While current-induced spin-orbit torques have been extensively studied in ferromagnets and antiferromagnets, ferrimagnets have been less studied. Here we report the presence of enhanced spin-orbit torques resulting from negative exchange interaction in ferrimagnets. The effective field and switching efficiency increase substantially as CoGd approaches its compensation point, giving rise to 9 times larger spin-orbit torques compared to that of a noncompensated one. The macrospin modeling results also support efficient spin-orbit torques in a ferrimagnet. Our results suggest that ferrimagnets near compensation can be a new route for spin-orbit torque applications due to their high thermal stability and easy current-induced switching assisted by negative exchange interaction.

We present a general method to construct translation-invariant and SU(2) symmetric antiferromagnetic parent Hamiltonians of valence bond crystals (VBCs). The method is based on a canonical mapping transforming $S=1/2$ spin operators into a bilinear form of a new set of dimer fermion operators. We construct parent Hamiltonians of the columnar and the staggered VBCs on the square lattice, for which the VBC is an eigenstate in all regimes and the exact ground state in some region of the phase diagram. We study the departure from the exact VBC regime upon tuning the anisotropy by means of the hierarchical mean field theory and exact diagonalization on finite clusters. In both Hamiltonians, the VBC phase extends over the exact regime and transits to a columnar antiferromagnet (CAFM) through a window of intermediate phases, revealing an intriguing competition of correlation lengths at the VBC-CAFM transition. The method can be readily applied to construct other VBC parent Hamiltonians in different lattices and dimensions.

A purely artificial mechanism for optical nonlinearity is proposed based on a metamaterial route. The mechanism is derived from classical electromagnetic interaction in a metamolecule consisting of a cut-wire meta-atom nested within a split-ring meta-atom. Induced by the localized magnetic field in the split-ring meta-atom, the magnetic force drives an anharmonic oscillation of free electrons in the cut-wire meta-atom, generating an intrinsically nonlinear electromagnetic response. An explicit physical process of a second-order nonlinear behavior is adequately described, which is perfectly demonstrated with a series of numerical simulations. Instead of “borrowing” from natural nonlinear materials, this novel mechanism of optical nonlinearity is artificially dominated by the metamolecule geometry and possesses unprecedented design freedom, offering fascinating possibilities to the research and application of nonlinear optics.

Collective phenomena emerge from the interaction of natural or artificial units with a complex organization. The interplay between structural patterns and dynamics might induce functional clusters that, in general, are different from topological ones. In biological systems, like the human brain, the overall functionality is often favored by the interplay between connectivity and synchronization dynamics, with functional clusters that do not coincide with anatomical modules in most cases. In social, sociotechnical, and engineering systems, the quest for consensus favors the emergence of clusters. Despite the unquestionable evidence for mesoscale organization of many complex systems and the heterogeneity of their interconnectivity, a way to predict and identify the emergence of functional modules in collective phenomena continues to elude us. Here, we propose an approach based on random walk dynamics to define the diffusion distance between any pair of units in a networked system. Such a metric allows us to exploit the underlying diffusion geometry to provide a unifying framework for the intimate relationship between metastable synchronization, consensus, and random search dynamics in complex networks, pinpointing the functional mesoscale organization of synthetic and biological systems.

We investigate the ordering dynamics of the voter model with time-delayed interactions. The dynamical process in the $d$-dimensional lattice is shown to be equivalent to the first passage problem of a random walker in the ($d+1$)-dimensional strip of a finite width determined by the delay time. The equivalence reveals that the time delay leads to the dimensional crossover from the ($d+1$)-dimensional scaling behavior at a short time to the $d$-dimensional scaling behavior at a long time. The scaling property in both regimes and the crossover time scale are obtained analytically, which are confirmed with the numerical simulation results.

The merger rate of black hole binaries inferred from the detections in the first Advanced LIGO science run implies that a stochastic background produced by a cosmological population of mergers will likely mask the primordial gravitational wave background. Here we demonstrate that the next generation of ground-based detectors, such as the Einstein Telescope and Cosmic Explorer, will be able to observe binary black hole mergers throughout the Universe with sufficient efficiency that the confusion background can potentially be subtracted to observe the primordial background at the level of ${\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{GW}}\simeq {10}^{-13}$ after 5 years of observation.

We triply ionize the van der Waals bound carbon monoxide dimer with intense ultrashort pulses and study the breakup channel $(\mathrm{CO}{)}_2^{3+}\to {\mathrm{C}}^{+}+{\mathrm{O}}^{+}+{\mathrm{CO}}^{+}$. The fragments are recorded in a cold target recoil ion momentum spectrometer. We observe a fast ${\mathrm{CO}}^{2+}$ dissociation channel in the dimer, which does not exist for the monomer. We found that a nearby charge breaks the symmetry of a ${\mathrm{X}}^3\mathrm{\Pi }$ state of ${\mathrm{CO}}^{2+}$ and induces an avoided crossing that allows a fast dissociation. Calculation on the full dimer complex shows the coupling of different charge states, as predicted from excimer theory, gives rise to electronic state components not present in the monomer, thereby enabling fast dissociation with higher kinetic energy release. These results demonstrate that the electronic structure of molecular cluster complexes can give rise to dynamics that is qualitatively different from that observed in the component monomers.

Asymmetric structures support different field distributions and electromagnetic responses when excited from different directions. Here we show that time-reversal symmetry imposes fundamental constraints on their overall response, beyond those dictated by reciprocity. For two-port devices, the asymmetry in field distribution for opposite excitations is shown to be fundamentally bounded by the reflection at the ports, and the fields are identical everywhere in space in the case of full transmission. In multiport and open scenarios, these bounds have implications on radiation and scattering at different ports and towards different directions. Beyond their theoretical significance, these results provide relevant insights into the operation of nonlinear isolators, metasurfaces, and other nanophotonic devices.

The interaction of charged particles and photons with intense electromagnetic fields gives rise to multiphoton Compton and Breit-Wheeler processes. These are usually described in the framework of the external field approximation, where the electromagnetic field is assumed to have infinite energy. However, the multiphoton nature of these processes implies the absorption of a significant number of photons, which scales as the external field amplitude cubed. As a result, the interaction of a highly charged electron bunch with an intense laser pulse can lead to significant depletion of the laser pulse energy, thus rendering the external field approximation invalid. We provide relevant estimates for this depletion and find it to become important in the interaction between fields of amplitude $a_0\sim 10^3$ and electron bunches with charges of the order of 10 nC.

In small-scale metallic systems, collective dislocation activity has been correlated with size effects in strength and with a steplike plastic response under uniaxial compression and tension. Yielding and plastic flow in these samples is often accompanied by the emergence of multiple dislocation avalanches. Dislocations might be active preyield, but their activity typically cannot be discerned because of the inherent instrumental noise in detecting equipment. We apply alternate current load perturbations via dynamic mechanical analysis during quasistatic uniaxial compression experiments on single crystalline Cu nanopillars with diameters of 500 nm and compute dynamic moduli at frequencies 0.1, 0.3, 1, and 10 Hz under progressively higher static loads until yielding. By tracking the collective aspects of the oscillatory stress-strain-time series in multiple samples, we observe an evolving dissipative component of the dislocation network response that signifies the transition from elastic behavior to dislocation avalanches in the globally preyield regime. We postulate that microplasticity, which is associated with the combination of dislocation avalanches and slow viscoplastic relaxations, is the cause of the dependency of dynamic modulus on the driving rate and the quasistatic stress. We construct a continuum mesoscopic dislocation dynamics model to compute the frequency response of stress over strain and obtain a consistent agreement with experimental observations. The results of our experiments and simulations present a pathway to discern and quantify correlated dislocation activity in the preyield regime of deforming crystals.

Within the context of semiquantum nonlocal games, the trust can be removed from the measurement devices in an entanglement-detection procedure. Here, we show that a similar approach can be taken to quantify the amount of entanglement. To be specific, first, we show that in this context, a small subset of semiquantum nonlocal games is necessary and sufficient for entanglement detection in the local operations and classical communication paradigm. Second, we prove that the maximum payoff for these games is a universal measure of entanglement which is convex and continuous. Third, we show that for the quantification of negative-partial-transpose entanglement, this subset can be further reduced down to a single arbitrary element. Importantly, our measure is measurement device independent by construction and operationally accessible. Finally, our approach straightforwardly extends to quantify the entanglement within any partitioning of multipartite quantum states.

Seemingly unrelated models of inflation that originate from different physical setups yield, in some cases, identical predictions for the currently constrained inflationary observables. In order to classify the available models, we propose to express the slow-roll parameters and the relevant observables in terms of frame and reparametrization invariant quantities. The adopted invariant formalism makes manifest the redundancy that afflicts the current description of inflation dynamics and offers a straightforward way to identify classes of models which yield identical phenomenology. In this Letter, we offer a step-to-step recipe to recast every single field inflationary model in the proposed formalism, detailing also the procedure to compute inflationary observables in terms of frame and reparametrization invariant quantities. We hope that our results become the cornerstone of a new categorization of viable inflationary models and open the way to a deeper understanding of the inflation mechanism.

We develop a rigorous theoretical framework to describe light-sound interaction in the laser-pumped periodic multiple-quantum-well structure accounting for hybrid phonon-polariton excitations, termed phonoritons. We show that phonoritons exhibit the pumping-induced synthetic magnetic field in the artificial “coordinate-energy” space that makes transmission of left- and right- going waves different. The sound transmission nonreciprocity allows one to use such phonoritonic crystals with realistic parameters as optically controlled nanoscale acoustic diodes.

We first reproduce on the Janus and Janus II computers a milestone experiment that measures the spin-glass coherence length through the lowering of free-energy barriers induced by the Zeeman effect. Secondly, we determine the scaling behavior that allows a quantitative analysis of a new experiment reported in the companion Letter [S. Guchhait and R. Orbach, Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 157203 (2017)]. The value of the coherence length estimated through the analysis of microscopic correlation functions turns out to be quantitatively consistent with its measurement through macroscopic response functions. Further, nonlinear susceptibilities, recently measured in glass-forming liquids, scale as powers of the same microscopic length.

We measure the field dependence of spin glass free energy barriers in a thin amorphous Ge:Mn film through the time dependence of the magnetization. After the correlation length $\xi (t,T)$ has reached the film thickness $\mathcal{L}=155\AA$ so that the dynamics are activated, we change the initial magnetic field by $\delta H$. In agreement with the scaling behavior exhibited in a companion Letter [M. Baity-Jesi et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 157202 (2017)], we find that the activation energy is increased when $\delta H<0$. The change is proportional to $(\delta H{)}^2$ with the addition of a small $(\delta H{)}^4$ term. The magnitude of the change of the spin glass free energy barriers is in near quantitative agreement with the prediction of a barrier model.

Universality connects various natural phenomena through physical principles governing their dynamics, and has provided broadly accepted answers to many complex questions, including information processing in neuronal systems. However, its significance in behavioral systems is still elusive. Lateral head scanning (LHS) behavior in rodents might contribute to spatial navigation by actively managing (optimizing) the available sensory information. Our findings of scale invariant distributions in LHS lifetimes, interevent intervals and event magnitudes, provide evidence for the first time that the optimization takes place at a critical point in LHS dynamics. We propose that the LHS behavior is responsible for preprocessing of the spatial information content, critical for subsequent foolproof encoding by the respective downstream neural networks.

Single-shot readout of qubits is required for scalable quantum computing. Nuclear spins are superb quantum memories due to their long coherence time, but are difficult to be read out in a single shot due to their weak interaction with probes. Here we demonstrate single-shot readout of a weakly coupled ${}^{13}\mathrm{C}$ nuclear spin at room temperature, which is unresolvable in traditional protocols. States of the weakly coupled nuclear spin are trapped and read out projectively by sequential weak measurements, which are implemented by dynamical decoupling pulses. A nuclear spin coupled to the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center with strength 330 kHz is read out in 200 ms with a fidelity of 95.5%. This work provides a general protocol for single-shot readout of weakly coupled qubits at room temperature and therefore largely extends the range of physical systems for scalable quantum computing.