Pattern dynamics on curved surfaces are found everywhere in nature. The geometry of surfaces has been shown to influence dynamics and play a functional role, yet a comprehensive understanding is still elusive. Here, we report for the first time that a static Turing pattern on a flat surface can propagate on a curved surface, as opposed to previous studies, where the pattern is presupposed to be static irrespective of the surface geometry. To understand such significant changes on curved surfaces, we investigate reaction-diffusion systems on axisymmetric curved surfaces. Numerical and theoretical analyses reveal that both the symmetries of the surface and pattern participate in the initiation of pattern propagation. This study provides a novel and generic mechanism of pattern propagation that is caused by surface curvature, as well as insights into the general role of surface geometry.

We use lithium-6 atoms in an optical tweezer array to realize an eight-site Fermi-Hubbard chain near half filling. We achieve single site detection by combining the tweezer array with a quantum gas microscope. By reducing disorder in the energy offsets to less than the tunneling energy, we observe Mott insulators with strong antiferromagnetic correlations. The measured spin correlations allow us to put an upper bound on the entropy of $0.26(4)k_B$ per atom, comparable to the lowest entropies achieved with optical lattices. Additionally, we establish the flexibility of the tweezer platform by initializing atoms on one tweezer and observing tunneling dynamics across the array for uniform and staggered 1D geometries.

Porous rocks, foams, cereals, and snow display a diverse set of common compaction patterns, including propagating or stationary bands. Although this commonality across distinct media has been widely noted, the patterns’ origin remains debated—current models employ empirical laws for material-specific processes. Here, using a generic model of inelastic structured porous geometries, we show that the previously observed patterns can be attributed to a universal process of pore collapse. Furthermore, the pattern diversity can be mapped in a phase space of only two dimensionless numbers describing material strength and loading rate.

Coherent extreme-ultraviolet pulses from high-harmonic generation have ample applications in attosecond science, lensless imaging, and industrial metrology. However, tailoring complex spatial amplitude, phase, and polarization properties of extreme-ultraviolet pulses is made nontrivial by the lack of efficient optical elements. Here, we have overcome this limitation through nanoengineered solid samples, which enable direct control over amplitude and phase patterns of nonlinearly generated extreme-ultraviolet pulses. We demonstrate experimental configurations and emitting structures that yield spatially patterned beam profiles, increased conversion efficiencies, and tailored polarization states. Furthermore, we use the emitted patterns to reconstruct height profiles, probe the near-field confinement in nanostructures below the diffraction limit of the fundamental radiation, and to image complex structures through coherent diffractive emission from these structures. Our results pave the way for introducing sub-fundamental-wavelength resolution imaging, direct manipulation of beams through nanoengineered samples, and metrology of nanostructures into the extreme-ultraviolet spectral range.

We implement a superlocalization method in the time domain that allows the observation of the external motion of soliton molecules in a fiber ring cavity laser with unprecedented accuracy. In particular, we demonstrate the synchronization of two oscillating soliton molecules separated by several nanoseconds, with intermolecular oscillations following the same pattern as the intramolecular motion of the individual molecules. These experimental findings indicate an interplay between the different interaction mechanisms that coexist inside the laser cavity, despite their very different characteristic ranges, timescales, strengths, and physical origins.

We study theoretically and observe experimentally the evolution of periodic wave trains by utilizing surface gravity water wave packets. Our experimental system enables us to observe both the amplitude and the phase of these wave packets. For low steepness waves, the propagation dynamics is in the linear regime, and these waves unfold a Talbot carpet. By increasing the steepness of the waves and the corresponding nonlinear response, the waves follow the Akhmediev breather solution, where the higher frequency periodic patterns at the fractional Talbot distance disappear. Further increase in the wave steepness leads to deviations from the Akhmediev breather solution and to asymmetric breaking of the wave function. Unlike the periodic revival that occurs in the linear regime, here the wave crests exhibit self acceleration, followed by self deceleration at half the Talbot distance, thus completing a smooth transition of the periodic pulse train by half a period. Such phenomena can be theoretically modeled by using the Dysthe equation.

Through a series of x-ray diffraction, optical spectroscopy diamond anvil cell experiments, combined with density functional theory calculations, we explore the dense ${\mathrm{CH}}_4\text{−}{\mathrm{H}}_2$ system. We find that pressures as low as 4.8 GPa can stabilize ${\mathrm{CH}}_4({\mathrm{H}}_2{)}_2$ and $({\mathrm{CH}}_4{)}_2{\mathrm{H}}_2$, with the latter exhibiting extreme hardening of the intramolecular vibrational mode of ${\mathrm{H}}_2$ units within the structure. On further compression, a unique structural composition, $({\mathrm{CH}}_4{)}_3({\mathrm{H}}_2{)}_{25}$, emerges. This novel structure holds a vast amount of molecular hydrogen and represents the first compound to surpass 50 wt % ${\mathrm{H}}_2$. These compounds, stabilized by nuclear quantum effects, persist over a broad pressure regime, exceeding 160 GPa.

We compute the three-loop helicity amplitudes for the scattering of four gluons in QCD. We employ projectors in the ’t Hooft-Veltman scheme and construct the amplitudes from a minimal set of physical building blocks, which allows us to keep the computational complexity under control. We obtain relatively compact results that can be expressed in terms of harmonic polylogarithms. In addition, we consider the Regge limit of our amplitude and extract the gluon Regge trajectory in full three-loop QCD. This is the last missing ingredient required for studying single-Reggeon exchanges at next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy.

We report the first evidence of Raman scattering from surface phonons of a pristine metal surface. Our study reveals a Raman-active surface vibrational resonance on Cu(110) with a surprisingly large scattering efficiency. With the incident photon energy close to the energy of the Cu(110) surface state electronic transition, the Raman scattering from the surface optical resonance can be significantly enhanced, while any contribution from bulk phonons is absent.

In superconductors that lack inversion symmetry, the flow of supercurrent can induce a nonvanishing magnetization, a phenomenon which is at the heart of nondissipative magnetoelectric effects, also known as Edelstein effects. For electrons carrying spin and orbital moments, a question of fundamental relevance deals with the orbital nature of magnetoelectric effects in conventional spin-singlet superconductors with Rashba coupling. Remarkably, we find that the supercurrent-induced orbital magnetization is more than 1 order of magnitude greater than that due to the spin, giving rise to a colossal magnetoelectric effect. The induced orbital magnetization is shown to be sign tunable, with the sign change occurring for the Fermi level lying in proximity of avoiding crossing points in the Brillouin zone. In the presence of superconducting phase inhomogeneities, a modulation of the Edelstein signal on the scale of the superconducting coherence length appears, leading to domains with opposite orbital moment orientations. These hallmarks are robust to real-space self-consistent treatment of the superconducting order parameter. The orbital-dominated magnetoelectric phenomena, hence, have clear-cut marks for detection both in the bulk and at the edge of the system and are expected to be a general feature of multiorbital superconductors with inversion symmetry breaking.

Antiferromagnetic insulators have recently been proved to support spin current efficiently. Here, we report the dampinglike spin-orbit torque (SOT) in $\mathrm{Pt}/\mathrm{NiO}/\mathrm{CoFeB}$ has a strong temperature dependence and reverses the sign below certain temperatures, which is different from the slight variation with temperature in the $\mathrm{Pt}/\mathrm{CoFeB}$ bilayer. The negative dampinglike SOT at low temperatures is proposed to be mediated by the magnetic interactions that tie with the “exchange bias” in $\mathrm{Pt}/\mathrm{NiO}/\mathrm{CoFeB}$, in contrast to the thermal-magnon-mediated scenario at high temperatures. Our results highlight the promise to control the SOT through tuning the magnetic structure in multilayers.

For high-power heavy ion accelerators, the development of a suitable charge stripper, which can handle intense beams, is essential. This Letter describes the first experimental demonstration of a heavy ion liquid lithium charge stripper. A $10–20\mu \mathrm{m}$ thick liquid lithium jet flowing at $>50\mathrm{m}/\mathrm{s}$ was formed and confirmed stable when bombarded by various heavy ion beams, while increasing the charge state of the incoming beams to the desired charge state range. This demonstration proved the existing power limitation with the conventional strippers can be overcome by the liquid-metal stripper, opening completely new possibilities in high-power accelerator development.

We construct an effective field theory of a two-neutron halo nucleus in the limit where the two-neutron separation energy $B$ and the neutron-neutron two-body virtual energy ${\epsilon }_n$ are smaller than any other energy scale in the problem, but the scattering between the core and a single neutron is not fine-tuned, and the Efimov effect does not operate. The theory has one dimensionless coupling which formally runs to a Landau pole in the ultraviolet. We show that many properties of the system are universal in the double fine-tuning limit. The ratio of the mean-square matter radius and charge radius is found to be $⟨r_m^2⟩/⟨r_c^2⟩=Af({\epsilon }_n/B)$, where $A$ is the mass number of the core and $f$ is a function of the ratio ${\epsilon }_n/B$ which we find explicitly. In particular, when $B\gg {\epsilon }_n$, $⟨r_m^2⟩/⟨r_c^2⟩=\frac{2}{3}A$. The shape of the $E1$ dipole strength function also depends only on the ratio ${\epsilon }_n/B$ and is derived in explicit analytic form. We estimate that for the ${}^{22}\mathrm{C}$ nucleus higher-order corrections to our theory are of the order of 20% or less if the two-neutron separation energy is less than 100 keV and the $s$-wave scattering length between a neutron and a ${}^{20}\mathrm{C}$ nucleus is less than 2.8 fm.

Monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides feature tightly bound bright excitons at the degenerate valleys, where electron-hole Coulomb exchange interaction strongly couples the valley pseudospin to the momentum of the exciton. Placed on a periodically structured dielectric substrate, the spatial modulation of the Coulomb interaction leads to the formation of exciton Bloch states with real-space valley pseudospin texture displayed in a mesoscopic supercell. We find this spatial valley texture in the exciton Bloch function is pattern locked to the propagation direction, enabling nano-optical excitation of directional exciton flow through the valley selection rule. The left-right directionality of the injected exciton current is controlled by the circular polarization of excitation, while the angular directionality is controlled by the excitation location, exhibiting a vortex pattern in a supercell. The phenomenon is reminiscent of the chiral light-matter interaction in nanophotonics structures, with the role of the guided electromagnetic wave now replaced by the valley-orbit coupled exciton Bloch wave in a uniform monolayer, which points to new excitonic devices with nonreciprocal functionalities.

We investigate experimentally and analytically the coalescence of reflectionless (RL) states in symmetric complex wave-scattering systems. We observe RL exceptional points (EPs), first with a conventional Fabry-Perot system for which the scattering strength within the system is tuned symmetrically and then with single- and multichannel symmetric disordered systems. We confirm that an EP of the parity-time ($PT$)-symmetric RL operator is obtained for two isolated quasinormal modes when the spacing between central frequencies is equal to the decay rate into incoming and outgoing channels. Finally, we leverage the transfer functions associated with RL and RL-EP states to implement first- and second-order analog differentiation.

Optimal transport theory has recently re-emerged as a vastly resourceful field of mathematics with elegant applications across physics and computer science. Harnessing methods from geometry processing, we report on the efficient implementation for a specific problem in cosmology—the reconstruction of the linear density field from low redshifts, in particular the recovery of the baryonic acoustic oscillation (BAO) scale. We demonstrate our algorithm’s accuracy by retrieving the BAO scale in noiseless cosmological simulations that are dedicated to cancel cosmic variance; we find uncertainties to be reduced by a factor of 4.3 compared with performing no reconstruction, and a factor of 3.1 compared with standard reconstruction.

The Josephson junction of a strong spin-orbit material under a magnetic field is a promising Majorana fermion candidate. Supercurrent enhancement by a magnetic field has been observed in the InAs nanowire Josephson junctions and assigned to a topological transition. In this work we observe a similar phenomenon but discuss the nontopological origin by considering the trapping of quasiparticles by vortices that penetrate the superconductor under a finite magnetic field. This assignment is supported by the observed hysteresis of the switching current when sweeping up and down the magnetic field. Our experiment shows the importance of quasiparticles in superconducting devices with a magnetic field, which can provide important insights for the design of qubits using superconductors.

The heat dissipation in quantum metrology represents not only an unavoidable problem towards practical applications of quantum sensing devices but also a fundamental relationship between thermodynamics and quantum metrology. However, a general thermodynamic principle which governs the rule of energy consumption in quantum metrology, similar to Landauer’s principle for heat dissipation in computations, has remained elusive. Here, we establish such a physical principle for energy consumption in order to achieve a certain level of measurement precision in quantum metrology, and show that it is intrinsically determined by the erasure of quantum Fisher information. The principle provides a powerful tool to investigate the advantage of quantum resources, not only in measurement precision but also in energy efficiency. It also serves as a bridge between thermodynamics and various fundamental physical concepts related in quantum physics and quantum information theory.

We find that a uniform scaling of the gravitational free-fall rates and photon-electron scattering rate leaves most dimensionless cosmological observables nearly invariant. This result opens up a new approach to reconciling cosmic microwave background and large-scale structure observations with high values of the Hubble constant $H_0$: Find a cosmological model in which the scaling transformation can be realized without violating any measurements of quantities not protected by the symmetry. A “mirror world” dark sector allows for effective scaling of the gravitational free-fall rates while respecting the measured mean photon density today. Further model building might bring consistency with the two constraints not yet satisfied: the inferred primordial abundances of deuterium and helium.

The utility of all parametric nonlinear optical processes is hampered by phase-matching requirements. Quasi-phase-matching, birefringent phase matching, and higher-order-mode phase matching have all been developed to address this constraint, but the methods demonstrated to date suffer from the inconvenience of only being phase matched for a single, specific arrangement of beams, typically copropagating, resulting in cumbersome experimental configurations and large footprints for integrated devices. Here, we experimentally demonstrate that these phase-matching requirements may be satisfied in a parametric nonlinear optical process for multiple, if not all, configurations of input and output beams when using low-index media. Our measurement constitutes the first experimental observation of direction-independent phase matching for a medium sufficiently long for phase matching to be relevant. We demonstrate four-wave mixing from spectrally distinct co- and counterpropagating pump and probe beams, the backward generation of a nonlinear signal, and excitation by an out-of-plane probe beam. These results explicitly show that the unique properties of low-index media relax traditional phase-matching constraints, which can be exploited to facilitate nonlinear interactions and miniaturize nonlinear devices, thus adding to the established exceptional properties of low-index materials.