyl systems.

On the grounds of nonadditive entropies—appropriate for complex systems—we investigate the electroencephalogram amplitudes of typical and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) children. The corresponding probability distributions are $q$-Gaussians, i.e., $\rho \left(x\right)\propto e_q^{-\beta x^2}\equiv {[1+(q-1)\beta x^2]}^{1/(1-q)}$, where $(q,\beta )$ are, respectively, the entropic index characterizing complexity and the inverse width. We show that $q$ tends to monotonically vary with $\beta$ for both typical and ADHD subjects, thus strongly suggesting a scalinglike organization of electroencephalogram amplitude statistics compatible with nearly critical or multiscale brain dynamics. Moreover, we verify that ADHD subjects have a higher complexity than the typical ones. Consistently, biomarkers for objective psychiatric diagnosis could emerge along this path.

We analyze decoherence in a one-loop Stern-Gerlach-type matter-wave interferometer for a massive nanoparticle embedded with a nitrogen-vacancy-centered nanodiamond evolving under an effective harmonic-oscillator dynamics in a magnetic-field gradient. We assume that the Stern-Gerlach interferometer is subjected to an acceleration $\vec{a}$ external to the system, which is at an angle ${\theta }_0$ with respect to the direction of the superposition. For a one-loop interferometer, we quantify dephasing from two noise channels: fluctuations in the external acceleration $\delta a\left(t\right)$ and fluctuations in the tilt angle $\delta \theta \left(t\right)$. At the level of the action, we treat these two external sources of noise as stochastic inputs, compute the resulting stochastic phase difference between the interferometer arms, and obtain the dephasing rate $\mathrm{\Gamma }$. We obtain the transfer function of the interferometer for each of the noise sources. We also show explicit results of constraints on the power spectral density of the noise sources for an interferometer that produces a superposition size of $\mathrm{\Delta }x\sim 1\mathrm{nm}$ of a nanodiamond of mass $m={10}^{-15}\mathrm{kg}$ by considering white-noise statistics and imposing a coherence target $\mathrm{\Gamma }\tau \le 1$, where $\tau \simeq 0.015\mathrm{s}$. We find $\sqrt{{\mathcal{S}}_{aa}}\lesssim \mathcal{O}\left({10}^{-11}\right)\mathrm{m}{\mathrm{s}}^{-2}{\mathrm{Hz}}^{-1/2}$ if we take the external acceleration, $a=0\mathrm{m}{\mathrm{s}}^{-2}$ and ${\theta }_0=0^{\circ }$ (along the direction of the superposition), and $\sqrt{{\mathcal{S}}_{\theta \theta }}\lesssim \mathcal{O}\left({10}^{-10}\right)\mathrm{rad}{\mathrm{Hz}}^{-1/2}$ for $a=g=9.81\mathrm{m}{\mathrm{s}}^{-2}$ and ${\theta }_0={90}^{\circ }$ (superposition direction is perpendicular to the Earth’s gravity). We have also found an operating regime where the acceleration noise can be minimized by either varying ${\theta }_0$ or $a$ for a fixed set of other experimental parameters.

Labyrinthine structures are ubiquitous in pattern-forming systems arising from a wide variety of physical, chemical, and biological processes. Yet, their characterization remains challenging due to the lack of long-range order and the resultant complicated morphologies. Here, we present an approach for characterizing labyrinthine patterns based on the identification and the correlation analysis of their topological defects. We employ advanced machine-learning-based-pattern-recognition techniques to identify the types and locations of topological defects of the local stripe ordering. Applying this method to single-crystal Bi-substituted yttrium iron garnet films, we uncover a distinct morphological transition between two zero-field labyrinthine structures. Crucially, the pair distribution functions of the topological defects reveal subtle differences between labyrinthine structures, which are not discernible from conventional global analysis. By systematically analyzing the spatial correlations and geometric properties of these defects, we provide insights into the athermal dynamics that govern the observed morphological transitions. Our work demonstrates that machine-learning-based recognition techniques enable systematic studies of rich and complex labyrinthine-type structures universal to many pattern-formation systems.

A quantum network enables the execution of advanced protocols, such as distributed quantum computing, quantum metrology, quantum cryptography, and long-distance quantum communication. Anomalous nodes pose significant threats to these protocols, as they are notoriously difficult to detect and can cause severe disruption. In this work, we introduce a quantum-walk-based protocol for detecting such anomalies. The protocol exploits the sensitivity of coherent quantum transport to local perturbations of the network Hamiltonian. In particular, anomalous on-site potentials or modified hopping amplitudes alter the quantum walker's interference pattern, thereby shifting the time-averaged arrival probability between two trusted end points and offering the detection signal. We develop the protocol for one-dimensional quantum networks, derive spectral criteria for detectability, and discuss how the resulting ideas may extend to more general graph topologies.

Local material inhomogeneities can strongly influence magnetization dynamics and macroscopic magnetic properties, yet detecting such defects from magnetic imaging data remains challenging when thermal fluctuations and experimental noise obscure static contrast. Here, we investigate defect detection in strongly fluctuating magnetization regimes, where signatures of inhomogeneities largely average out in time-resolved measurements. Using finite-temperature micromagnetic simulations with randomly distributed defects and material parameters representative of ${\mathrm{Ni}}_{80}{\mathrm{Fe}}_{20}$, we compute per-pixel temporal mean, temporal standard deviation, and latent entropy and use them as inputs for U-Net-based semantic segmentation models. We find that the most effective descriptor depends on the noise level and, importantly, that robust detection requires training data that reflect the expected noise statistics. These results provide practical guidance toward designing noise-robust defect-detection workflows in magnetic imaging.

We consider highly inaccurate measurements made on classical stochastic and quantum systems. In the quantum case, such a “weak” measurement preserves coherence between the system's alternatives. We demonstrate that in both classically and quantally the information about the scenario realized in each individual trial is lost. However, ensemble parameters such as classical path probabilities and quantum quasiprobabilities can be extracted from the obtained statistics. Both classically and quantally, causality ensures that additional postselection only redistributes individual outcomes between the system's final states. Quantum quasiprobabilities may change sign, which allows for anomalously large meter's (pointer's) reading for some final states. These, we show, result from mere “reshaping” of a broad distribution obtained earlier and provide no “experimental evidence” of quantum variables taking, albeit on rare occasions, exceptionally large or otherwise anomalous values.

We construct a series of graphene-based superconducting quantum circuits and integrate them into three-dimensional (3D) cavities. For a device exhibiting single-qubit behavior, we demonstrate flux-tunable qubit transition, with a relaxation time $T_1\approx 48\mathrm{ns}$ measured in one cooldown at a reduced qubit frequency of $3.65\mathrm{GHz}$, and a separate power-broadening-based lower bound $T_2^{*}\gtrsim 17.63\mathrm{ns}$ at the sweet spot in an earlier cooldown at $f_q\approx 8.07\mathrm{GHz}$. By coupling the device to cavities with different resonant frequencies, we access multiple qubit-cavity coupling regimes, enabling the observation of vacuum Rabi splitting and flux-dependent spectral linewidths. In a two-circuit device consisting of a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) and a single junction, power-dependent measurements reveal a two-stage dispersive shift. By flux tuning the cavity frequency at different readout powers, we attribute the first shift to the fixed qubit and the second to the SQUID qubit, indicating successful coupling between the two circuits and a single cavity mode. Our study demonstrates the flexible coupling achievable between two-dimensional (2D)-material-based flux-tunable superconducting circuits and 3D cavities, and paves the way toward constructing multicircuit 3D transmonlike devices from 2D materials.