We show that puzzling recent experimental results on spin diffusion in a strongly interacting atomic gas may be understood in terms of the predicted spin diffusion coefficient for a generic strongly interacting system. Three important features play a central role: (a) Fick’s law for diffusion must be modified to allow for the trapping potential; (b) the diffusion coefficient is inhomogeneous, due to the density variations in the cloud; and (c) the diffusion approximation fails in the outer parts of the cloud, where the mean free path is long.

We discovered from first principles an unusual polar state in the low $n$ ${\mathrm{Sr}}_{n+1}{\mathrm{Ti}}_n{\mathrm{O}}_{3n+1}$ Ruddlesden-Popper (RP) layered perovskites in which ferroelectricity is nearly degenerate with antiferroelectricity, a relatively rare form of ferroic order. We show that epitaxial strain plays a key role in tuning the “perpendicular coherence length” of the ferroelectric mode, and does not induce ferroelectricity in these low-dimensional RP materials as is well known to occur in ${\mathrm{SrTiO}}_3$. These systems present an opportunity to manipulate the coherence length of a ferroic distortion in a controlled way, without disorder or a free surface.

We use Raman-assisted tunneling in an optical superlattice to generate large tunable effective magnetic fields for ultracold atoms. When hopping in the lattice, the accumulated phase shift by an atom is equivalent to the Aharonov-Bohm phase of a charged particle exposed to a staggered magnetic field of large magnitude, on the order of 1 flux quantum per plaquette. We study the ground state of this system and observe that the frustration induced by the magnetic field can lead to a degenerate ground state for noninteracting particles. We provide a measurement of the local phase acquired from Raman-induced tunneling, demonstrating time-reversal symmetry breaking of the underlying Hamiltonian. Furthermore, the quantum cyclotron orbit of single atoms in the lattice exposed to the magnetic field is directly revealed.

We report low-temperature, high-field magnetotransport measurements of ${\mathrm{SrTiO}}_3$ gated by an ionic gel electrolyte. A saturating resistance upturn and negative magnetoresistance that signal the emergence of the Kondo effect appear for higher applied gate voltages. This observation, enabled by the wide tunability of the ionic gel-applied electric field, promotes the interpretation of the electric field-effect-induced 2D electron system in ${\mathrm{SrTiO}}_3$ as an admixture of magnetic ${\mathrm{Ti}}^{3+}$ ions, i.e., localized and unpaired electrons, and delocalized electrons that partially fill the Ti $3d$ conduction band.

Examining botanical trees, Leonardo da Vinci noted that the total cross section of branches is conserved across branching nodes. In this Letter, it is proposed that this rule is a consequence of the tree skeleton having a self-similar structure and the branch diameters being adjusted to resist wind-induced loads.

Using heterostructures that combine a large-polarization ferroelectric (${\mathrm{BiFeO}}_3$) and a high-temperature superconductor (${\mathrm{YBa}}_2{\mathrm{Cu}}_3{\mathrm{O}}_{7-\delta }$), we demonstrate the modulation of the superconducting condensate at the nanoscale via ferroelectric field effects. Through this mechanism, a nanoscale pattern of normal regions that mimics the ferroelectric domain structure can be created in the superconductor. This yields an energy landscape for magnetic flux quanta and, in turn, couples the local ferroelectric polarization to the local magnetic induction. We show that this form of magnetoelectric coupling, together with the possibility to reversibly design the ferroelectric domain structure, allows the electrostatic manipulation of magnetic flux quanta.

Among the possibly most intriguing aspects of quantum entanglement is that it comes in free and bound instances. The existence of bound entangled states certifies an intrinsic irreversibility of entanglement in nature and suggests a connection with thermodynamics. In this Letter, we present a first unconditional, continuous-variable preparation and detection of a bound entangled state of light. We use convex optimization to identify regimes rendering its bound character well certifiable, and continuously produce a distributed bound entangled state with an extraordinary and unprecedented significance of more than 10 standard deviations away from both separability and distillability. Our results show that the approach chosen allows for the efficient and precise preparation of multimode entangled states of light with various applications in quantum information, quantum state engineering, and high precision metrology.

Satellite galaxies of the Milky Way are among the most promising targets for dark matter searches in gamma rays. We present a search for dark matter consisting of weakly interacting massive particles, applying a joint likelihood analysis to 10 satellite galaxies with 24 months of data of the Fermi Large Area Telescope. No dark matter signal is detected. Including the uncertainty in the dark matter distribution, robust upper limits are placed on dark matter annihilation cross sections. The $95\%$ confidence level upper limits range from about ${10}^{-26}{\mathrm{cm}}^3{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}$ at 5 GeV to about $5\times {10}^{-23}{\mathrm{cm}}^3{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}$ at 1 TeV, depending on the dark matter annihilation final state. For the first time, using gamma rays, we are able to rule out models with the most generic cross section ($\sim 3\times {10}^{-26}{\mathrm{cm}}^3{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}$ for a purely $s$-wave cross section), without assuming additional boost factors.

Dwarf spheroidal galaxies are known to be excellent targets for the detection of annihilating dark matter. We present new limits on the annihilation cross section of weakly interacting massive particles based on the joint analysis of seven Milky Way dwarfs using a frequentist Neyman construction and Pass 7 data from the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope. We exclude generic weakly interacting massive particle candidates annihilating into $b\overline{b}$ with a mass less than 40 GeV that reproduce the observed relic abundance. To within $95\%$ systematic errors on the dark matter distribution within the dwarfs, the mass lower limit can be as low as 19 GeV or as high as 240 GeV. For annihilation into ${\tau }^{+}{\tau }^{-}$, these limits become 19, 13, and 80 GeV, respectively.

Superconducting quantum circuits based on Josephson junctions have made rapid progress in demonstrating quantum behavior and scalability. However, the future prospects ultimately depend upon the intrinsic coherence of Josephson junctions, and whether superconducting qubits can be adequately isolated from their environment. We introduce a new architecture for superconducting quantum circuits employing a three-dimensional resonator that suppresses qubit decoherence while maintaining sufficient coupling to the control signal. With the new architecture, we demonstrate that Josephson junction qubits are highly coherent, with $T_2\sim 10$ to $20\mu \mathrm{s}$ without the use of spin echo, and highly stable, showing no evidence for $1/f$ critical current noise. These results suggest that the overall quality of Josephson junctions in these qubits will allow error rates of a few ${10}^{-4}$, approaching the error correction threshold.

Gedanken experiments help to reconcile our classical intuition with quantum mechanics and nowadays are routinely performed in the laboratory. An important open question is the quantum behavior of the controlling devices in such experiments. We propose a framework to analyze quantum-controlled experiments and illustrate it by discussing a quantum version of Wheeler’s delayed-choice experiment. Using a quantum control has several consequences. First, it enables us to measure complementary phenomena with a single experimental setup, pointing to a redefinition of complementarity principle. Second, it allows us to prove there are no consistent hidden-variable theories having “particle” and “wave” as realistic properties. Finally, it shows that a photon can have a morphing behavior between particle and wave. The framework can be extended to other experiments (e.g., Bell inequality).

If the dark matter consists of primordial black holes (PBHs), we show that gravitational lensing of stars being monitored by NASA’s Kepler search for extrasolar planets can cause significant numbers of detectable microlensing events. A search through the roughly 150 000 light curves would result in large numbers of detectable events for PBHs in the mass range $5\times {10}^{-10}{M}_{\odot }$ to ${10}^{-4}{M}_{\odot }$. Nondetection of these events would close almost 2 orders of magnitude of the mass window for PBH dark matter. The microlensing rate is higher than previously noticed due to a combination of the exceptional photometric precision of the Kepler mission and the increase in cross section due to the large angular sizes of the relatively nearby Kepler field stars. We also present a new formalism for calculating optical depth and microlensing rates in the presence of large finite-source effects.

Universal chiral Luttinger liquid behavior has been predicted for fractional quantum Hall edge states, but so far has not been observed experimentally in semiconductor-based two-dimensional electron gases. One likely cause of this absence of universality is the generic occurrence of edge reconstruction in such systems, which is the result of a competition between confinement potential and Coulomb repulsion. We show that due to a completely different mechanism of confinement, edge reconstruction can be avoided in graphene, which allows for the observation of the predicted universality.

We show that to explain the growth of the citation network by preferential attachment (PA), one has to accept that individual nodes exhibit heterogeneous fitness values that decay with time. While previous PA-based models assumed either heterogeneity or decay in isolation, we propose a simple analytically treatable model that combines these two factors. Depending on the input assumptions, the resulting degree distribution shows an exponential, log-normal or power-law decay, which makes the model an apt candidate for modeling a wide range of real systems.

We show that high fluence, high-intensity x-ray pulses from the world’s first hard x-ray free-electron laser produce nonlinear phenomena that differ dramatically from the linear x-ray–matter interaction processes that are encountered at synchrotron x-ray sources. We use intense x-ray pulses of sub-10-fs duration to first reveal and subsequently drive the $1s\leftrightarrow 2p$ resonance in singly ionized neon. This photon-driven cycling of an inner-shell electron modifies the Auger decay process, as evidenced by line shape modification. Our work demonstrates the propensity of high-fluence, femtosecond x-ray pulses to alter the target within a single pulse, i.e., to unveil hidden resonances, by cracking open inner shells energetically inaccessible via single-photon absorption, and to consequently trigger damaging electron cascades at unexpectedly low photon energies.

Spontaneous two-photon emission from a solid-state single quantum emitter is observed. We investigated photoluminescence from the neutral biexciton in a single semiconductor quantum dot coupled with a high $Q$ photonic crystal nanocavity. When the cavity is resonant to the half energy of the biexciton, the strong vacuum field in the cavity inspires the biexciton to simultaneously emit two photons into the mode, resulting in clear emission enhancement of the mode. Meanwhile, the suppression of other single photon emission from the biexciton was observed, as the two-photon emission process becomes faster than the others at the resonance.

Atomic diffusion in deformed ${\mathrm{Pd}}_{40}{\mathrm{Ni}}_{40}{\mathrm{P}}_{20}$ bulk metallic glass containing a single family of deformation-induced shear bands was measured by the radiotracer technique. The significant, by orders of magnitude, enhancement of the diffusion rate with respect to that in the untransformed matrix suggests that the shear bands represent short-circuit diffusion paths. Correlations between diffusivity, viscosity, and the excess free volume distribution inside of shear bands are discussed.

We achieve a quantum-noise-limited absorption sensitivity of $1.7\times {10}^{-12}{\mathrm{cm}}^{-1}$ per spectral element at 400 s of acquisition time with cavity-enhanced frequency comb spectroscopy, the highest demonstrated for a comb-based technique. The system comprises a frequency comb locked to a high-finesse cavity and a fast-scanning Fourier transform spectrometer with an ultralow-noise autobalancing detector. Spectra with a signal-to-noise ratio above 1000 and a resolution of 380 MHz are acquired within a few seconds. The measured absorption line shapes are in excellent agreement with theoretical predictions.

In this Letter, we provide a general methodology to directly measure topological order in cold atom systems. As an application, we propose the realization of a characteristic topological model, introduced by Haldane, using optical lattices loaded with fermionic atoms in two internal states. We demonstrate that time-of-flight measurements directly reveal the topological order of the system in the form of momentum-space Skyrmions.

A quantum mechanical superposition of a long-lived, localized phonon and a matter excitation is described. We identify a realization in strained silicon: a low-lying donor transition (P or Li) driven solely by acoustic phonons at wavelengths where high-$Q$ phonon cavities can be built. This phonon-matter resonance is shown to enter the strongly coupled regime where the “vacuum” Rabi frequency exceeds the spontaneous phonon emission into noncavity modes, phonon leakage from the cavity, and phonon anharmonicity and scattering. We introduce a micropillar distributed Bragg reflector $\mathrm{Si}/\mathrm{Ge}$ cavity, where $Q\simeq {10}^5–{10}^6$ and mode volumes $\mathcal{V}\lesssim 25{\lambda }^3$ are reachable. These results indicate that single or many-body devices based on these systems are experimentally realizable.