We introduce a novel nonminimal coupling between gravity and the inflaton sector. Remarkably, for large values of this coupling all models asymptote to a universal attractor. This behavior is independent of the original scalar potential and generalizes the attractor in the ${\phi }^4$ theory with nonminimal coupling to gravity. The attractor is located in the “sweet spot” of parameter values that are preferred by Planck’s recent results.

We consider the time evolution of entanglement entropy after a global quench in a strongly coupled holographic system, whose subsequent equilibration is described in the gravity dual by the gravitational collapse of a thin shell of matter resulting in a black hole. In the limit of large regions of entanglement, the evolution of entanglement entropy is controlled by the geometry around and inside the event horizon of the black hole, resulting in regimes of pre-local-equilibration quadratic growth (in time), post-local-equilibration linear growth, a late-time regime in which the evolution does not carry memory of the size and shape of the entangled region, and a saturation regime with critical behavior resembling those in continuous phase transitions. Collectively, these regimes suggest a picture of entanglement growth in which an “entanglement tsunami” carries entanglement inward from the boundary. We also make a conjecture on the maximal rate of entanglement growth in relativistic systems.

Effective methods for decoupling superconducting qubits (SQs) from parasitic environmental noise sources are critical for increasing their lifetime and phase fidelity. While considerable progress has been made in this area, the microscopic origin of noise remains largely unknown. In this work, first principles density functional theory calculations are employed to identify the microscopic origins of magnetic noise sources in SQs on an $\alpha \mathrm{\text{−}}{\mathrm{Al}}_2{\mathrm{O}}_3$ substrate. The results indicate that it is unlikely that the existence of intrinsic point defects and defect complexes in the substrate are responsible for low frequency noise in these systems. Rather, a comprehensive analysis of extrinsic defects shows that surface aluminum ions interacting with ambient molecules will form a bath of magnetic moments that can couple to the SQ paramagnetically. The microscopic origin of this magnetic noise source is discussed and strategies for ameliorating the effects of these magnetic defects are proposed.

We show that scattering from a single gold nanoparticle is saturable for the first time. Wavelength-dependent study reveals that the saturation behavior is governed by depletion of surface plasmon resonance, not the thermal effect. We observed interesting flattening of the point spread function of scattering from a single nanoparticle due to saturation. By extracting the saturated part of scattering via temporal modulation, we achieve $\lambda /8$ point spread function in far-field imaging with unambiguous separation of adjacent particles.

We report on the creation of a degenerate dipolar Fermi gas of erbium atoms. We force evaporative cooling in a fully spin-polarized sample down to temperatures as low as 0.2 times the Fermi temperature. The strong magnetic dipole-dipole interaction enables elastic collisions between identical fermions even in the zero-energy limit. The measured elastic scattering cross section agrees well with the predictions from the dipolar scattering theory, which follow a universal scaling law depending only on the dipole moment and on the atomic mass. Our approach to quantum degeneracy proceeds with very high cooling efficiency and provides large atomic densities, and it may be extended to various dipolar systems.

Producing large samples of slow molecules from thermal-velocity ensembles is a formidable challenge. Here we employ a centrifugal force to produce a continuous molecular beam with a high flux at near-zero velocities. We demonstrate deceleration of three electrically guided molecular species, ${\mathrm{CH}}_3\mathrm{F}$, ${\mathrm{CF}}_3\mathrm{H}$, and ${\mathrm{CF}}_3\mathrm{CCH}$, with input velocities of up to $200{\mathrm{m}\mathrm{s}}^{-1}$ to obtain beams with velocities below $15{\mathrm{m}\mathrm{s}}^{-1}$ and intensities of several ${10}^9{\mathrm{mm}}^{-2}{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}$. The centrifuge decelerator is easy to operate and can, in principle, slow down any guidable particle. It has the potential to become a standard technique for continuous deceleration of molecules.

In a “thought experiment,” now a classic in physics pedagogy, Feynman visualizes Young’s double-slit interference experiment with electrons in magnetic field. He shows that the addition of an Aharonov-Bohm phase is equivalent to shifting the zero-field wave interference pattern by an angle expected from the Lorentz force calculation for classical particles. We have performed this experiment with one slit, instead of two, where ballistic electrons within two-dimensional electron gas diffract through a small orifice formed by a quantum point contact (QPC). As the QPC width is comparable to the electron wavelength, the observed intensity profile is further modulated by the transverse waveguide modes present at the injector QPC. Our experiments open the way to realizing diffraction-based ideas in mesoscopic physics.

The scattering rate in dark-matter direct-detection experiments should modulate annually due to Earth’s orbit around the Sun. The rate is typically thought to be extremized around June 1, when the relative velocity of Earth with respect to the dark-matter wind is maximal. We point out that gravitational focusing can alter this modulation phase. Unbound dark-matter particles are focused by the Sun’s gravitational potential, affecting their phase-space density in the lab frame. Gravitational focusing can result in a significant overall shift in the annual-modulation phase, which is most relevant for dark matter with low scattering speeds. The induced phase shift for light $O(10)\mathrm{GeV}$ dark matter may also be significant, depending on the threshold energy of the experiment.

This Letter investigates a hybrid quantum system combining cavity quantum electrodynamics and optomechanics. The Hamiltonian problem of a photon mode coupled to a two-level atom via a Jaynes-Cummings coupling and to a mechanical mode via radiation pressure coupling is solved analytically. The atom-cavity polariton number operator commutes with the total Hamiltonian leading to an exact description in terms of tripartite atom-cavity-mechanics polarons. We demonstrate the possibility to obtain cooling of mechanical motion at the single-polariton level and describe the peculiar quantum statistics of phonons in such an unconventional regime.

Most treatments of large scale anomalies in the microwave sky are a posteriori, with unquantified look-elsewhere effects. We contrast these with physical models of specific inhomogeneities in the early Universe which can generate these apparent anomalies. Physical models predict correlations between candidate anomalies and the corresponding signals in polarization and large scale structure, reducing the impact of cosmic variance. We compute the apparent spatial curvature associated with large-scale inhomogeneities and show that it is typically small, allowing for a self-consistent analysis. As an illustrative example we show that a single large plane wave inhomogeneity can contribute to low-$l$ mode alignment and odd-even asymmetry in the power spectra and the best-fit model accounts for a significant part of the claimed odd-even asymmetry. We argue that this approach can be generalized to provide a more quantitative assessment of potential large scale anomalies in the Universe.

We report on three-dimensional (3D) imaging of individual Gd dopant atoms in a thin ($\sim 2.3\mathrm{nm}$) foil of ${\mathrm{SrTiO}}_3$, using quantitative scanning transmission electron microscopy. Uncertainties in the depth positions of individual dopants are less than 1 unit cell. The overall dopant concentration measured from atom column intensities agrees quantitatively with electrical measurements. The method is applied to analyze the 3D arrangement of dopants within small clusters containing 4–5 Gd atoms.

Probes of cosmic expansion constitute the main basis for arguments to support or refute a possible apparent acceleration due to different expansion rates in the Universe as described by inhomogeneous cosmological models. We present in this Letter a separate argument based on results from an analysis of the growth rate of large-scale structure in the Universe as modeled by the inhomogeneous cosmological models of Szekeres. We use the models with no assumptions of spherical or axial symmetries. We find that while the Szekeres models can fit very well the observed expansion history without a $\mathrm{\Lambda }$, they fail to produce the observed late-time suppression in the growth unless $\mathrm{\Lambda }$ is added to the dynamics. A simultaneous fit to the supernova and growth factor data shows that the cold dark matter model with a cosmological constant ($\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}$) provides consistency with the data at a confidence level of 99.65%, while the Szekeres model without $\mathrm{\Lambda }$ achieves only a 60.46% level. When the data sets are considered separately, the Szekeres with no $\mathrm{\Lambda }$ fits the supernova data as well as the $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}$ does, but provides a very poor fit to the growth data with only 31.31% consistency level compared to 99.99% for the $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}$. This absence of late-time growth suppression in inhomogeneous models without a is consolidated by a physical explanation.

Correlations in quantum systems exhibit a rich phenomenology under the effect of various sources of noise. We investigate theoretically and experimentally the dynamics of quantum correlations and their classical counterparts in two nuclear magnetic resonance setups, as measured by geometric quantifiers based on trace norm. We consider two-qubit systems prepared in Bell diagonal states, and perform the experiments in real decohering environments resulting from Markovian local noise which preserves the Bell diagonal form of the states. We then report the first observation of environment-induced double sudden transitions in the geometric quantum correlations, a genuinely nonclassical effect not observable in classical correlations. The evolution of classical correlations in our physical implementation reveals in turn the finite-time relaxation to a pointer basis under nondissipative decoherence, which we characterize geometrically in full analogy with predictions based on entropic measures.

I present a simple model that exhibits a temporal analogue of superconducting crystalline (Larkin-Ovchinnikov-Ferrell-Fulde) ordering, with a time-dependent order parameter. I sketch designs for minimally dissipative ac circuits, all based on time translation symmetry ($\tau$) invariant dynamics, exploiting weak links (Josephson effects). These systems violate $\tau$ spontaneously. I also discuss effective theories of that phenomenon, and space-time generalizations.

Artificially implementing the biological light reactions responsible for the remarkably efficient photon-to-charge conversion in photosynthetic complexes represents a new direction for the future development of photovoltaic devices. Here, we develop such a paradigm and present a model photocell based on the nanoscale architecture and molecular elements of photosynthetic reaction centers. Quantum interference of photon absorption and emission induced by the dipole-dipole interaction between molecular excited states guarantees an enhanced light-to-current conversion and power generation for a wide range of electronic, thermal, and optical parameters for optimized dipolar geometries. This result opens a promising new route for designing artificial light-harvesting devices inspired by biological photosynthesis and quantum technologies.

The breakdown of magnons, the quasiparticles of magnetic systems, has rarely been seen. By using an inelastic neutron scattering technique, we report the observation of spontaneous magnon decay in multiferroic ${\mathrm{LuMnO}}_3$, a simple two dimensional Heisenberg triangular lattice antiferromagnet, with large spin $S=2$. The origin of this rare phenomenon lies in the nonvanishing cubic interaction between magnons in the spin Hamiltonian arising from the noncollinear 120° spin structure. We observed all three key features of the nonlinear effects as theoretically predicted: a rotonlike minimum, a flat mode, and a linewidth broadening, in our inelastic neutron scattering measurements of single crystal ${\mathrm{LuMnO}}_3$. Our results show that quasiparticles in a system hitherto thought of as “classical” can indeed break down.

A unique spin depolarization mechanism, induced by the presence of $g$-factor anisotropy and intervalley scattering, is revealed by spin-transport measurements on long-distance germanium devices in a magnetic field longitudinal to the initial spin orientation. The confluence of electron-phonon scattering (leading to Elliott-Yafet spin flips) and this previously unobserved physics enables the extraction of spin lifetime solely from spin-valve measurements, without spin precession, and in a regime of substantial electric-field-generated carrier heating. We find spin lifetimes in Ge up to several hundreds of nanoseconds at low temperature, far beyond any other available experimental results.

We report here the first direct observation of U(V) in uranium binary oxides and analyze the gradual conversion of the U oxidation state in the mixed uranium systems. Our finding clarifies previous contradicting results and provides important input for the geological disposal of spent fuel, recycling applications, and chemistry of uranium species.

We report results of a search for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPS) with the silicon detectors of the CDMS II experiment. This blind analysis of 140.2 kg day of data taken between July 2007 and September 2008 revealed three WIMP-candidate events with a surface-event background estimate of ${0.41}_{-0.08}^{+0.20}(\mathrm{stat}{)}_{-0.24}^{+0.28}(\mathrm{syst})$. Other known backgrounds from neutrons and ${}^{206}\mathrm{Pb}$ are limited to $<0.13$ and $<0.08$ events at the 90% confidence level, respectively. The exposure of this analysis is equivalent to 23.4 kg day for a recoil energy range of 7–100 keV for a WIMP of mass $10\mathrm{GeV}/c^2$. The probability that the known backgrounds would produce three or more events in the signal region is 5.4%. A profile likelihood ratio test of the three events that includes the measured recoil energies gives a 0.19% probability for the known-background-only hypothesis when tested against the alternative $\mathrm{\text{WIMP}}+\mathrm{\text{background}}$ hypothesis. The highest likelihood occurs for a WIMP mass of $8.6\mathrm{GeV}/c^2$ and WIMP-nucleon cross section of $1.9\times {10}^{-41}{\mathrm{cm}}^2$.

We introduce a new $N=1$ no-scale supergravity model with $F$- and $D$-term breaking. It contains a single chiral supermultiplet $\mathcal{T}$ and a single U(1) vector multiplet $U$, gauging a nonanomalous axionic shift symmetry. Both supersymmetry and the gauge symmetry are spontaneously broken, with the spin-$3/2$, spin-1, and spin-$1/2$ masses sliding along a classical flat direction, with a single real massless scalar in the spectrum. The other degrees of freedom are absorbed by the massive gravitino and vector. We extend our model, under very mild conditions, to general gauge groups and matter content.