We develop a theory of viscous dissipation in one-dimensional single-component quantum liquids at low temperatures. Such liquids are characterized by a single viscosity coefficient, the bulk viscosity. We show that for a generic interaction between the constituent particles this viscosity diverges in the zero-temperature limit. In the special case of integrable models, the viscosity is infinite at any temperature, which can be interpreted as a breakdown of the hydrodynamic description. Our consideration is applicable to all single-component Galilean-invariant one-dimensional quantum liquids, regardless of the statistics of the constituent particles and the interaction strength.

A virus binding to a surface causes stress of the virus cage near the contact area. Here, we investigate the potential role of substrate-induced structural perturbation in the mechanical response of virus particles to adsorption. This is particularly relevant to the broad category of viruses stabilized by weak noncovalent interactions. We utilize atomic force microscopy to measure height distributions of the brome mosaic virus upon adsorption from solution on atomically flat substrates and present a continuum model that captures our observations and provides estimates of elastic properties and of the interfacial energy of the virus, without recourse to indentation.

We present a relativistic description of electron vortex beams in a homogeneous magnetic field. Including spin from the beginning reveals that spin-polarized electron vortex beams have a complicated azimuthal current structure, containing small rings of counterrotating current between rings of stronger corotating current. Contrary to many other problems in relativistic quantum mechanics, there exists a set of vortex beams with exactly zero spin-orbit mixing in the highly relativistic and nonparaxial regime. The well-defined phase structure of these beams is analogous to simpler scalar vortex beams, owing to the protection by the Zeeman effect. For states that do show spin-orbit mixing, the spin polarization across the beam is nonuniform rendering the spin and orbital degrees of freedom inherently inseparable.

We present an algorithm for error correction in topological codes that exploits modern machine learning techniques. Our decoder is constructed from a stochastic neural network called a Boltzmann machine, of the type extensively used in deep learning. We provide a general prescription for the training of the network and a decoding strategy that is applicable to a wide variety of stabilizer codes with very little specialization. We demonstrate the neural decoder numerically on the well-known two-dimensional toric code with phase-flip errors.

In the weak-field limit of general relativity, gravitational waves obey linear equations and propagate at the speed of light. These properties of general relativity are supported by the observation of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays as well as by LIGO’s recent detection of gravitation waves. We argue that two existing relativistic generalizations of modified Newtonian dynamics, namely, the generalized Einstein-aether theory and bimetric modified Newtonian dynamics, display fatal inconsistencies with these observations.

We calculate the impact of quantum gravity–motivated ultraviolet cutoffs on inflationary predictions for the cosmic microwave background spectrum. We model the ultraviolet cutoffs fully covariantly to avoid possible artifacts of covariance breaking. Imposing these covariant cutoffs results in the production of small, characteristically $k$-dependent oscillations in the spectrum. The size of the effect scales linearly with the ratio of the Planck to Hubble lengths during inflation. Consequently, the relative size of the effect could be as large as one part in $10^5$; i.e., eventual observability may not be ruled out.

We study the production and polarization of $J/\psi$ mesons within a jet in proton-proton collisions at the LHC. We define the $J/\psi$-jet fragmentation function as a ratio of differential jet cross sections with and without the reconstructed $J/\psi$ in the jet. We demonstrate that this is a very useful observable to help explore the $J/\psi$ production mechanism, and to differentiate between different nonrelativistic QCD global fits based on inclusive $J/\psi$ cross sections. Furthermore, we propose to measure the polarization of $J/\psi$ mesons inside the jet, which can provide even more stringent constraints for the heavy quarkonium production mechanism.

We analyze the recent LHCb measurement of the distribution of the fraction of the transverse momentum, $z(J/\psi )$, carried by the $J/\psi$ within a jet. LHCb data are compared with analytic calculations using the fragmenting jet function (FJF) formalism for studying $J/\psi$ in jets. Logarithms in the FJFs are resummed using Dokshitzer-Gribov-Lipatov-Altarelli-Parisi evolution. We also convolve hard QCD partonic cross sections, showered with pythia, with leading order nonrelativistic quantum chromodynamics (NRQCD) fragmentation functions and obtain consistent results. Both approaches use madgraph to calculate the hard process that creates the jet initiating parton. These calculations give reasonable agreement with the $z(J/\psi )$ distribution that was shown to be poorly described by default pythia simulations in the LHCb paper. We compare our predictions for the $J/\psi$ distribution using various extractions of nonperturbative NRQCD long-distance matrix elements (LDMEs) in the literature. NRQCD calculations agree with LHCb data better than default pythia regardless of which fit to the LDMEs is used. LDMEs from fits that focus exclusively on high transverse momentum data from colliders are in good agreement with the LHCb measurement.

We introduce a wave front shaping protocol for focusing inside disordered media based on a generalization of the established Wigner-Smith time-delay operator. The key ingredient for our approach is the scattering (or transmission) matrix of the medium and its derivative with respect to the position of the target one aims to focus on. A specific experimental realization in the microwave regime is presented showing that the eigenstates of a corresponding operator are sorted by their focusing strength—ranging from strongly focusing on the designated target to completely bypassing it. Our protocol works without optimization or phase conjugation and we expect it to be particularly attractive for optical imaging in disordered media.

Dissipative solitons often behave as quasiparticles, and they may form molecules characterized by well-defined bond distances. We show that pointwise nonlocality may lead to a new kind of molecule where bonds are not rigid. The elements of this molecule can shift mutually one with respect to the others while remaining linked together, in a manner similar to interlaced rings in a chain. We report experimental observations of these chains of nested dissipative solitons in a time-delayed laser system.

We reveal the existence of continuous families of guided single-mode solitons in planar waveguides with weakly nonlinear active core and absorbing boundaries. Stable propagation of TE and TM-polarized solitons is accompanied by attenuation of all other modes, i.e., the waveguide features properties of conservative and dissipative systems. If the linear spectrum of the waveguide possesses exceptional points, which occurs in the case of TM polarization, an originally focusing (defocusing) material nonlinearity may become effectively defocusing (focusing). This occurs due to the geometric phase of the carried eigenmode when the surface impedance encircles the exceptional point. In its turn, the change of the effective nonlinearity ensures the existence of dark (bright) solitons in spite of focusing (defocusing) Kerr nonlinearity of the core. The existence of an exceptional point can also result in anomalous enhancement of the effective nonlinearity. In terms of practical applications, the nonlinearity of the reported waveguide can be manipulated by controlling the properties of the absorbing cladding.

Access to and characterization of sustained, toroidally confined plasmas with a very high plasma-to-magnetic pressure ratio (${\beta }_t$), low internal inductance, high elongation, and nonsolenoidal current drive is a central goal of present tokamak plasma research. Stable access to this desirable parameter space is demonstrated in plasmas with ultralow aspect ratio and high elongation. Local helicity injection provides nonsolenoidal sustainment, low internal inductance, and ion heating. Equilibrium analyses indicate ${\beta }_t$ up to $\sim 100\%$ with a minimum $|B|$ well spanning up to $\sim 50\%$ of the plasma volume.

In this study, we show that robust and tunable acoustic asymmetric transmission can be achieved through gradient-index metasurfaces by harnessing judiciously tailored losses. We theoretically prove that the asymmetric wave behavior stems from loss-induced suppression of high order diffraction. We further experimentally demonstrate this novel phenomenon. Our findings could provide new routes to broaden applications for lossy acoustic metamaterials and metasurfaces.

Based on first-principles calculations and effective model analysis, we propose that the WC-type HfC, in the absence of spin-orbit coupling (SOC), can host a three-dimensional nodal chain semimetal state. Distinguished from the previous material ${\mathrm{IrF}}_4$ [T. Bzdusek et al., Nature 538, 75 (2016)], the nodal chain here is protected by mirror reflection symmetries of a simple space group, while in ${\mathrm{IrF}}_4$ the nonsymmorphic space group with a glide plane is a necessity. Moreover, in the presence of SOC, the nodal chain in WC-type HfC evolves into Weyl points. In the Brillouin zone, a total of 30 pairs of Weyl points in three types are obtained through the first-principles calculations. Besides, the surface states and the pattern of the surface Fermi arcs connecting these Weyl points are studied, which may be measured by future experiments.

We study the ac anomalous Hall conductivity ${\sigma }_{xy}(\omega )$ of a Weyl semimetal with broken time-reversal symmetry. Even in the absence of free carriers these materials exhibit a “universal” anomalous Hall response determined solely by the locations of the Weyl nodes. We show that the free carriers, which are generically present in an undoped Weyl semimetal, give an additional contribution to the ac Hall conductivity. We elucidate the phy146sical mechanism of the effect and develop a microscopic theory of the free carrier contribution to ${\sigma }_{xy}(\omega )$. The latter can be expressed in terms of a small number of parameters (the electron velocity matrix, the Fermi energy $\mu$, and the “tilt” of the Weyl cone). The resulting ${\sigma }_{xy}(\omega )$ has resonant features at $\omega \sim 2\mu$ which may be used to separate the free carrier response from the filled-band response using, for example, Kerr effect measurements. This may serve as a diagnostic tool to characterize the doping of individual valleys.

We report a ${}^{35}\mathrm{Cl}$ nuclear magnetic resonance study in the honeycomb lattice $\alpha$-${\mathrm{RuCl}}_3$, a material that has been suggested to potentially realize a Kitaev quantum spin liquid (QSL) ground state. Our results provide direct evidence that $\alpha$-${\mathrm{RuCl}}_3$ exhibits a magnetic-field-induced QSL. For fields larger than $\sim 10\mathrm{T}$, a spin gap opens up while resonance lines remain sharp, evidencing that spins are quantum disordered and locally fluctuating. The spin gap increases linearly with an increasing magnetic field, reaching $\sim 50\mathrm{K}$ at 15 T, and is nearly isotropic with respect to the field direction. The unusual rapid increase of the spin gap with increasing field and its isotropic nature are incompatible with conventional magnetic ordering and, in particular, exclude that the ground state is a fully polarized ferromagnet. The presence of such a field-induced gapped QSL phase has indeed been predicted in the Kitaev model.