Granular materials can fail through spontaneous events like earthquakes or brittle fracture. However, measurements and analytic models which forecast failure in this class of materials, while of both fundamental and practical interest, remain elusive. Materials including numerical packings of spheres, colloidal glasses, and granular materials have been known to develop an excess of low-frequency vibrational modes as the confining pressure is reduced. Here, we report experiments on sheared granular materials in which we monitor the evolving density of excited modes via passive monitoring of acoustic emissions. We observe a broadening of the distribution of excited modes coincident with both bulk and local plasticity, and evolution in the shape of the distribution before and after bulk failure. These results provide a new interpretation of the changing state of the material on its approach to stick-slip failure.

We report the observation and characterization of position-space Bloch oscillations using cold atoms in a tilted optical lattice. While momentum-space Bloch oscillations are a common feature of optical lattice experiments, the real-space center-of-mass dynamics are typically unresolvable. In a regime of rapid tunneling and low force, we observe real-space Bloch oscillation amplitudes of hundreds of lattice sites, in both ground and excited bands. We demonstrate two unique capabilities enabled by tracking of Bloch dynamics in position space: measurement of the full position-momentum phase-space evolution during a Bloch cycle, and direct imaging of the lattice band structure. These techniques, along with the ability to exert long-distance coherent control of quantum gases without modulation, may open up new possibilities for quantum control and metrology.

Calculating one-body density profiles in equilibrium via particle-based simulation methods involves counting of events of particle occurrences at (histogram-resolved) space points. Here, we investigate an alternative method based on a histogram of the local force density. Via an exact sum rule, the density profile is obtained with a simple spatial integration. The method circumvents the inherent ideal gas fluctuations. We have tested the method in Monte Carlo, Brownian dynamics, and molecular dynamics simulations. The results carry a statistical uncertainty smaller than that of the standard counting method, reducing therefore the computation time.

We report a quantum simulation of the deuteron binding energy on quantum processors accessed via cloud servers. We use a Hamiltonian from pionless effective field theory at leading order. We design a low-depth version of the unitary coupled-cluster ansatz, use the variational quantum eigensolver algorithm, and compute the binding energy to within a few percent. Our work is the first step towards scalable nuclear structure computations on a quantum processor via the cloud, and it sheds light on how to map scientific computing applications onto nascent quantum devices.

The QCD axion is a good dark matter candidate. The observed dark matter abundance can arise from misalignment or defect mechanisms, which generically require an axion decay constant $f_a\sim \mathcal{O}({10}^{11})\mathrm{GeV}$ (or higher). We introduce a new cosmological origin for axion dark matter, parametric resonance from oscillations of the Peccei-Quinn symmetry breaking field, that requires $f_a\sim ({10}^8–{10}^{11})\mathrm{GeV}$. The axions may be warm enough to give deviations from cold dark matter in large scale structure.

The OPERA experiment was designed to study ${\nu }_{\mu }\to {\nu }_{\tau }$ oscillations in the appearance mode in the CERN to Gran Sasso Neutrino beam (CNGS). In this Letter, we report the final analysis of the full data sample collected between 2008 and 2012, corresponding to $17.97\times {10}^{19}$ protons on target. Selection criteria looser than in previous analyses have produced ten ${\nu }_{\tau }$ candidate events, thus reducing the statistical uncertainty in the measurement of the oscillation parameters and of ${\nu }_{\tau }$ properties. A multivariate approach for event identification has been applied to the candidate events and the discovery of ${\nu }_{\tau }$ appearance is confirmed with an improved significance level of $6.1\sigma$. $|\mathrm{\Delta }{m}_{32}^2|$ has been measured, in appearance mode, with an accuracy of 20%. The measurement of the ${\nu }_{\tau }$ charged-current cross section, for the first time with a negligible contamination from ${\overline{\nu }}_{\tau }$, and the first direct evidence for the ${\nu }_{\tau }$ lepton number are also reported.

One of the outstanding challenges to information processing is the eloquent suppression of energy consumption in the execution of logic operations. The Landauer principle sets an energy constraint in deletion of a classical bit of information. Although some attempts have been made to experimentally approach the fundamental limit restricted by this principle, exploring the Landauer principle in a purely quantum mechanical fashion is still an open question. Employing a trapped ultracold ion, we experimentally demonstrate a quantum version of the Landauer principle, i.e., an equality associated with the energy cost of information erasure in conjunction with the entropy change of the associated quantized environment. Our experimental investigation substantiates an intimate link between information thermodynamics and quantum candidate systems for information processing.

We directly monitor exciton propagation in freestanding and ${\mathrm{SiO}}_2$-supported ${\mathrm{WS}}_2$ monolayers through spatially and time-resolved microphotoluminescence under ambient conditions. We find a highly nonlinear behavior with characteristic, qualitative changes in the spatial profiles of the exciton emission and an effective diffusion coefficient increasing from 0.3 to more than $30{\mathrm{cm}}^2/\mathrm{s}$, depending on the injected exciton density. Solving the diffusion equation while accounting for Auger recombination allows us to identify and quantitatively understand the main origin of the increase in the observed diffusion coefficient. At elevated excitation densities, the initial Gaussian distribution of the excitons evolves into long-lived halo shapes with $\mu \mathrm{m}$-scale diameter, indicating additional memory effects in the exciton dynamics.

The repeated loading of a solid leads to microstructural damage that ultimately results in catastrophic material failure. While posing a major threat to the stability of virtually all materials, the microscopic origins of fatigue, especially for soft solids, remain elusive. Here we explore fatigue in colloidal gels as prototypical inhomogeneous soft solids by combining experiments and computer simulations. Our results reveal how mechanical loading leads to irreversible strand stretching, which builds slack into the network that softens the solid at small strains and causes strain hardening at larger deformations. We thus find that microscopic plasticity governs fatigue at much larger scales. This gives rise to a new picture of fatigue in soft thermal solids and calls for new theoretical descriptions of soft gel mechanics in which local plasticity is taken into account.

The existence of a spatially varying texture in superfluid ${}^3\mathrm{He}$ is a direct manifestation of the complex macroscopic wave function. The real space shape of the texture, namely, a macroscopic wave function, has been studied extensively with the help of theoretical modeling but has never been directly observed experimentally with spatial resolution. We have succeeded in visualizing the texture by a specialized magnetic resonance imaging. With this new technology, we have discovered that the macroscopic chiral domains, of which sizes are as large as 1 mm, and corresponding chiral domain walls exist rather stably in ${}^3\mathrm{He}\text{−}A$ film at temperatures far below the transition temperature.

We introduce and analyze a quantum spin or Majorana chain with a tricritical Ising point separating a critical phase from a gapped phase with order-disorder coexistence. We show that supersymmetry is not only an emergent property of the scaling limit but also manifests itself on the lattice. Namely, we find explicit lattice expressions for the supersymmetry generators and currents. Writing the Hamiltonian in terms of these generators allows us to find the ground states exactly at a frustration-free coupling. These confirm the coexistence between two (topologically) ordered ground states and a disordered one in the gapped phase. Deforming the model by including explicit chiral symmetry breaking, we find the phases persist up to an unusual chiral phase transition where the supersymmetry becomes exact even on the lattice.

Large-scale quantum information processing networks will most probably require the entanglement of distant systems that do not interact directly. This can be done by performing entangling gates between standing information carriers, used as memories or local computational resources, and flying ones, acting as quantum buses. We report the deterministic entanglement of two remote transmon qubits by Raman stimulated emission and absorption of a traveling photon wave packet. We achieve a Bell state fidelity of 73%, well explained by losses in the transmission line and decoherence of each qubit.

The detection of gravitational waves with Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo has enabled novel tests of general relativity, including direct study of the polarization of gravitational waves. While general relativity allows for only two tensor gravitational-wave polarizations, general metric theories can additionally predict two vector and two scalar polarizations. The polarization of gravitational waves is encoded in the spectral shape of the stochastic gravitational-wave background, formed by the superposition of cosmological and individually unresolved astrophysical sources. Using data recorded by Advanced LIGO during its first observing run, we search for a stochastic background of generically polarized gravitational waves. We find no evidence for a background of any polarization, and place the first direct bounds on the contributions of vector and scalar polarizations to the stochastic background. Under log-uniform priors for the energy in each polarization, we limit the energy densities of tensor, vector, and scalar modes at 95% credibility to ${\mathrm{\Omega }}_0^T<5.58\times {10}^{-8}$, ${\mathrm{\Omega }}_0^V<6.35\times {10}^{-8}$, and ${\mathrm{\Omega }}_0^S<1.08\times {10}^{-7}$ at a reference frequency $f_0=25\mathrm{Hz}$.

Within the framework of chiral effective field theory, we discuss the leading contributions to the neutrinoless double-beta decay transition operator induced by light Majorana neutrinos. Based on renormalization arguments in both dimensional regularization with minimal subtraction and a coordinate-space cutoff scheme, we show the need to introduce a leading-order short-range operator, missing in all current calculations. We discuss strategies to determine the finite part of the short-range coupling by matching to lattice QCD or by relating it via chiral symmetry to isospin-breaking observables in the two-nucleon sector. Finally, we speculate on the impact of this new contribution on nuclear matrix elements of relevance to experiment.

Spectral lines are among the most powerful signatures for dark matter (DM) annihilation searches in very-high-energy $\gamma$ rays. The central region of the Milky Way halo is one of the most promising targets given its large amount of DM and proximity to Earth. We report on a search for a monoenergetic spectral line from self-annihilations of DM particles in the energy range from 300 GeV to 70 TeV using a two-dimensional maximum likelihood method taking advantage of both the spectral and spatial features of the signal versus background. The analysis makes use of Galactic center observations accumulated over ten years (2004–2014) with the H.E.S.S. array of ground-based Cherenkov telescopes. No significant $\gamma$-ray excess above the background is found. We derive upper limits on the annihilation cross section $⟨\sigma v⟩$ for monoenergetic DM lines at the level of $4\times {10}^{-28}{\mathrm{cm}}^3{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}$ at 1 TeV, assuming an Einasto DM profile for the Milky Way halo. For a DM mass of 1 TeV, they improve over the previous ones by a factor of 6. The present constraints are the strongest obtained so far for DM particles in the mass range 300 GeV–70 TeV. Ground-based $\gamma$-ray observations have reached sufficient sensitivity to explore relevant velocity-averaged cross sections for DM annihilation into two $\gamma$-ray photons at the level expected from the thermal relic density for TeV DM particles.

The survival of many microorganisms, like Leptospira or Spiroplasma bacteria, can depend on their ability to navigate towards regions of favorable viscosity. While this ability, called viscotaxis, has been observed in several bacterial experiments, the underlying mechanism remains unclear. We provide a framework to study viscotaxis of biological or synthetic self-propelled swimmers in slowly varying viscosity fields and show that suitable body shapes create viscotaxis based on a systematic asymmetry of viscous forces acting on a microswimmer. Our results shed new light on viscotaxis in Spiroplasma and Leptospira and suggest that dynamic body shape changes exhibited by both types of microorganisms may have an unrecognized functionality: to prevent them from drifting to low viscosity regions where they swim poorly. The present theory classifies microswimmers regarding their ability to show viscotaxis and can be used to design synthetic viscotactic swimmers, e.g., for delivering drugs to a target region distinguished by viscosity.

We show that the soft photon, gluon, and graviton theorems can be understood as the Ward-Takahashi identities of large gauge transformation, i.e., diffeomorphism that does not fall off at spatial infinity. We found infinitely many new identities which constrain the higher order soft behavior of the gauge bosons and gravitons in scattering amplitudes of gauge and gravity theories. Diagrammatic representations of these soft theorems are presented.

A Tomonaga-Luttinger (TL) liquid is known as an integrable system, in which a nonequilibrium many-body state survives without relaxing to a thermalized state. This intriguing characteristic is tested experimentally in copropagating quantum Hall edge channels at bulk filling factor $\nu =2$. The unidirectional transport allows us to investigate the time evolution by measuring the spatial evolution of the electronic states. The initial state is prepared with a biased quantum point contact, and its spatial evolution is measured with a quantum-dot energy spectrometer. We find strong evidence for a nonthermal metastable state in agreement with the TL theory before the system relaxes to thermal equilibrium with coupling to the environment.

Fish schooling is often modeled with self-propelled particles subject to phenomenological behavioral rules. Although fish are known to sense and exploit flow features, these models usually neglect hydrodynamics. Here, we propose a novel model that couples behavioral rules with far-field hydrodynamic interactions. We show that (1) a new “collective turning” phase emerges, (2) on average, individuals swim faster thanks to the fluid, and (3) the flow enhances behavioral noise. The results of this model suggest that hydrodynamic effects should be considered to fully understand the collective dynamics of fish.

Rydberg atoms immersed in a Bose-Einstein condensate interact with the quantum gas via electron-atom and ion-atom interaction. To suppress the typically dominant electron-neutral interaction, Rydberg states with a principal quantum number up to $n=190$ are excited from a dense and tightly trapped micron-sized condensate. This allows us to explore a regime where the Rydberg orbit exceeds the size of the atomic sample by far. In this case, a detailed line shape analysis of the Rydberg excitation spectrum provides clear evidence for ion-atom interaction at temperatures well below a microkelvin. Our results may open up ways to enter the quantum regime of ion-atom scattering for the exploration of charged quantum impurities and associated polaron physics.