We show that when the refractive index of a photonic system is harmonically modulated, the phase of the modulation introduces an effective gauge potential for photons. This effective gauge potential can be used to create a photonic Aharonov-Bohm effect. We show that the photonic Aharonov-Bohm effect provides the optimal mechanism for achieving complete on-chip nonmagnetic optical isolation.

We report the first demonstration of magnetically induced transmission in an opaque magnetized plasma. Magnetically induced transmission in a plasma is a classical analog to the electromagnetically induced transparency in atomic systems. The transmission of radiation through an axially magnetized plasma is obtained by applying an additional one dimensional transverse spatial periodic magnetic field. The transverse-periodic magnetic field uncouples the right-hand electromagnetic wave from interacting with plasma electrons, rendering the plasma band-stop transparent. This provides means to control the extent of absorption of electromagnetic radiation in magnetized plasma.

Because of its unique physical properties, graphene, a 2D honeycomb arrangement of carbon atoms, has attracted tremendous attention. Silicene, the graphene equivalent for silicon, could follow this trend, opening new perspectives for applications, especially due to its compatibility with Si-based electronics. Silicene has been theoretically predicted as a buckled honeycomb arrangement of Si atoms and having an electronic dispersion resembling that of relativistic Dirac fermions. Here we provide compelling evidence, from both structural and electronic properties, for the synthesis of epitaxial silicene sheets on a silver (111) substrate, through the combination of scanning tunneling microscopy and angular-resolved photoemission spectroscopy in conjunction with calculations based on density functional theory.

Are excitons involved in lasing in ZnO nanowires or not? Our recently developed and experimentally tested quantum many-body theory sheds new light on this question. We measured the laser thresholds and Fabry-Pérot laser modes for three radically different excitation schemes. The thresholds, photon energies, and mode spacings can all be explained by our theory, without invoking enhanced light-matter interaction, as is needed in an earlier excitonic model. Our conclusion is that lasing in ZnO nanowires at room temperature is not of excitonic nature, as is often thought, but instead is electron-hole plasma lasing.

We overcome the difficulties in pulling long draglines from spiders, twist bundles of dragline filaments, and succeed in preparing violin strings. The twisting is found to change the cross section shapes of filaments from circular to polygonal and to optimize the packing structure with no openings among filaments providing mechanically strong and elastic strings. The spider string signal peaks of overtones for the violin are relatively large at high frequencies, generating a soft and profound timbre. Such a preferable timbre is considered to be due to the unique polygonal packing structure which provides valuable knowledge for developing new types of materials.

The ${\chi }_b(nP)$ quarkonium states are produced in proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider at $\sqrt{s}=7\mathrm{TeV}$ and recorded by the ATLAS detector. Using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of $4.4{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$, these states are reconstructed through their radiative decays to ${\rm Y}(1S,2S)$ with ${\rm Y}\to {\mu }^{+}{\mu }^{-}$. In addition to the mass peaks corresponding to the decay modes ${\chi }_b(1P,2P)\to {\rm Y}(1S)\gamma$, a new structure centered at a mass of $10.530\pm 0.005(\mathrm{stat})\pm 0.009(\mathrm{syst})\mathrm{GeV}$ is also observed, in both the ${\rm Y}(1S)\gamma$ and ${\rm Y}(2S)\gamma$ decay modes. This structure is interpreted as the ${\chi }_b(3P)$ system.

Time-resolved magneto-optical imaging of laser-excited rare-earth orthoferrite $(\mathrm{SmPr}){\mathrm{FeO}}_3$ demonstrates that a single 60 fs circularly polarized laser pulse is capable of creating a magnetic domain on a picosecond time scale with a magnetization direction determined by the helicity of light. Depending on the light intensity and sample temperature, pulses of the same helicity can create domains with opposite magnetizations. We argue that this phenomenon relies on a twofold effect of light which (i) instantaneously excites coherent low-amplitude spin precession and (ii) triggers a spin reorientation phase transition. The former dynamically breaks the equivalence between two otherwise degenerate states with opposite magnetizations in the high-temperature phase and thus controls the route of the phase transition.

The yellowing of paper on aging causes major aesthetic damages of cultural heritage. It is due to cellulose oxidation, a complex process with many possible products still to be clarified. By comparing ultraviolet-visible reflectance spectra of ancient and artificially aged modern papers with ab initio time-dependent density functional theory calculations, we identify and estimate the abundance of oxidized functional groups acting as chromophores and responsible of paper yellowing. This knowledge can be used to set up strategies and selective chemical treatments preventing paper yellowing.

We present shot noise measurements on Au nanowires showing very pronounced vibration-mode features. In accordance to recent theoretical predictions the sign of the inelastic signal, i.e., the signal due to vibration excitations, depends on the transmission probability becoming negative below a certain transmission value. We argue that the negative contribution to noise arises from coherent two-electron processes mediated by electron-phonon scattering and the Pauli exclusion principle. These signals can provide unique information on the local phonon population and lattice temperature of the nanoscale system.

In Bacillus subtilis colonies, motile bacteria move collectively, spontaneously forming dynamic clusters. These bacterial clusters share similarities with other systems exhibiting polarized collective motion, such as bird flocks or fish schools. Here we study experimentally how velocity and orientation fluctuations within clusters are spatially correlated. For a range of cell density and cluster size, the correlation length is shown to be 30% of the spatial size of clusters, and the correlation functions collapse onto a master curve after rescaling the separation with correlation length. Our results demonstrate that correlations of velocity and orientation fluctuations are scale invariant in dynamic bacterial clusters.

Many experiments and simulations of packings of monodisperse hard spheres report a dominance of the face-centered cubic structure in the hexagonally close-packed limit, even though it has no significant energetic or entropic gain over other close-packed configurations. Combining simulations and experiments, we demonstrate that a simple mechanical instability which occurs during the packing process may play an important role in selecting the face-centered cubic structure over other close-packed alternatives. Our argument is supported by detailed quantitative analyses of key configurations in sphere packings and highlights the importance of the packing dynamics. The proposed mechanism is elementary and should therefore play a role in a wide range of sphere systems.

We explore the mechanism responsible for the ergodicity breaking in systems with long-range forces. In thermodynamic limit such systems do not evolve to the Boltzmann-Gibbs equilibrium, but become trapped in an out-of-equilibrium quasi-stationary-state. Nevertheless, we show that if the initial distribution satisfies a specific constraint—a generalized virial condition—the quasistationary state is very close to ergodic and can be described by Lynden-Bell statistics. On the other hand, if the generalized virial condition is violated, parametric resonances are excited, leading to chaos and ergodicity breaking.

We report the first experimental observation of a spatially localized dynamo magnetic field, a common feature of astrophysical dynamos and convective dynamo simulations. When the two propellers of the von Kármán sodium experiment are driven at frequencies that differ by 15%, the mean magnetic field’s energy measured close to the slower disk is nearly 10 times larger than the one close to the faster one. This strong localization of the magnetic field when a symmetry of the forcing is broken is in good agreement with a prediction based on the interaction between a dipolar and a quadrupolar magnetic mode.

We theoretically demonstrate the formation of a new type of unconventional superconductivity in graphene materials, which exhibits a gapless property. The studied superconductivity is based on an interlayer pairing of chiral electrons in bilayer graphene, which results in an exotic $s$-wave spin-triplet condensate order with anomalous thermodynamic properties. These include the possibility of a temperature-induced condensation causing an increase of the pairing gap with increasing temperature and an entropy of the stable superconducting state which can be higher than its value in the normal state. Our study reveals the analogy of the interlayer superconductivity in graphene materials to the color superconductivity in dense quark matter and the gapless pairing states in nuclear matter and ultracold atomic gases.

We show how to bridge the divide between atomic systems and electronic devices by engineering a coupling between the motion of a single ion and the quantized electric field of a resonant circuit. Our method can be used to couple the internal state of an ion to the quantized circuit with the same speed as the internal-state coupling between two ions. All the well-known quantum information protocols linking ion internal and motional states can be converted to protocols between circuit photons and ion internal states. Our results enable quantum interfaces between solid state qubits, atomic qubits, and light, and lay the groundwork for a direct quantum connection between electrical and atomic metrology standards.

We report optical spectroscopic measurements of molecular positronium (${\mathrm{Ps}}_2$), performed via a previously unobserved $L=1$ excited state. ${\mathrm{Ps}}_2$ molecules created in a porous silica film, and also in vacuum from an Al(111) crystal, were resonantly excited and then photoionized by pulsed lasers, providing conclusive evidence for the production of this molecular matter-antimatter system and its excited state. Future experiments making use of the photoionized vacuum $L=1$ ${\mathrm{Ps}}_2$ could provide a source of ${\mathrm{Ps}}^{+}$ ions, as well as other multipositronic systems, such as ${\mathrm{Ps}}_2{\mathrm{H}}^{-}$ or ${\mathrm{Ps}}_2\mathrm{O}$.

We use scanning gate microscopy to probe the ballistic motion of electrons within an open $\mathrm{GaAs}/\mathrm{AlGaAs}$ quantum dot. Conductance maps are recorded by scanning a biased tip over the open quantum dot while a magnetic field is applied. We show that, for specific magnetic fields, the measured conductance images resemble the classical transmitted and backscattered trajectories and their quantum mechanical analogue. In addition, we prove experimentally, with this direct measurement technique, the existence of pointer states. The demonstrated direct imaging technique is essential for the fundamental understanding of wave function scarring and quantum decoherence theory.

In two long-duration balloon flights over Antarctica, the Balloon-borne Experiment with a Superconducting Spectrometer (BESS) collaboration has searched for antihelium in the cosmic radiation with the highest sensitivity reported. BESS-Polar I flew in 2004, observing for 8.5 days. BESS-Polar II flew in 2007–2008, observing for 24.5 days. No antihelium candidate was found in BESS-Polar I data among $8.4\times {10}^6$ $|Z|=2$ nuclei from 1.0 to 20 GV or in BESS-Polar II data among $4.0\times {10}^7$ $|Z|=2$ nuclei from 1.0 to 14 GV. Assuming antihelium to have the same spectral shape as helium, a 95% confidence upper limit to the possible abundance of antihelium relative to helium of $6.9\times {10}^{-8}$ was determined combining all BESS data, including the two BESS-Polar flights. With no assumed antihelium spectrum and a weighted average of the lowest antihelium efficiencies for each flight, an upper limit of $1.0\times {10}^{-7}$ from 1.6 to 14 GV was determined for the combined BESS-Polar data. Under both antihelium spectral assumptions, these are the lowest limits obtained to date.

We present a general strategy to simulate a $D+1$-dimensional quantum system using a $D$-dimensional one. We analyze in detail a feasible implementation of our scheme using optical lattice technology. The simplest nontrivial realization of a fourth dimension corresponds to the creation of a bi-volume geometry. We also propose single- and many-particle experimental signatures to detect the effects of the extra dimension.

We address the problem of a Luttinger liquid with a scatterer that allows for both coherent and incoherent scattering channels. The asymptotic behavior at zero temperature is governed by a new stable fixed point: A Goldstone mode dominates the low energy dynamics, leading to universal behavior. This limit is marked by equal probabilities for forward and backward scattering. Notwithstanding this nontrivial scattering pattern, we find that the shot noise as well as cross-current correlations vanish. We thus present a paradigmatic picture of an impurity in the Luttinger model, alternative to the Kane-Fisher picture.