Filamentous polymer networks govern the mechanical properties of many biological materials. Force distributions within these networks are typically highly inhomogeneous, and, although the importance of force distributions for structural properties is well recognized, they are far from being understood quantitatively. Using a combination of probabilistic and graph-theoretical techniques, we derive force distributions in a model system consisting of ensembles of random linear spring networks on a circle. We show that characteristic quantities, such as the mean and variance of the force supported by individual springs, can be derived explicitly in terms of only two parameters: (i) average connectivity and (ii) number of nodes. Our analysis shows that a classical mean-field approach fails to capture these characteristic quantities correctly. In contrast, we demonstrate that network topology is a crucial determinant of force distributions in an elastic spring network. Our results for 1D linear spring networks readily generalize to arbitrary dimensions.

Reconstructive surgeries often use topological manipulation of tissue to minimize postoperative scarring. The most common version of this, $Z$-plasty, involves modifying a straight line cut into a $Z$ shape, followed by a rotational transposition of the resulting triangular pedicle flaps, and a final restitching of the wound. This locally reorients the anisotropic stress field and reduces the potential for scarring. We analyze the planar geometry and mechanics of the $Z$-plasty to quantify the rotation of the overall stress field and the local forces on the restitched cut using theory, simulations, and simple physical $Z$-plasty experiments with foam sheets that corroborate each other. Our study rationalizes the most typical surgical choice of this angle, and opens the way for a range of surgical decisions by characterizing the stresses along the cut.

Multilayer networks describe well many real interconnected communication and transportation systems, ranging from computer networks to multimodal mobility infrastructures. Here, we introduce a model in which the nodes have a limited capacity of storing and processing the agents moving over a multilayer network, and their congestions trigger temporary faults which, in turn, dynamically affect the routing of agents seeking for uncongested paths. The study of the network performance under different layer velocities and node maximum capacities reveals the existence of delicate trade-offs between the number of served agents and their time to travel to destination. We provide analytical estimates of the optimal buffer size at which the travel time is minimum and of its dependence on the velocity and number of links at the different layers. Phenomena reminiscent of the slower is faster effect and of the Braess’ paradox are observed in our dynamical multilayer setup.

We present a scheme for measuring Rényi entropies in generic atomic Hubbard and spin models using single copies of a quantum state and for partitions in arbitrary spatial dimensions. Our approach is based on the generation of random unitaries from random quenches, implemented using engineered time-dependent disorder potentials, and standard projective measurements, as realized by quantum gas microscopes. By analyzing the properties of the generated unitaries and the role of statistical errors, with respect to the size of the partition, we show that the protocol can be realized in existing quantum simulators and used to measure, for instance, area law scaling of entanglement in two-dimensional spin models or the entanglement growth in many-body localized systems.

The law of statistical physics dictates that generic closed quantum many-body systems initialized in nonequilibrium will thermalize under their own dynamics. However, the emergence of many-body localization (MBL) owing to the interplay between interaction and disorder, which is in stark contrast to Anderson localization, which only addresses noninteracting particles in the presence of disorder, greatly challenges this concept, because it prevents the systems from evolving to the ergodic thermalized state. One critical evidence of MBL is the long-time logarithmic growth of entanglement entropy, and a direct observation of it is still elusive due to the experimental challenges in multiqubit single-shot measurement and quantum state tomography. Here we present an experiment fully emulating the MBL dynamics with a 10-qubit superconducting quantum processor, which represents a spin-$1/2$ $XY$ model featuring programmable disorder and long-range spin-spin interactions. We provide essential signatures of MBL, such as the imbalance due to the initial nonequilibrium, the violation of eigenstate thermalization hypothesis, and, more importantly, the direct evidence of the long-time logarithmic growth of entanglement entropy. Our results lay solid foundations for precisely simulating the intriguing physics of quantum many-body systems on the platform of large-scale multiqubit superconducting quantum processors.

The optimal parameters for nuclear excitation by electron capture in plasma environments generated by the interaction of ultrastrong optical lasers with solid matter are investigated theoretically. As a case study we consider a 4.85 keV nuclear transition starting from the long-lived ${}^{93\mathrm{m}}\mathrm{Mo}$ isomer that can lead to the release of the stored 2.4 MeV excitation energy. We find that due to the complex plasma dynamics, the nuclear excitation rate and the actual number of excited nuclei do not reach their maximum at the same laser parameters. The nuclear excitation achievable with a high-power optical laser is up to twelve and up to six orders of magnitude larger than the values predicted for direct resonant and secondary plasma-mediated excitation at the x-ray free electron laser, respectively. Our results show that the experimental observation of the nuclear excitation of ${}^{93\mathrm{m}}\mathrm{Mo}$ and the subsequent release of stored energy should be possible at laser facilities available today.

We investigate the effects of high fluid velocities on flow and tracer transport in heterogeneous porous media. We simulate fluid flow and advective transport through two-dimensional pore-scale matrices with varying structural complexity. As the Reynolds number increases, the flow regime transitions from linear to nonlinear; this behavior is controlled by the medium structure, where higher complexity amplifies inertial effects. The result is, nonintuitively, increased homogenization of the flow field, which leads in the context of conservative chemical transport to less anomalous behavior. We quantify the transport patterns via a continuous time random walk, using the spatial distribution of the kinetic energy within the fluid as a characteristic measure.

The nonlinear Schrödinger equation, used to describe the dynamics of quantum fluids, is known to be valid not only for massive particles but also for the propagation of light in a nonlinear medium, predicting condensation of classical waves. Here we report on the initial evolution of random waves with Gaussian statistics using atomic vapors as an efficient two dimensional nonlinear medium. Experimental and theoretical analysis of near field images reveal a phenomenon of nonequilibrium precondensation, characterized by a fast relaxation towards a precondensate fraction of up to 75%. Such precondensation is in contrast to complete thermalization to the Rayleigh-Jeans equilibrium distribution, requiring prohibitive long interaction lengths.

Liquid crystals (LCs) are known to undergo rapid ordering transitions with virtually no hysteresis. We report a remarkable counterexample, itraconazole, where the nematic to smectic transition is avoided at a cooling rate exceeding $20\mathrm{K}/\mathrm{s}$. The smectic order trapped in a glass is the order reached by the equilibrium liquid before the kinetic arrest of the end-over-end molecular rotation. This is attributed to the fact that smectic ordering requires orientational ordering and suggests a general condition for preparing organic glasses with tunable LC order for electronic applications.

We present an experiment on crystallization of packings of macroscopic granular spheres. This system is often considered to be a model for thermally driven atomic or colloidal systems. Cyclically shearing a packing of frictional spheres, we observe a first order phase transition from a disordered to an ordered state. The ordered state consists of crystallites of mixed fcc and hcp symmetry that coexist with the amorphous bulk. The transition, initiated by homogeneous nucleation, overcomes a barrier at 64.5% volume fraction. Nucleation consists predominantly of the dissolving of small nuclei and the growth of nuclei that have reached a critical size of about ten spheres.

Magnetotransport measurements in combination with molecular dynamics simulations on two-dimensional disordered Lorentz gases in the classical regime are reported. In quantitative agreement between experiment and simulation, the magnetoconductivity displays a pronounced peak as a function of the perpendicular magnetic field $B$ which cannot be explained by existing kinetic theories. This peak is linked to the onset of a directed motion of the electrons along the contour of the disordered obstacle matrix when the cyclotron radius becomes smaller than the size of the obstacles. This directed motion leads to transient superdiffusive motion and strong scaling corrections in the vicinity of the insulator-to-conductor transitions of the Lorentz gas.

The controlled generation and identification of quantum correlations, usually encoded in either qubits or continuous degrees of freedom, builds the foundation of quantum information science. Recently, more sophisticated approaches, involving a combination of two distinct degrees of freedom, have been proposed to improve on the traditional strategies. Hyperentanglement describes simultaneous entanglement in more than one distinct degree of freedom, whereas hybrid entanglement refers to entanglement shared between a discrete and a continuous degree of freedom. In this work we propose a scheme that allows us to combine the two approaches, and to extend them to the strongest form of quantum correlations. Specifically, we show how two identical, initially separated particles can be manipulated to produce Bell nonlocality among their spins, among their momenta, as well as across their spins and momenta. We discuss possible experimental realizations with atomic and photonic systems.

A mobile impurity coupled to a weakly interacting Bose gas, a Bose polaron, displays several interesting effects. While a single attractive quasiparticle is known to exist at zero temperature, we show here that the spectrum splits into two quasiparticles at finite temperatures for sufficiently strong impurity-boson interaction. The ground state quasiparticle has minimum energy at $T_c$, the critical temperature for Bose-Einstein condensation, and it becomes overdamped when $T\gg T_c$. The quasiparticle with higher energy instead exists only below $T_c$, since it is a strong mixture of the impurity with thermally excited collective Bogoliubov modes. This phenomenology is not restricted to ultracold gases, but should occur whenever a mobile impurity is coupled to a medium featuring a gapless bosonic mode with a large population for finite temperature.

One of the largest obstacles to building a quantum computer is gate error, where the physical evolution of the state of a qubit or group of qubits during a gate operation does not match the intended unitary transformation. Gate error stems from a combination of control errors and random single qubit errors from interaction with the environment. While great strides have been made in mitigating control errors, intrinsic qubit error remains a serious problem that limits gate fidelity in modern qubit architectures. Simultaneously, recent developments of small error-corrected logical qubit devices promise significant increases in logical state lifetime, but translating those improvements into increases in gate fidelity is a complex challenge. In this Letter, we construct protocols for gates on and between small logical qubit devices which inherit the parent device’s tolerance to single qubit errors which occur at any time before or during the gate. We consider two such devices, a passive implementation of the three-qubit bit flip code, and the author’s own [E. Kapit, Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 150501 (2016)] very small logical qubit (VSLQ) design, and propose error-tolerant gate sets for both. The effective logical gate error rate in these models displays superlinear error reduction with linear increases in single qubit lifetime, proving that passive error correction is capable of increasing gate fidelity. Using a standard phenomenological noise model for superconducting qubits, we demonstrate a realistic, universal one- and two-qubit gate set for the VSLQ, with error rates an order of magnitude lower than those for same-duration operations on single qubits or pairs of qubits. These developments further suggest that incorporating small logical qubits into a measurement based code could substantially improve code performance.

A well-known strategy to characterize multiparticle entanglement utilizes the notion of stochastic local operations and classical communication (SLOCC), but characterizing the resulting entanglement classes is difficult. Given a multiparticle quantum state, we first show that Gilbert’s algorithm can be adapted to prove separability or membership in a certain entanglement class. We then present two algorithms for convex optimization over SLOCC classes. The first algorithm uses a simple gradient approach, while the other one employs the accelerated projected-gradient method. For demonstration, the algorithms are applied to the likelihood-ratio test using experimental data on bound entanglement of a noisy four-photon Smolin state [Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 130501 (2010)].

Recently, we have extended the x-ray reflection model relxill to test the spacetime metric in the strong gravitational field of astrophysical black holes. In the present Letter, we employ this extended model to analyze XMM-Newton, NuSTAR, and Swift data of the supermassive black hole in 1H0707-495 and test deviations from a Kerr metric parametrized by the Johannsen deformation parameter ${\alpha }_{13}$. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that the spacetime metric around the black hole in 1H0707-495 is described by the Kerr solution.

In recent years local chiral interactions have been derived and implemented in quantum Monte Carlo methods in order to test to what extent the chiral effective field theory framework impacts our knowledge of few- and many-body systems. In this Letter, we present Green’s function Monte Carlo calculations of light nuclei based on the family of local two-body interactions presented by our group in a previous paper in conjunction with chiral three-body interactions fitted to bound- and scattering-state observables in the three-nucleon sector. These interactions include $\mathrm{\Delta }$ intermediate states in their two-pion-exchange components. We obtain predictions for the energy levels and level ordering of nuclei in the mass range $A=4–12$, accurate to $\le 2\%$ of the binding energy, in very satisfactory agreement with experimental data.

Supercontinuum generation (SCG) in integrated photonic waveguides is a versatile source of broadband light, and the generated spectrum is largely determined by the phase-matching conditions. Here we show that quasi-phase-matching via periodic modulations of the waveguide structure provides a useful mechanism to control the evolution of ultrafast pulses during supercontinuum generation. We experimentally demonstrate a quasi-phase-matched supercontinuum to the ${\mathrm{TE}}_{20}$ and ${\mathrm{TE}}_{00}$ waveguide modes, which enhances the intensity of the SCG in specific spectral regions by as much as 20 dB. We utilize higher-order quasi-phase-matching (up to the 16th order) to enhance the intensity in numerous locations across the spectrum. Quasi-phase-matching adds a unique dimension to the design space for SCG waveguides, allowing the spectrum to be engineered for specific applications.