We compute the next-to-next-to-leading-order QCD corrections to the hadronic decay rates of the pseudoscalar quarkonia, at the lowest order in velocity expansion. The validity of nonrelativistic QCD (NRQCD) factorization for inclusive quarkonium decay process, for the first time, is verified to relative order ${\alpha }_s^2$. As a by-product, the renormalization group equation of the leading NRQCD four-fermion operator ${\mathcal{O}}_1({{}^{1}S}_0)$ is also deduced to this perturbative order. By incorporating this new piece of correction together with available relativistic corrections, we find that there exists severe tension between the state-of-the-art NRQCD predictions and the measured ${\eta }_c$ hadronic width and, in particular, the branching fraction of ${\eta }_c\to \gamma \gamma$. NRQCD appears to be capable of accounting for ${\eta }_b$ hadronic decay to a satisfactory degree, and our most refined prediction is $\text{Br}({\eta }_b\to \gamma \gamma )=(4.8\pm 0.7)\times {10}^{-5}$.

Surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) are electromagnetic surface waves that travel along the boundary of a metal and a dielectric medium. They can be generated when freely propagating light is scattered by structural metallic features such as gratings or slits. In plasmonics, SPPs are manipulated, amplified, or routed before being converted back into light by a second scattering event. In this process, the light acquires a dynamic phase and perhaps an additional geometric phase associated with polarization changes. We examine the possibility that SPPs mediate the Pancharatnam–Berry phase, which follows from a closed path of successive in-phase polarization-state transformations on the Poincaré sphere and demonstrate that this is indeed the case. The geometric phase is shown to survive the $\mathrm{light}\to \mathrm{SPP}\to \mathrm{light}$ process and, moreover, its magnitude agrees with Pancharatnam’s rule. Our findings are fundamental in nature and highly relevant for photonics applications.

A shear fracture of brittle solids under compression undergoes a substantial evolution from the initial microcracking to a fully formed powder-filled shear zone. Experiments covering the entire process are relatively easy to conduct, but they are very difficult to investigate in detail. Numerically, the large strain limit has remained a challenge. An efficient simulation model and a custom-made experimental device are employed to test to what extent a shear fracture alone is sufficient to drive material to spontaneous self-lubrication. A “weak shear zone” is an important concept in geology, and a large number of explanations, specific for tectonic conditions, have been proposed. We demonstrate here that weak shear zones are far more general, and that their emergence only demands that a microscopic, i.e., fragment-scale, stress relaxation mechanism develops during the fracture process.

The spin galvanic effect (SGE) describes the conversion of a nonequilibrium spin polarization into a transverse charge current. Recent experiments have demonstrated a large conversion efficiency for the two-dimensional electron gas formed at the interface between two insulating oxides, ${\mathrm{LaAlO}}_3$ and ${\mathrm{SrTiO}}_3$. Here, we analyze the SGE for oxide interfaces within a three-band model for the Ti ${\mathrm{t}}_{2g}$ orbitals which displays an interesting variety of effective spin-orbit couplings in the individual bands that contribute differently to the spin-charge conversion. Our analytical approach is supplemented by a numerical treatment where we also investigate the influence of disorder and temperature, which turns out to be crucial to providing an appropriate description of the experimental data.

The inference of Ying et al. [Europhys. Lett. 104, 67005 (2013)] of a composition-induced change from $c$-axis ordered-moment alignment in a collinear $\mathsf{A}$-type antiferromagnetic (AFM) structure at small $x$ to $ab$-plane alignment in an unknown AFM structure at larger $x$ in ${\mathrm{Ca}}_{1-x}{\mathrm{Sr}}_x{\mathrm{Co}}_{2-y}{\mathrm{As}}_2$ with the body-centered tetragonal ${\mathrm{ThCr}}_2{\mathrm{Si}}_2$ structure is confirmed. Our major finding is an anomalous magnetic behavior in the crossover region $0.2\lesssim x\lesssim 0.3$ between these two phases. In this region the magnetic susceptibility vs temperature ${\chi }_{ab}(T)$ measured with magnetic fields $\mathbf{H}$ applied in the $ab$ plane exhibit typical AFM behaviors with cusps at the Néel temperatures of $\sim 65\mathrm{K}$, whereas ${\chi }_c(T)$ and the low-temperature isothermal magnetization $M_c(H)$ with $\mathbf{H}$ aligned along the $c$ axis exhibit extremely soft ferromagneticlike behaviors.

Meandering spiral waves are often observed in excitable media such as the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction and cardiac tissue. We derive a theory for drift dynamics of meandering rotors in general reaction-diffusion systems and apply it to two types of external disturbances: an external field and curvature-induced drift in three dimensions. We find two distinct regimes: with small filament curvature, meandering scroll waves exhibit filament tension, whose sign determines the stability and drift direction. In the regimes of strong external fields or meandering motion close to resonance, however, phase locking of the meander pattern is predicted and observed.

Sterile neutrinos produced through oscillations are a well motivated dark matter candidate, but recent constraints from observations have ruled out most of the parameter space. We analyze the impact of new interactions on the evolution of keV sterile neutrino dark matter in the early Universe. Based on general considerations we find a mechanism which thermalizes the sterile neutrinos after an initial production by oscillations. The thermalization of sterile neutrinos is accompanied by dark entropy production which increases the yield of dark matter and leads to a lower characteristic momentum. This resolves the growing tensions with structure formation and x-ray observations and even revives simple nonresonant production as a viable way to produce sterile neutrino dark matter. We investigate the parameters required for the realization of the thermalization mechanism in a representative model and find that a simple estimate based on energy and entropy conservation describes the mechanism well.

We propose a general way to complete supersymmetric theories with operators below the unitarity bound, adding gauge-singlet fields that enforce the decoupling of such operators. This makes it possible to perform all usual computations, and to compactify on a circle. We concentrate on a duality between an $\mathcal{N}=1$ SU(2) gauge theory and the $\mathcal{N}=2$ $A_3$ Argyres-Douglas theory, mapping the moduli space and chiral ring of the completed $\mathcal{N}=1$ theory to those of the $A_3$ model. We reduce the completed gauge theory to 3D, finding a 3D duality with $\mathcal{N}=4$ supersymmetric QED (SQED) with two flavors. The naive dimensional reduction is instead $\mathcal{N}=2$ SQED. Crucial is a concept of chiral ring stability, which modifies the superpotential and allows for a 3D emergent global symmetry.

Optical clocks benefit from tight atomic confinement enabling extended interrogation times as well as Doppler- and recoil-free operation. However, these benefits come at the cost of frequency shifts that, if not properly controlled, may degrade clock accuracy. Numerous theoretical studies have predicted optical lattice clock frequency shifts that scale nonlinearly with trap depth. To experimentally observe and constrain these shifts in an ${}^{171}\mathrm{Yb}$ optical lattice clock, we construct a lattice enhancement cavity that exaggerates the light shifts. We observe an atomic temperature that is proportional to the optical trap depth, fundamentally altering the scaling of trap-induced light shifts and simplifying their parametrization. We identify an “operational” magic wavelength where frequency shifts are insensitive to changes in trap depth. These measurements and scaling analysis constitute an essential systematic characterization for clock operation at the ${10}^{-18}$ level and beyond.

We experimentally visualize the dissociative frustrated double ionization of hydrogen molecules by using few-cycle laser pulses in a pump-probe scheme, in which process the tunneling ionized electron is recaptured by one of the outgoing nuclei of the breaking molecule. Three internuclear distances are recognized to enhance the dissociative frustrated double ionization of molecules at different instants after the first ionization step. The recapture of the electron can be further steered to one of the outgoing nuclei as desired by using phase-controlled two-color laser pulses. Both the experimental measurements and numerical simulations suggest that the Rydberg atom is favored to emit to the direction of the maximum of the asymmetric optical field. Our results on the one hand intuitively visualize the dissociative frustrated double ionization of molecules, and on the other hand open the possibility to selectively excite the heavy fragment ejected from a molecule.

The orientation of small anisotropic particles settling in a turbulent fluid determines some essential properties of the suspension. We show that the orientation distribution of small heavy spheroids settling through turbulence can be accurately predicted by a simple Gaussian statistical model that takes into account particle inertia and provides a quantitative understanding of the orientation distribution on the problem parameters when fluid inertia is negligible. Our results open the way to a parametrization of the distribution of ice crystals in clouds, and potentially lead to an improved understanding of radiation reflection or particle aggregation through collisions in clouds.

We report an experimental observation of the coupling of the transverse vertical and longitudinal in-plane dust-lattice wave modes in a two-dimensional complex plasma crystal in the absence of mode crossing. A new large-diameter rf plasma chamber was used to suspend the plasma crystal. The observations are confirmed with molecular dynamics simulations. The coupling manifests itself in traces of the transverse vertical mode appearing in the measured longitudinal spectra and vice versa. We calculate the expected ratio of the trace to the principal mode with a theoretical analysis of the modes in a crystal with finite temperature and find good agreement with the experiment and simulations.

We witness multipartite entanglement in the ground state of the Kitaev chain—a benchmark model of a one dimensional topological superconductor—also with variable-range pairing, using the quantum Fisher information. Phases having a finite winding number, for both short- and long-range pairing, are characterized by a power-law diverging finite-size scaling of multipartite entanglement. Moreover, the occurring quantum phase transitions are sharply marked by the divergence of the derivative of the quantum Fisher information, even in the absence of a closing energy gap.

In natural foraging, many organisms seem to perform two different types of motile search: directed search (taxis) and random search. The former is observed when the environment provides cues to guide motion towards a target. The latter involves no apparent memory or information processing and can be mathematically modeled by random walks. We show that both types of search can be generated by a common mechanism in which Lévy flights or Lévy walks emerge from a second-order gradient-based search with noisy observations. No explicit switching mechanism is required—instead, continuous transitions between the directed and random motions emerge depending on the Hessian matrix of the cost function. For a wide range of scenarios, the Lévy tail index is $\alpha =1$, consistent with previous observations in foraging organisms. These results suggest that adopting a second-order optimization method can be a useful strategy to combine efficient features of directed and random search.

We report the observation of new properties of primary cosmic rays He, C, and O measured in the rigidity (momentum/charge) range 2 GV to 3 TV with $90\times {10}^6$ helium, $8.4\times {10}^6$ carbon, and $7.0\times {10}^6$ oxygen nuclei collected by the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) during the first five years of operation. Above 60 GV, these three spectra have identical rigidity dependence. They all deviate from a single power law above 200 GV and harden in an identical way.

We prove the following theorem: axisymmetric, stationary solutions of the Einstein field equations formed from classical gravitational collapse of matter obeying the null energy condition, that are everywhere smooth and ultracompact (i.e., they have a light ring) must have at least two light rings, and one of them is stable. It has been argued that stable light rings generally lead to nonlinear spacetime instabilities. Our result implies that smooth, physically and dynamically reasonable ultracompact objects are not viable as observational alternatives to black holes whenever these instabilities occur on astrophysically short time scales. The proof of the theorem has two parts: (i) We show that light rings always come in pairs, one being a saddle point and the other a local extremum of an effective potential. This result follows from a topological argument based on the Brouwer degree of a continuous map, with no assumptions on the spacetime dynamics, and, hence, it is applicable to any metric gravity theory where photons follow null geodesics. (ii) Assuming Einstein’s equations, we show that the extremum is a local minimum of the potential (i.e., a stable light ring) if the energy-momentum tensor satisfies the null energy condition.