The superfluid stiffness fundamentally constrains the transition temperature of superconductors, especially in the strongly coupled regime. However, accurately determining this inherently quantum many-body property in microscopic models remains a significant challenge. In this Letter, we show how the quantum many-body bootstrap framework, specifically the reduced density matrix (RDM) bootstrap, can be leveraged to obtain rigorous lower bounds on the superfluid stiffness in frustration free interacting models with superconducting ground state. We numerically apply the method to a special class of frustration-free models, which are known as quantum geometric nesting models, for flatband superconductivity, where we uncover a general relation between the stiffness and the pair mass. Going beyond the familiar Hubbard case within this class, we find how additional interactions, notably simple magnetic couplings, can enhance the superfluid stiffness. Straightforward generalization of the method can lead to bounds on susceptibilities complementary to variational approaches. Our findings underscore the immense potential of the quantum many-body bootstrap as a powerful tool to derive rigorous bounds on physical quantities beyond energy.

Weak first-order pseudocriticality with approximate scale invariance has been observed in a variety of settings, including the intriguing case of deconfined criticality in $2+1$ dimensions. Recently, this has been interpreted as extremely slow flows (“walking behavior”) for real-valued couplings in proximity to a bona fide critical point with complex-valued couplings, described by a complex conformal field theory (CFT). Here we study an $\mathrm{SU}(N)$ generalization of the Heisenberg antiferromagnet, which is a familiar model for deconfined criticality in $2+1$ dimensions. We show that in $1+1$ dimensions the model is located near a complex CFT, whose proximity can be tuned as a function of $N$. We employ state-of-the-art quantum Monte Carlo simulations for continuous $N$ along with an improved loop estimator for the Rényi entanglement entropy based on a nonequilibrium work protocol. These techniques allow us to track the central charge of this model in detail as a function of $N$, where we observe excellent agreement with CFT predictions. Notably, this includes the region $N>2$, where the CFT moves into the complex plane and pseudocritical drifts enable us to recover the real part of the complex central charge with remarkable accuracy. Since the present model with $N=3$ is also equivalent to the spin-1 biquadratic model, our Letter sheds new light on the dimerized phase of the spin-1 chain, demonstrating that it is pseudocritical and proximate to a complex CFT.

We demonstrate a violation of local reciprocity in the interconversion between charge and orbital currents. By investigating orbital torque and orbital pumping in W/Ni bilayers, we show that the charge-orbital interconversion in the bulk of the W layer exhibits opposite signs in the direct and inverse processes—the direct and inverse orbital Hall effects being positive and negative, respectively. This finding provides direct evidence of local nonreciprocity in the charge-orbital interconversion, in agreement with a theoretical prediction. These results highlight the unique characteristics of charge-orbital coupled transport and offer fundamental insights into the mechanisms underlying orbital-current-driven phenomena.

We propose a method for inferring entropy production (EP) in high-dimensional stochastic systems, including many-body systems and non-Markovian systems with long memory. Standard techniques for estimating EP become intractable in such systems due to computational and statistical limitations. We infer trajectory-level EP and lower bounds on average EP by exploiting a nonequilibrium analogue of the maximum entropy principle, along with convex duality. Our approach uses only samples of trajectory observables, such as spatiotemporal correlations. It does not require reconstruction of high-dimensional probability distributions or rate matrices, nor impose any special assumptions such as discrete states or multipartite dynamics. In addition, it may be used to compute a hierarchical decomposition of EP, reflecting contributions from different interaction orders, and it has an intuitive physical interpretation as a “thermodynamic uncertainty relation.” We demonstrate its numerical performance on a disordered nonequilibrium spin model with 1000 spins and a large neural spike-train dataset.

Anticipating critical transitions in complex dynamical systems is often hindered by the need for explicit knowledge of the bifurcation parameter. We present a fully data-driven framework that combines a variational autoencoder with reservoir computing to overcome this limitation. The variational autoencoder autonomously extracts latent driving factors from time-series data in an unsupervised manner, providing effective control parameters for the reservoir computer to forecast imminent transitions. This approach eliminates dependence on prior parameter knowledge and enables direct prediction from raw observations. By linking inferred latent variables to the system’s dynamical evolution, the framework establishes a general paradigm for identifying and predicting critical transitions in nonlinear systems. Its effectiveness is demonstrated on benchmark examples, including the spatiotemporal Kuramoto-Sivashinsky system, and the method naturally extends to systems influenced by multiple parameters or with incomplete state information.

When materials are deformed at extreme strain rates, $>{10}^6{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}$, a counterintuitive mechanical response is seen where the strength and hardness of pure metals increases with increasing temperature. This antithermal hardening is due to dislocations meeting resistance to their motion from phonons in the crystal lattice. However, here, using optically driven microballistic impact testing to measure dynamic strength and hardness, we show that when the composition is systematically varied away from high purity, the mechanical response of metals transitions from phonon drag of dislocations back to thermally activated pinning of dislocations, even at the highest strain rates. This boundary from “hotter-is-stronger” to “hotter-is-softer” is observed and mapped for nickel, titanium, and gold. The ability to tune between deformation mechanisms with very different temperature dependencies speaks to new directions for alloy design in extreme conditions.

We investigate the role of generalized symmetries in driving nonequilibrium and nonlinear phenomena, specifically focusing on turbulent systems. While conventional turbulence studies have revealed inverse cascades driven by conserved quantities integrated over the entire space, such as helicity in three spatial dimensions, the influence of higher-form symmetries, whose conserved charges are defined by integration over subspaces, remains largely unexplored. We demonstrate a novel mechanism where higher-form symmetries naturally induce a self-similar inverse cascade. Taking axion electrodynamics with nonlinear topological interaction as a paradigmatic example, we show that the conserved charge associated with its 1-form symmetry drives the system toward large-scale coherent structures through a universal scaling behavior characterized by analytically determined scaling exponents. Our findings suggest that higher-form symmetries can provide a fundamental organizing principle for understanding nonequilibrium phenomena and the emergence of coherent structures in turbulent systems.

A search is presented for the two-body charmed baryonic decays, ${\overline{B}}_{(s)}^0\to {\mathrm{\Lambda }}_c^{+}{\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}}_c^{-}$, using a data sample collected by the LHCb experiment during 2011–2012 and 2015–2018, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of $9{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$. The first observation of the ${\overline{B}}_s^0\to {\mathrm{\Lambda }}_c^{+}{\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}}_c^{-}$ decay is reported with $6.2\sigma$ significance along with $4.3\sigma$ evidence for the ${\overline{B}}^0\to {\mathrm{\Lambda }}_c^{+}{\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}}_c^{-}$ decay. The branching fractions are measured to be $\mathcal{B}({\overline{B}}^0\to {\mathrm{\Lambda }}_c^{+}{\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}}_c^{-})=(1.01_{-0.28}^{+0.27}\pm 0.08\pm 0.15)\times {10}^{-5}$ and $\mathcal{B}({\overline{B}}_s^0\to {\mathrm{\Lambda }}_c^{+}{\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}}_c^{-})=(5.0\pm 1.3\pm 0.5\pm 0.8)\times {10}^{-5}$, where the first uncertainty is statistical, the second systematic, and the third due to external inputs. These results provide novel experimental inputs for the theoretical framework describing two-body baryonic decays of $B$ mesons via $W$-emission and $W$-exchange mechanisms.

A mixed quantum state can be taken as capturing an unspecified form of ignorance; or as describing the lack of knowledge about the true pure state of the system (“proper mixture”); or as arising from entanglement with another system that has been disregarded (“improper mixture”). These different views yield identical density matrices and therefore identical predictions for future measurements. But when used as prior beliefs for inferring the past state from later observations (“retrodiction”), they lead to different updated beliefs. This is a purely quantum feature of Bayesian agency. Based on this observation, we establish a framework for retrodicting on any quantum belief and we prove a necessary and sufficient condition for the equivalence of beliefs. We also illustrate how these differences have operational consequences in quantum state recovery.

Quantum systems that interact nonlocally with an environment are paradigms for exploring collective phenomena. They naturally emerge in various physical contexts involving long-range, many-body interactions. We consider a general class of such open systems characterized by a coupling to the environment that is inversely proportional to the square root of the environment size. We show that the induced system dynamics has a universal bosonic nature: the same evolution arises from coupling the system to a collection of noninteracting bosonic modes, independently of the microscopic structure of the original environment. This emergent “bosonization” of the environment’s influence results from the scaling of the coupling in the thermodynamic limit and is a manifestation of the quantum central limit theorem. While the effect has been observed in specific models before, we show that it is, in fact, a universal feature.

Open driven quantum systems have defined a powerful paradigm of nonequilibrium phases and phase transitions; however, quantum phase transitions are generically not expected in this setting due to the decohering effect of dissipation. In this Letter, we consider a quantum Ising model subject to bulk dissipation (at rate $\mathrm{\Gamma }$) and show that, although the correlation length remains finite (hence no phase transition), it develops a pronounced peak close to the ground-state quantum critical point. While standard techniques fail in this regime, we develop a versatile analytical approach that becomes exact with vanishing dissipation ($\mathrm{\Gamma }\to 0$ but finite $\mathrm{\Gamma }t$). On a technical level, our approach builds on previous work where the state of the system is described by a slowly evolving generalized Gibbs ensemble that accounts for the integrability of the Hamiltonian while treating dissipation perturbatively. Finally, we demonstrate a kind of universality in that integrability-breaking perturbations of the Hamiltonian lead to the same behavior. To this end, we first show that the steady state of a chaotic Ising Hamiltonian under local Markovian dissipation that preserves the Ising symmetry, and in the limit $\mathrm{\Gamma }\to 0$, is identical to that of quench dynamics in the absence of dissipation. This intriguing connection then allows us to draw on recent findings about quantum phase transition signatures in quench dynamics.

We present a deterministic protocol for the preparation of entangled states in the symmetric Dicke subspace of $N$ spins coupled to a common cavity mode that prepares entangled states useful for quantum sensing, achieving a precision significantly better than the standard quantum limit in the presence of photon cavity loss, spontaneous emission and dephasing. The protocol combines a new geometric phase gate which can be utilized for exact unitary synthesis on the Dicke subspace, an analytic solution of the noisy quantum channel dynamics and optimal control methods. This Letter opens the way to entanglement-enhanced sensing with cold trapped atoms in cavities and is extendable to other spin systems coupled to a bosonic mode.

The Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometer is a foundational tool in quantum optics with both fundamental and practical significance. Earlier works identified that input-state symmetry under exchange of the two spatial modes is fundamental in the understanding of the Hong-Ou-Mandel effect. We now show that this notion of symmetry is central to generalizing this effect. In particular, this point of view enables the construction of extensions beyond the standard two single-photon case to arbitrary input states, as well as to configurations with more than two spatial modes via a natural generalization of the beam splitter to a discrete Fourier transform interferometer. Beyond its conceptual significance, this framework offers direct insights into quantum metrology, showing how symmetry properties of input states allow for the computation of explicit precision bounds. By focusing on symmetry, we provide a perspective that simplifies and unifies a range of known results while paving the way for new developments in quantum interference and sensing.