The Goos-Hänchen (GH) shift becomes giant in resonant photonic structures, making it promising for refractive index sensors with ultimate sensitivities. Here we provide a complete formalism to analytically describe the GH shift and its associated sensitivity around the critical coupling regime in photonic structures. This analytical framework quantitatively connects physical parameters such as the quality factor, the angular dispersion, the beam size, and the phase singularity to the GH shift. We numerically confirm this theory in two practical designs: a surface plasmon resonance sensor and a Bloch surface wave (BSW) metasurface sensor. Coupling our theory with numerical simulations, we design a BSW metasurface whose GH sensitivity $({10}^{13}\mu \mathrm{m}/\text{RIU})$ is more than 5 orders of magnitude higher than the current state of the art. We also reveal that the main practical limitation to reach ultimate GH sensitivities is the beam size. However, taking into account realistic beam sizes and introducing engineering dispersion for the metasurface, we calculate limits of detection for GH sensors as low as ${10}^{-13}\text{RIU}$ that still surpass current sensors. These results open the way for alternative sensing applications needing high sensitivity and low limit of detection.

Majorana zero modes (MZMs) are non-Abelian quasiparticles with the potential to serve as topological qubits for fault-tolerant quantum computing due to their ability to encode quantum information nonlocally. In multi-Majorana systems configured into two separated subsystems, nontrivial quantum correlations persist, but the presence of trivial Andreev bound states can obscure this nonlocality if MZM preparation fails. To address this, we propose a protocol using an entanglement witness based solely on parity measurements to distinguish the nonlocal characteristics of MZM systems. Our framework is motivated by experimentally relevant parity-measurement architectures and can be implemented in principle, although a full feasibility analysis is left for future work. In a six-site system, the protocol achieves a detection probability of approximately 18% for a matched parity sector. Finally, we present preliminary numerical evidence that the witness retains partial detection power under quasiparticle poisoning, while acknowledging that other imperfections such as intersubsystem overlap remain a serious limitation.

In this work, we investigate the Kitaev honeycomb model employing the recently developed Clifford circuits augmented matrix product states (CAMPS) method. While the model in the gapped phase is known to reduce to the toric code model—whose ground state is entirely constructible from Clifford circuits—we demonstrate that the very different gapless quantum spin liquid (QSL) phase can also be significantly disentangled with Clifford circuits. Specifically, CAMPS simulations reveal that approximately two-thirds of the entanglement entropy in the isotropic point arises from Clifford-circuit contributions, enabling dramatically more efficient computations compared to conventional matrix product state (MPS) methods. Crucially, this finding implies that the Kitaev QSL state retains significant “Clifford-simulatable” structure, even in the gapless phase with non-Abelian anyon excitations when time reversal symmetry is broken. This property not only enhances classical simulation efficiency significantly but also suggests substantial resource reduction for preparing such states on quantum devices. As an application, we leverage CAMPS to study the Kitaev-Heisenberg model and determine the most accurate phase boundary between the antiferromagnetic phase and the Kitaev QSL phase in the model. Our results highlight how Clifford circuits can effectively disentangle the intricate entanglement of Kitaev QSLs, opening avenues for efficiently simulating related and similar strongly correlated models.

In recent years thermoelectric materials have gained attention for electricity generation from waste heat and in cooling applications. However, the efficiency of these materials is still limited, and their improvement is hampered by the complexity of their characterization. The efficiency of these materials is determined by the thermoelectric figure of merit, which depends on their electrical conductivity, Seebeck coefficient, and thermal conductivity. Usually the complete characterization of these properties involves the use of multiple tools, which requires time and introduces uncertainty. Therefore, to boost the discovery of materials with higher efficiency, there is a strong need for fast and accurate experimental characterization. Additionally it is important to measure the thermoelectric properties at the microscale since it enables a thorough understanding of the materials. In this study we present a new method using a micro four-point probe (M4PP) that is able to measure within seconds, at the microscopic scale all of the material properties that define the thermoelectric figure of merit. The method is demonstrated using two skutterudite materials with known thermoelectric properties, and it shows a strong agreement with the reference data. The M4PP method demonstrates potential to revolutionize the testing of thermoelectric materials to expedite their development.

We present a theory of the graphene nanoslide, a fundamental device for graphene straintronics that realizes a single pseudogauge barrier. We solve the scattering problem in closed form and demonstrate that the nanoslide gives rise to a hybrid pseudogauge and electrostatic cavity in the bipolar regime, and hosts one-dimensional transverse channels. The latter can be tuned using a bottom gate between valley-chiral or counterpropagating modes, as well as one-dimensional flatbands. Hence, the local density of states near the barrier depends strongly on the gate voltage with a tunable sublattice and electron-hole asymmetry. In the presence of electron-electron interactions, the nanoslide allows for in situ tuning between a chiral and ordinary Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid.

We consider the displacement contribution to photoresistance in overlapping Landau levels at radiation frequencies much smaller than the cyclotron frequency. We show that in the limit of short-range disorder and high radiation power, this contribution leads to another class of magnetoresistance oscillations. These oscillations, which we call radiowave-induced resistance oscillations (RIROs), are distinct from the well-known microwave-induced resistance oscillations in the following aspects: (i) their amplitude is independent of power, (ii) their period is controlled by the radiation electric field, rather than by the radiation frequency, and (iii) they can be either $1/B$ or $1/B^2$ periodic, depending on $B$, with the crossover point linked to the width of the cyclotron resonance absorption curve. We also show that RIROs should be readily observed in experiments.

Magnesium fluoride ($\mathrm{Mg}{\mathrm{F}}_2$) serves as an important analog system to study the pressure-induced structural and electronic phase transitions in oxides relevant to geoscience and planetary science, such as $\mathrm{Si}{\mathrm{O}}_2$ and $\mathrm{Ge}{\mathrm{O}}_2$. In this work, through first-principles calculations combined with synchrotron x-ray diffraction (XRD) and Raman-scattering measurements in laser-heated diamond anvil cells, we study the structural phase transition of $\mathrm{Mg}{\mathrm{F}}_2$ at high pressure. We confirm the existence of a mixed-coordinated rhombohedral phase with $R\overline{3}$ symmetry in $\mathrm{Mg}{\mathrm{F}}_2$, which was previously predicted to be thermodynamically stable between 645 and 890 GPa in silica but has never been synthesized experimentally. This $R\overline{3}$ phase is the ground state in the pressure range from 40 to 55 GPa in $\mathrm{Mg}{\mathrm{F}}_2$, in analogy to silica but at much lower pressure. The in situ high-pressure XRD measurements confirm the phase transition from the pyrite-type phase to the $R\overline{3}$ phase after laser heating at around 51 GPa along with Raman modes well aligned with the calculated $R\overline{3}$ phase. Furthermore, our extended calculations for $\mathrm{Ge}{\mathrm{O}}_2$ confirm the $R\overline{3}$ phase as the ground state at 250–310 GPa. Considering the similar phase transition sequences of silica and magnesium fluoride, our findings provide a reference for the future experimental verification of the $R\overline{3}$ phase of $\mathrm{Si}{\mathrm{O}}_2$, which is of great significance in geoscience and planetary science.

The precise location of the liquid-vapor critical point in aluminum has remained elusive for decades, with reported critical temperatures spanning nearly 4000 K. Here we resolve this long-standing uncertainty by combining deep potential molecular dynamics with large-scale simulations trained on high-fidelity electronic-structure data. We benchmark multiple exchange-correlation functionals against experimental liquid densities and identify PBEsol as providing the most consistent description. Using complementary approaches, that is, spinodal analysis of the equation of state and direct coexistence simulations with Gaussian mixture phase identification, we converge on a critical temperature of 6531–6576 K, a critical density of 0.637 ${\mathrm{g}/\mathrm{cm}}^3$, and a critical pressure of 1.6 kbar. The precision of these values, with temperature uncertainties of approximately $50\mathrm{K}$, represents a marked improvement over previous estimates. Our framework establishes a transferable strategy for predicting critical phenomena in metals, with implications for laser ablation, shock compression, and planetary modeling under extreme conditions.

Quantum phase transitions have been shown to be highly beneficial for quantum sensing, owing to diverging quantum Fisher information close to criticality. In this work we consider a periodically modulated Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model to show that discrete time crystal (DTC) phase transition in this setup can enable us to achieve quantum-enhanced high-precision sensing of field strength. We employ a detailed finite-size scaling analysis, a time-averaged Inverse Participation Ratio analysis, and mean-field analysis in the thermodynamic limit, to determine the critical properties of this second-order phase transition. Our studies provide a comprehensive understanding of how quantum criticality in DTCs involving long-range interactions can be harnessed for advanced quantum sensing applications.

In recent years, tensor network renormalization (TNR) has emerged as an efficient and accurate method for studying (1 + 1)-dimensional quantum systems or two-dimensional classical systems using real-space renormalization group (RG) techniques. One notable application of TNR is its ability to extract central charge and conformal scaling dimensions for critical systems. In this paper, we present the implementation of the Loop-TNR algorithm, which allows for the computation of dynamical correlation functions. Our algorithm goes beyond traditional approaches by not only calculating correlations in the spatial direction, where the separation is an integer, but also in the temporal direction, where the time difference can contain decimal values. Our algorithm is designed to handle both imaginary-time and real-time correlations, utilizing a tensor network representation constructed from a path-integral formalism. Additionally, we highlight that the Loop-TNR algorithm can also be applied to investigate critical properties of non-Hermitian systems, an area that was previously inaccessible using density matrix renormalization group– and matrix product state–based algorithms.

We explore the quench dynamics of $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric non-Hermitian systems by utilizing the biorthogonal formalism. We analyze quench dynamics of observable quantities, the quantum geometric tensor, and various entanglement quantities, including the entanglement entropy, the SVD entropy, and the Tu-Tzeng-Chang (TTC) entropy. Our results show that a sudden quench into a $\mathcal{PT}$-broken phase generally leads to exponential growth in these quantities, driven by the biorthogonal density matrix's nonpositivity. In contrast to generic interacting systems, we observe a linear decay in the TTC entropy for noninteracting fermionic systems. This finding originates from the approximate spectral symmetry of the biorthogonal reduced density matrix, and we confirm our findings using the Yang-Lee and non-Hermitian XXZ models.

We report the synthesis and physical properties of single-crystalline ${\mathrm{Cr}}_{3-x}{\mathrm{Se}}_4 (x<0.2)$ using magnetic suscepetibility, magnetization, electrical transport, and thermodynamic measurements. Two magnetic transitions are identified at $T_{\mathrm{N}}\approx 170\mathrm{K}$ and $T_{\mathrm{M}}\approx 50\mathrm{K}$. Additionally, this compound exhibits a field-induced spin-flop-like transition below $T_{\mathrm{N}}$ for magnetic field applied perpendicular to the crystallographic $a$ axis and develops a weak ferromagnetic component below $T_{\mathrm{M}}$. These rich magnetic phases in ${\mathrm{Cr}}_{3-x}{\mathrm{Se}}_4 (x<0.2)$ can also be confirmed by the resistivity and thermodynamic measurements, indicating charge carrier scattering highly sensitive to spin configurations in different magnetic phases and calling for further investigations into its local atomic environment and magnetic structure.

Based on the study of a one-dimensional (1D) antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on a comb lattice, in this work, we identify an example of spontaneous continuous symmetry breaking in a 1D system with short-range interactions. When a symmetry-preserving relevant perturbation is applied to the system, we find that this model can always be described by the Marshall-Lieb-Mattis (MLM) theorem. The Shen-Qiu-Tian theorem establishes a direct connection between the MLM theorem (in the case of bipartite lattices with unequal numbers of sites in the two sublattices) and the breaking of continuous symmetry. Moreover, although authors of previous studies have suggested that the presence of a tower of states (TOS) serves as an important numerical diagnostic of the tendency of a system toward spontaneous symmetry breaking, these investigations have primarily focused on two-dimensional systems. In 1D systems, however, the presence of long-range order does not automatically imply the emergence of a TOS. Here, we observe the existence of a TOS in a 1D realistic ferrimagnetic lattice system with short-range interactions.

Antiferromagnetic (AFM) spintronics has attracted significant interest due to its potential for lower power consumption, nonvolatile memory, and faster data processing from terahertz-frequency spin dynamics of AFM moments compared to their ferromagnetic (FM) counterpart, driving advancements in information technology. Spin-flop coupling, a perpendicular coupling between AFM and FM moments observed at AFM ${\mathrm{La}}_{0.5}{\mathrm{Sr}}_{0.5}{\mathrm{FeO}}_3$ (LSFO) and FM ${\mathrm{La}}_{0.7}{\mathrm{Sr}}_{0.3}{\mathrm{MnO}}_3$ (LSMO) interfaces, enables spin transport measurements through the AFM layer, a crucial step in developing AFM spintronics. A moderate magnetic field can reorient the FM moments, and this interfacial coupling, in turn, reorients the AFM moments at the interface. This work investigates LSFO/LSMO bilayers as the thickness of the LSFO layer is systematically varied while keeping the LSMO layer thickness constant. X-ray magnetic linear dichroism measurements, conducted with and without a magnetic field, show the extent of the reorientation of the AFM moments and the evolution of their direction throughout the LSFO thickness. This comprehensive understanding of the behavior of AFM moments in a spin-flop coupled system under the influence of a magnetic field is crucial for advancing the development of AFM spintronics.

Superdiffusive spin transport in the one-dimensional (1D) Heisenberg model is a key theoretical discovery in nonequilibrium quantum many-body physics. Although extensively studied in 1D systems, the breakdown and sustenance of superdiffusion in two-dimensional (2D) lattices with integrability-breaking terms, as found in real materials, remains an open question. To address this, we develop a toy model that extends the 1D Heisenberg model with a representative set of 2D interaction types and tunable strengths. Our model exhibits varying degrees of superdiffusion breakdown depending on the interaction type, spanning ballistic to diffusive regimes. We establish and justify a hierarchy of 2D interactions based on their resilience against superdiffusion breakdown: Heisenberg $>XX>$ Ising. This precise control over the superdiffusive behavior also enables rigorous benchmarking of quantum hardware, and our simulations on IBM's Heron devices confirm the hardware's ability to accurately capture these many-body nonequilibrium phenomena. Overall, our results are relevant not only to simulating superdiffusion in real materials, such as the 1D Heisenberg compound ${\mathrm{KCuF}}_3$, which contains modest nonintegrable 2D terms, but also to extending superdiffusive behavior to larger 2D qubit lattices and other 2D materials.

Altermagnets, a distinctive class of unconventional antiferromagnets featuring compensated magnetization but ferromagnetlike spin splitting, have attracted significant interest as promising candidates for next-generation memories. Here, we design an altermagnetic tunnel junction (AMTJ) based on the room-temperature altermagnetic metal ${\mathrm{RbV}}_2{\mathrm{Te}}_2\mathrm{O}$ and systematically explore its interfacial and transport properties via first-principles calculations. We found that the strong interfacial V-O bonding effectively bridges the separated magnetic V atomic chains across the barrier, resulting in an ultralow resistance-area (RA) product of $\sim 3.82\mathrm{\Omega }\mu {\mathrm{m}}^2$. In contrast, the substitution of other types of interfacial bonds disrupts the V chain connectivity and dramatically increases device RA up to $\sim 2.55\times {10}^7\mathrm{\Omega }\mu {\mathrm{m}}^2$. Moreover, the ${\mathrm{RbV}}_2{\mathrm{Te}}_2\mathrm{O}/{\mathrm{SrTiO}}_3/{\mathrm{RbV}}_2{\mathrm{Te}}_2\mathrm{O}$ AMTJ exhibits a giant tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) of $\sim 6.58\times {10}^{12}\%$, owing to the high effective spin polarization of ${\mathrm{RbV}}_2{\mathrm{Te}}_2\mathrm{O}$ and excellent momentum overlap with lowest-decay-rate evanescent states in the ${\mathrm{SrTiO}}_3$ barrier. Our work proposes an alternative strategy—engineering strong interfacial bonding along the magnetic atomic chains—aside from conventional approaches such as high spin polarization and momentum matching, to simultaneously minimize RA while maximizing TMR within a single AMTJ. These findings inspire further exploration of AM-based spintronics.

Cuprate superconductors show various collective charge correlations that are intimately connected with their electronic properties. In particular, charge order in the form of an incommensurate charge density wave (CDW) order with an in-plane wave vector ${\delta }_{\text{CDW}}\approx$ 0.23–0.35 reciprocal lattice units appears to be universally present. In addition to CDW, dynamic charge density fluctuations (CDFs) are also present with wave vectors comparable to ${\delta }_{\text{CDW}}$. CDFs are present up to $\approx 300\mathrm{K}$ and have relatively short correlation lengths of $\xi \approx 20\AA$. Here we use Cu-$L_3$ and O-$K$ resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) to study the doping dependence of CDW and CDFs in ${\mathrm{La}}_{2-x}{\mathrm{Sr}}_x{\mathrm{CuO}}_4$. We fit our data with (quasi)elastic peaks resulting from the CDW and up to four inelastic modes associated with oxygen phonons that can be strongly coupled to the CDFs. Our analysis allows us to separate the charge correlations into three components: the CDW with wave vector ${\delta }_{4a\text{-CDW}}\approx 0.24$ and two CDF components with ${\delta }_{4a\text{-CDF}}\approx 0.24$ and ${\delta }_{3a\text{-CDF}}\approx 0.30$. We find that for $T\approx T_c$ the CDW coexists with the CDFs for dopings near $x=p\approx 1/8$. The $4a$-CDW disappears beyond $x=0.16$ and the $4a$-CDF beyond $x=0.19$, leaving only a weak $3a$-CDF at the highest doping studied, $x=0.22$. Our data suggest that low-energy charge fluctuations exist up to doping $x=0.19=p^{★}$, where the pseudogap disappears; however, we find no evidence that they are associated with a quantum critical point.

We propose a minimal model starting from a parent Chern band with quartic dispersion that can describe the spin-valley polarized electrons in rhombohedral tetralayer graphene. The interplay between repulsive and attractive interactions on top of that parent Chern band is studied. We conduct standard self-consistent mean-field calculations, and find a rich phase diagram that consists of metal, quantum anomalous Hall crystal, chiral topological superconductor, as well as trivial gapped Bose-Einstein condensate. In particular, there exists a topological phase transition from the chiral superconductor to the Bose-Einstein condensate at zero temperature. Motivated by the recent experimental and theoretical studies of composite Fermi liquid in rhombohedral stacked multilayer graphene, we further generalize the physical electron model to its composite fermion counterpart based on a field theory analysis. The chiral superconductor phase of the composite fermion becomes the non-abelian Moore-Read quantum Hall phase. We argue that a chiral (pseudo-)spin liquid phase can emerge in the vicinity of this Moore-Read quantum Hall phase. Our work suggests rhombohedral multilayer graphene as a potential platform for rich correlated topological phases.