Microswimmers can serve as cargo carriers that move deep inside complex flow networks. When a school collectively entrains the surrounding fluid, their transport capacity can be enhanced. This effect is quantified with good agreement between experiments with self-propelled droplets and a confined Brinkman squirmer model. The volume of liquid entrained can be much larger than the droplet itself, amplifying the effective cargo capacity over an order of magnitude, even for dilute schools. Hence, biological and engineered swimmers can efficiently transport materials into confined environments.

Predicting the local dynamics of supercooled liquids based purely on local structure is a key challenge in our quest for understanding glassy materials. Recent years have seen an explosion of methods for making such a prediction, often via the application of increasingly complex machine learning techniques. The best predictions so far have involved so-called Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) whose accuracy comes at a cost of models that involve on the order of ${10}^5$ fit parameters. In this Letter, we propose that the key structural ingredient to the GNN method is its ability to consider not only the local structure around a central particle, but also averaged structural features centered around nearby particles. We demonstrate that this insight can be exploited to design a significantly more efficient model that provides essentially the same predictive power at a fraction of the computational complexity (approximately 1000 fit parameters), and demonstrate its success by fitting the dynamic propensity of Kob-Andersen and binary hard-sphere mixtures. We then use this to make predictions regarding the importance of radial and angular descriptors in the dynamics of both models.

For the purpose of analyzing observed phenomena, it has been convenient, and thus far sufficient, to regard gravity as subject to the deterministic principles of classical physics, with the gravitational field obeying Newton’s law or Einstein’s equations. Here we treat the gravitational field as a quantum field and determine the implications of such treatment for experimental observables. We find that falling bodies in gravity are subject to random fluctuations (“noise”) whose characteristics depend on the quantum state of the gravitational field. We derive a stochastic equation for the separation of two falling particles. Detection of this fundamental noise, which may be measurable at gravitational wave detectors, would vindicate the quantization of gravity, and reveal important properties of its sources.

Recently, two-dimensional superconductivity was discovered at the oxide interface between ${\mathrm{KTaO}}_3$ and ${\mathrm{LaAlO}}_3$ (or EuO), whose superconducting transition temperature $T_c$ is up to 2.2 K and exhibits strong crystalline-orientation dependence. However, the origin of the interfacial electron gas, which becomes superconducting at low temperatures, remains elusive. Taking the ${\mathrm{LaAlO}}_3/{\mathrm{KTaO}}_3(111)$ interface as an example, we have demonstrated that there exists a critical ${\mathrm{LaAlO}}_3$ thickness of $\sim 3\mathrm{nm}$. Namely, a thinner ${\mathrm{LaAlO}}_3$ film will give rise to an insulating but not conducting (or superconducting) interface. By in situ transport measurements during growth, we have also revealed that the critical thickness can be suppressed if exposure to oxygen is avoided. These observations, together with other control experiments, suggest strongly that the origination of the electron gas is dominated by the electron transfer that is from oxygen vacancies in the ${\mathrm{LaAlO}}_3$ film to the ${\mathrm{KTaO}}_3$ substrate.

In this Letter, a water-in-oil swimming droplet’s transition from straight to curvilinear motion is investigated experimentally and theoretically. An analysis of the experimental results and the model reveal that the motion transition depends on the susceptibility of the droplet’s direction of movement to external stimuli as a function of environmental parameters such as droplet size. The simplicity of the present experimental system and the model suggests implications for a general class of transitions in self-propelled swimmers.

Twenty-five years ago, enigmatic linear polarization signals were discovered in the core of the sodium $D_1$ line. The only explanation that could be found implied that the solar chromosphere is practically unmagnetized, in contradiction with other evidences. This opened a paradox that has challenged physicists for many years. Here we present its solution, demonstrating that these polarization signals can be properly explained in the presence of magnetic fields in the gauss range. This result opens a novel diagnostic window for exploring the elusive magnetism of the solar chromosphere.

We use the $S$-matrix bootstrap to carve out the space of unitary, crossing symmetric and supersymmetric graviton scattering amplitudes in ten dimensions. We focus on the leading Wilson coefficient $\alpha$ controlling the leading correction to maximal supergravity. The negative region $\alpha <0$ is excluded by a simple dual argument based on linearized unitarity (the desert). A whole semi-infinite region $\alpha \gtrsim 0.14$ is allowed by the primal bootstrap (the garden). A finite intermediate region is excluded by nonperturbative unitarity (the swamp). Remarkably, string theory seems to cover all (or at least almost all) the garden from very large positive $\alpha$—at weak coupling—to the swamp boundary—at strong coupling.

We introduce dynamic speckle holography, a new technique that combines imaging and scattering to measure three-dimensional maps of displacements as small as ten nanometers over several centimeters, greatly extending the capabilities of traditional imaging systems. We attain this sensitivity by imaging speckle patterns of light collected at three scattering angles and measuring the decay in the temporal correlation due to local motion. We use dynamic speckle holography to measure the strain field of a colloidal gel undergoing fracture and establish the surprising role of internal tension in driving the fracture.

The first observation of exotic states with a new quark content $c\overline{c}u\overline{s}$ decaying to the $J/\psi K^{+}$ final state is reported with high significance from an amplitude analysis of the $B^{+}\to J/\psi \varphi K^{+}$ decay. The analysis is carried out using proton-proton collision data corresponding to a total integrated luminosity of $9{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$ collected by the LHCb experiment at center-of-mass energies of 7, 8, and 13 TeV. The most significant state, $Z_{cs}(4000{)}^{+}$, has a mass of $4003\pm 6_{-14}^{+4}\mathrm{MeV}$, a width of $131\pm 15\pm 26\mathrm{MeV}$, and spin parity $J^P=1^{+}$, where the quoted uncertainties are statistical and systematic, respectively. A new $1^{+}X(4685)$ state decaying to the $J/\psi \varphi$ final state is also observed with high significance. In addition, the four previously reported $J/\psi \varphi$ states are confirmed and two more exotic states, $Z_{cs}(4220{)}^{+}$ and $X(4630)$, are observed with significance exceeding 5 standard deviations.

The appearance of surface distortions on polymer melt extrudates, often referred to as sharkskin instability, is a long-standing problem. We report results of a simple physical model, which link the inception of surface defects with intense stretch of polymer chains and subsequent recoil at the region where the melt detaches from the solid wall of the die. The transition from smooth to wavy extrudate is attributed to a Hopf bifurcation, followed by a sequence of period doubling bifurcations, which eventually lead to elastic turbulence under creeping flow. The predicted flow profiles exhibit all the characteristics of the experimentally observed surface defects during polymer melt extrusion.

In a finite system driven out of equilibrium by a constant external force the thermodynamic uncertainty relation (TUR) bounds the variance of the conjugate current variable by the thermodynamic cost of maintaining the nonequilibrium stationary state. Here we highlight a new facet of the TUR by showing that it also bounds the timescale on which a finite system can exhibit anomalous kinetics. In particular, we demonstrate that the TUR bounds subdiffusion in a single file confined to a ring as well as a dragged Gaussian polymer chain even when detailed balance is satisfied. Conversely, the TUR bounds the onset of superdiffusion in the active comb model. Remarkably, the fluctuations in a comb model evolving from a steady state behave anomalously as soon as detailed balance is broken. Our work establishes a link between stochastic thermodynamics and the field of anomalous dynamics that will fertilize further investigations of thermodynamic consistency of anomalous diffusion models.

In this Letter, we theoretically propose and experimentally demonstrate a three-dimensional soundproof acoustic cage structure, hereby denoted as an acoustic metacage. The metacage is composed of six acoustic metamaterial slabs with open holes and hidden bypass space coiling tunnels connected to the holes. Band structure analysis reveals a novel physical mechanism to open a low-frequency broad partial band gap via the band folding in other directions, which can also be interpreted by an effective medium with indefinite effective mass density and negative effective modulus. Transmission loss in simulations and in the acoustic impedance tube are administered. Strikingly, we prove that the soundproofing effect of the metacage is robust against the airflow perturbation induced by a fan. Our work paves a road for low-frequency airborne soundproof structures in the presence of ventilation.

We report on the self-propulsion of boiling droplets which, despite their contact with viscous, immiscible oil films, attain high velocities comparable to those of levitating Leidenfrost droplets. Experiments and model reveal that droplet propulsion originates from a coupling between seemingly disparate short and long timescale phenomena due to microsecond fluctuations induced by boiling events at the droplet-oil interface. This interplay of phenomena leads to continuous asymmetric vapor release and momentum transfer for high droplet velocities.

We report the experimental observation of the rotation of the linear polarization of light propagating in a gas of fast-spinning molecules (molecular superrotors). In the observed effect, related to Fermi’s prediction of “polarization drag” by a rotating medium, the vector of linear polarization tilts in the direction of molecular rotation. We use an optical centrifuge to bring the molecules in a gas sample to ultrafast unidirectional rotation and measure the polarization drag angles of the order of ${10}^{-4}\mathrm{rad}$ (with an experimental uncertainty about ${10}^{-6}\mathrm{rad}$) over the propagation distance of the order of 1 mm in a number of gases under ambient conditions. We demonstrate an all-optical control of the drag magnitude and direction and investigate the robustness of the mechanical Faraday effect with respect to molecular collisions.

Stochastic search processes are ubiquitous in nature and are expected to become more efficient when equipped with a memory, where the searcher has been before. A natural realization of a search process with long-lasting memory is a migrating cell that is repelled from the diffusive chemotactic signal that it secretes on its way, denoted as an autochemotactic searcher. To analyze the efficiency of this class of non-Markovian search processes, we present a general formalism that allows one to compute the mean first-passage time (MFPT) for a given set of conditional transition probabilities for non-Markovian random walks on a lattice. We show that the optimal choice of the $n$-step transition probabilities decreases the MFPT systematically and substantially with an increasing number of steps. It turns out that the optimal search strategies can be reduced to simple cycles defined by a small parameter set and that mirror-asymmetric walks are more efficient. For the autochemotactic searcher, we show that an optimal coupling between the searcher and the chemical reduces the MFPT to $1/3$ of the one for a Markovian random walk.

Dissolving small amounts of polymer into a Newtonian fluid can dramatically change the dynamics of transitional and turbulent flows. We investigate the spatiotemporal dynamics of a submerged jet of dilute polymer solution entering a quiescent bath of Newtonian fluid. High-speed digital Schlieren imaging is used to quantify the evolution of Lagrangian features in the jet revealing a rich sequence of transitional and turbulent states. At high levels of viscoelasticity, we identify a new distinct transitional pathway to elastoinertial turbulence (EIT) that does not feature the conventional turbulent bursts and instead proceeds via a shear-layer instability that produces elongated filaments of polymer due to the nonlinear effects of viscoelasticity. Even though the pathways to the EIT state can be different, and within EIT the spatial details of the turbulent structures vary systematically with polymer microstructure and concentration, there is a universality in the power-law spectral decay of EIT with frequency, $f^{-3}$, independent of fluid rheology and flow parameters.

We experimentally demonstrate time-resolved exciton propagation in a monolayer semiconductor at cryogenic temperatures. Monitoring phonon-assisted recombination of dark states, we find a highly unusual case of exciton diffusion. While at 5 K the diffusivity is intrinsically limited by acoustic phonon scattering, we observe a pronounced decrease of the diffusion coefficient with increasing temperature, far below the activation threshold of higher-energy phonon modes. This behavior corresponds neither to well-known regimes of semiclassical free-particle transport nor to the thermally activated hopping in systems with strong localization. Its origin is discussed in the framework of both microscopic numerical and semiphenomenological analytical models illustrating the observed characteristics of nonclassical propagation. Challenging the established description of mobile excitons in monolayer semiconductors, these results open up avenues to study quantum transport phenomena for excitonic quasiparticles in atomically thin van der Waals materials and their heterostructures.

Interorbital coupling refers to the possibility of exciting orbital states by otherwise orthogonal noninteracting modes, a forbidden process in photonic lattices due to intrinsic propagation constant detuning. In this Letter, using a femtosecond (fs) laser writing technique, we experimentally demonstrate that fundamental and excited orbital states can couple each other when located at different spatial positions. We perform a full characterization of an asymmetric double-well-like potential and implement a scan method to effectively map the dynamics along the propagation coordinate. Our fundamental observation also constitutes a direct solution for a spatial mode converter device, which could be located in any position inside a photonic glass chip. By taking advantage of the phase structure of higher-order photonic modes and the effective negative coupling generated, we propose a trimer configuration as a phase beam splitter, which could be of great relevance for multiplexing and interference-based photonic concatenated operations.

Electrons and ions trapped with electromagnetic fields have long served as important high-precision metrological instruments, and more recently have also been proposed as a platform for quantum information processing. Here we point out that these systems can also be used as highly sensitive detectors of passing charged particles, due to the combination of their extreme charge-to-mass ratio and low-noise quantum readout and control. In particular, these systems can be used to detect energy depositions many orders of magnitude below typical ionization scales. As illustrations, we suggest some applications in particle physics. We outline a nondestructive time-of-flight measurement capable of sub-eV energy resolution for slowly moving, collimated particles. We also show that current devices can be used to provide competitive sensitivity to models where ambient dark matter particles carry small electric millicharges $\ll e$. Our calculations may also be useful in the characterization of noise in quantum computers coming from backgrounds of charged particles.

In light of the recent result of the muon $g-2$ experiment and the update on the test of lepton flavor universality $R_K$ published by the LHCb Collaboration, we systematically study for the first time a set of models with minimal field content that can simultaneously give (i) a thermal dark matter candidate; (ii) large loop contributions to $b\to s\ell \ell$ processes able to address $R_K$ and the other $B$ anomalies; (iii) a natural solution to the muon $g-2$ discrepancy through chirally enhanced contributions. Moreover, this type of model with heavy particles and chiral enhancement can evade the strong limits from direct searches but can be tested at present and future colliders and direct-detection searches.