We report a ${}^{51}\mathrm{V}$ nuclear magnetic resonance investigation of the frustrated spin-$1/2$ chain compound ${\mathrm{LiCuVO}}_4$, performed in pulsed magnetic fields and focused on high-field phases up to 56 T. For the crystal orientations $H\parallel c$ and $H\parallel b$, we find a narrow field region just below the magnetic saturation where the local magnetization remains uniform and homogeneous, while its value is field dependent. This behavior is the first microscopic signature of the spin-nematic state, breaking spin-rotation symmetry without generating any transverse dipolar order, and is consistent with theoretical predictions for the ${\mathrm{LiCuVO}}_4$ compound.

We report simultaneous conjugate Ramsey-Bordé interferometers with a sample of low-mass (lithium-7) atoms at 50 times the recoil temperature. We optically pump the atoms to a magnetically insensitive state using the $2S_{1/2}-2P_{1/2}$ line. Fast stimulated Raman beam splitters address a broad velocity class and unavoidably drive two conjugate interferometers that overlap spatially. We show that detecting the summed interference signals of both interferometers, using state labeling, allows recoil measurements and suppression of phase noise from vibrations. The use of “warm” atoms allows for simple, efficient, and high-flux atom sources and broadens the applicability of recoil-sensitive interferometry to particles that remain difficult to trap and cool.

For applications exploiting the valley pseudospin degree of freedom in transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers, efficient preparation of electrons or holes in a single valley is essential. Here, we show that a magnetic field of 7 T leads to a near-complete valley polarization of electrons in a ${\mathrm{MoSe}}_2$ monolayer with a density $1.6\times 10^{12}{\mathrm{cm}}^{-2}$; in the absence of exchange interactions favoring single-valley occupancy, a similar degree of valley polarization would have required a pseudospin $g$ factor of 38. To investigate the magnetic response, we use polarization resolved photoluminescence as well as resonant reflection measurements. In the latter, we observe gate voltage dependent transfer of oscillator strength from the exciton to the attractive Fermi polaron: stark differences in the spectrum of the two light helicities provide a confirmation of valley polarization. Our findings suggest an interaction induced giant paramagnetic response of ${\mathrm{MoSe}}_2$, which paves the way for valleytronics applications.

Much of the current understanding of topological insulators, which informs the experimental search for topological materials and systems, is based on crystalline band theory, where local electronic degrees of freedom at different crystal sites hybridize with each other in ways that produce nontrivial topology. Here we provide a novel theoretical demonstration of realizing topological phases in amorphous systems, as exemplified by a set of sites randomly located in space. We show this by constructing hopping models on such random lattices whose gapped ground states are shown to possess nontrivial topological nature (characterized by Bott indices) that manifests as quantized conductances in systems with a boundary. Our study adds a new dimension, beyond crystalline solids, to the search for topological systems by pointing to the promising possibilities in amorphous solids and other engineered random systems.

Results are reported from an improved measurement of ${\nu }_{\mu }\to {\nu }_e$ transitions by the NOvA experiment. Using an exposure equivalent to $6.05\times 10^{20}$ protons on target, 33 ${\nu }_e$ candidates are observed with a background of $8.2\pm 0.8$ (syst.). Combined with the latest NOvA ${\nu }_{\mu }$ disappearance data and external constraints from reactor experiments on ${\sin }^{2}2{\theta }_{13}$, the hypothesis of inverted mass hierarchy with ${\theta }_{23}$ in the lower octant is disfavored at greater than 93% C.L. for all values of ${\delta }_{CP}$.

In metallic samples of small enough size and sufficiently strong momentum-conserving scattering, the viscosity of the electron gas can become the dominant process governing transport. In this regime, momentum is a long-lived quantity whose evolution is described by an emergent hydrodynamical theory. Furthermore, breaking time-reversal symmetry leads to the appearance of an odd component to the viscosity called the Hall viscosity, which has attracted considerable attention recently due to its quantized nature in gapped systems but still eludes experimental confirmation. Based on microscopic calculations, we discuss how to measure the effects of both the even and odd components of the viscosity using hydrodynamic electronic transport in mesoscopic samples under applied magnetic fields.

Enwrapping liquid droplets with hydrophobic particles allows the manufacture of so-called “liquid marbles” [Aussillous and Quéré Nature (London) 411, 924 (2001); Mahadevan Nature (London)411, 895 (2001)]. The recent intensive research devoted to liquid marbles is justified by their very unusual physical and chemical properties and by their potential for various applications, from microreactors to water storage, including water pollution sensors [Bormashenko Curr. Opin. Colloid Interface Sci. 16, 266 (2011)]. Here we demonstrate that this concept can be successfully applied for encapsulating and protecting small gas pockets within an air environment. Similarly to their liquid counterparts, those new soft-matter objects, that we call “gas marbles,” can sustain external forces. We show that gas marbles are surprisingly tenfold stronger than liquid marbles and, more importantly, they can sustain both positive and negative pressure differences. This magnified strength is shown to originate from the strong cohesive nature of the shell. Those interesting properties could be exploited for imprisoning valuable or polluted gases or for designing new aerated materials.

The characterization of irreversibility in general quantum processes is an open problem of increasing technological relevance. Yet, the tools currently available to this aim are mostly limited to the assessment of dynamics induced by equilibrium environments, a situation that often does not match the reality of experiments at the microscopic and mesoscopic scale. We propose a theory of irreversible entropy production that is suited for quantum systems exposed to general, nonequilibrium reservoirs. We illustrate our framework by addressing a set of physically relevant situations that clarify both the features and the potential of our proposal.

We describe the observation of GW170104, a gravitational-wave signal produced by the coalescence of a pair of stellar-mass black holes. The signal was measured on January 4, 2017 at 10∶11:58.6 UTC by the twin advanced detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory during their second observing run, with a network signal-to-noise ratio of 13 and a false alarm rate less than 1 in 70 000 years. The inferred component black hole masses are $31.2_{-6.0}^{+8.4}{M}_{\odot }$ and $19.4_{-5.9}^{+5.3}{M}_{\odot }$ (at the 90% credible level). The black hole spins are best constrained through measurement of the effective inspiral spin parameter, a mass-weighted combination of the spin components perpendicular to the orbital plane, ${\chi }_{\mathrm{eff}}=-0.12_{-0.30}^{+0.21}$. This result implies that spin configurations with both component spins positively aligned with the orbital angular momentum are disfavored. The source luminosity distance is $880_{-390}^{+450}\mathrm{Mpc}$ corresponding to a redshift of $z=0.18_{-0.07}^{+0.08}$. We constrain the magnitude of modifications to the gravitational-wave dispersion relation and perform null tests of general relativity. Assuming that gravitons are dispersed in vacuum like massive particles, we bound the graviton mass to $m_g\le 7.7\times {10}^{-23}\mathrm{eV}/c^2$. In all cases, we find that GW170104 is consistent with general relativity.

For nearly a century, the universal logarithmic law of the mean velocity profile has been a mainstay of turbulent fluid mechanics and its teaching. Yet many experiments and numerical simulations are not fit exceedingly well by it, and the question whether the logarithmic law is indeed universal keeps turning up in discussion and in writing. Large experiments have been set up in various parts of the world to confirm or deny the logarithmic law and accurately estimate von Kármán’s constant, the coefficient that governs it. Here, we show that the discrepancy among flows in different (circular or plane) geometries can be ascribed to the effect of the pressure gradient. When this effect is accounted for in the form of a higher-order perturbation, universal agreement emerges beyond doubt and a satisfactorily simple formulation is established.

The MiniBooNE-DM Collaboration searched for vector-boson mediated production of dark matter using the Fermilab 8-GeV Booster proton beam in a dedicated run with $1.86\times 10^{20}$ protons delivered to a steel beam dump. The MiniBooNE detector, 490 m downstream, is sensitive to dark matter via elastic scattering with nucleons in the detector mineral oil. Analysis methods developed for previous MiniBooNE scattering results were employed, and several constraining data sets were simultaneously analyzed to minimize systematic errors from neutrino flux and interaction rates. No excess of events over background was observed, leading to a 90% confidence limit on the dark matter cross section parameter, $Y={\epsilon }^2{\alpha }_D(m_{\chi }/m_V{)}^4\lesssim {10}^{-8}$, for ${\alpha }_D=0.5$ and for dark matter masses of $0.01<m_{\chi }<0.3\mathrm{GeV}$ in a vector portal model of dark matter. This is the best limit from a dedicated proton beam dump search in this mass and coupling range and extends below the mass range of direct dark matter searches. These results demonstrate a novel and powerful approach to dark matter searches with beam dump experiments.

We demonstrate a quantum nanophotonics platform based on germanium-vacancy (GeV) color centers in fiber-coupled diamond nanophotonic waveguides. We show that GeV optical transitions have a high quantum efficiency and are nearly lifetime broadened in such nanophotonic structures. These properties yield an efficient interface between waveguide photons and a single GeV center without the use of a cavity or slow-light waveguide. As a result, a single GeV center reduces waveguide transmission by $18\pm 1\%$ on resonance in a single pass. We use a nanophotonic interferometer to perform homodyne detection of GeV resonance fluorescence. By probing the photon statistics of the output field, we demonstrate that the GeV–waveguide system is nonlinear at the single-photon level.

Remarkable mathematical properties of the integrable nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NLSE) can offer advanced solutions for the mitigation of nonlinear signal distortions in optical fiber links. Fundamental optical soliton, continuous, and discrete eigenvalues of the nonlinear spectrum have already been considered for the transmission of information in fiber-optic channels. Here, we propose to apply signal modulation to the kernel of the Gelfand-Levitan-Marchenko equations that offers the advantage of a relatively simple decoder design. First, we describe an approach based on exploiting the general $N$-soliton solution of the NLSE for simultaneous coding of $N$ symbols involving $4\times N$ coding parameters. As a specific elegant subclass of the general schemes, we introduce a soliton orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (SOFDM) method. This method is based on the choice of identical imaginary parts of the $N$-soliton solution eigenvalues, corresponding to equidistant soliton frequencies, making it similar to the conventional OFDM scheme, thus, allowing for the use of the efficient fast Fourier transform algorithm to recover the data. Then, we demonstrate how to use this new approach to control signal parameters in the case of the continuous spectrum.

We show that neutral anyonic excitations have a signature in spectroscopic measurements of materials: The low-energy onset of spectral functions near the threshold follows universal power laws with an exponent that depends only on the statistics of the anyons. This provides a route, using experimental techniques such as neutron scattering and tunneling spectroscopy, for detecting anyonic statistics in topologically ordered states such as gapped quantum spin liquids and hypothesized fractional Chern insulators. Our calculations also explain some recent theoretical results in spin systems.

Organic microcavities are photonic nanostructures that strongly confine the electromagnetic field, allowing exotic quantum regimes of light-matter interaction with disordered organic semiconductors. The unambiguous interpretation of the spectra of organic microcavities has been a long-standing challenge due to several competing effects involving electrons, vibrations, and cavity photons. Here we present a theoretical framework that is able to describe the main spectroscopic features of organic microcavities consistently. We introduce a class of light-matter excitations called dark vibronic polaritons, which strongly emit but only weakly absorb light in the same frequency region of the bare electronic transition. A successful comparison with experimental data demonstrates the applicability of our theory. The proposed microscopic understanding of organic microcavities paves the way for the development of optoelectronic devices enhanced by quantum optics.

We propose a photonic crystal nanocavity design with self-similar electromagnetic boundary conditions, achieving ultrasmall mode volume ($V_{\text{eff}}$). The electric energy density of a cavity mode can be maximized in the air or dielectric region, depending on the choice of boundary conditions. We illustrate the design concept with a silicon-air one-dimensional photon crystal cavity that reaches an ultrasmall mode volume of $V_{\text{eff}}\sim 7.01\times {10}^{-5}{\lambda }^3$ at $\lambda \sim 1550\mathrm{nm}$. We show that the extreme light concentration in our design can enable ultrastrong Kerr nonlinearities, even at the single-photon level. These features open new directions in cavity quantum electrodynamics, spectroscopy, and quantum nonlinear optics.

Upon cooling, glass-forming liquids experience a dynamic decoupling in the fast $\beta$ and slow $\alpha$ process, which has greatly influenced glass physics. By exploring an extremely wide temporal and temperature range, we find a surprising gradual change of the relaxation profile from a single-step to a two-step decay upon cooling in various metallic glasses. This behavior implies a decoupling of the relaxation in two different processes in a glass state: a faster one likely related to the anomalous stress-dominated microscopic dynamics, and a slower one associated with subdiffusive motion at larger scales with a broader distribution of relaxation times.

We demonstrate entanglement generation of two neutral atoms trapped inside an optical cavity. Entanglement is created from initially separable two-atom states through carving with weak photon pulses reflected from the cavity. A polarization rotation of the photons heralds the entanglement. We show the successful implementation of two different protocols and the generation of all four Bell states with a maximum fidelity of $(90\pm 2)\%$. The protocol works for any distance between cavity-coupled atoms, and no individual addressing is required. Our result constitutes an important step towards applications in quantum networks, e.g., for entanglement swapping in a quantum repeater.

Superconducting quantum circuits are a promising candidate for building scalable quantum computers. Here, we use a four-qubit superconducting quantum processor to solve a two-dimensional system of linear equations based on a quantum algorithm proposed by Harrow, Hassidim, and Lloyd [Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 150502 (2009)], which promises an exponential speedup over classical algorithms under certain circumstances. We benchmark the solver with quantum inputs and outputs, and characterize it by nontrace-preserving quantum process tomography, which yields a process fidelity of $0.837\pm 0.006$. Our results highlight the potential of superconducting quantum circuits for applications in solving large-scale linear systems, a ubiquitous task in science and engineering.

Tuning hard x-ray excitation energy along Cl $1s\to {\sigma }^{*}$ resonance in gaseous HCl allows manipulating molecular fragmentation in the course of the induced multistep ultrafast dissociation. The observations are supported by theoretical modeling, which shows a strong interplay between the topology of the potential energy curves, involved in the Auger cascades, and the so-called core-hole clock, which determines the time spent by the system in the very first step. The asymmetric profile of the fragmentation ratios reflects different dynamics of nuclear wave packets dependent on the photon energy.