We theoretically investigate the transfer of angular momentum between a spin superfluid and a domain wall in an exchange coupled easy-axis and easy-plane magnetic insulator system. A domain wall in the easy-axis magnet absorbs spin angular momentum via disrupting the flow of a superfluid spin current in the easy-plane magnet. Focusing on an open geometry, where the spin current is injected electrically via a nonequilibrium spin accumulation, we derive analytical expressions for the resultant superfluid-mediated motion of the domain wall. The analytical results are supported by micromagnetic simulations. The proposed phenomenon extends the regime of magnon-driven domain-wall motion to the case where the magnons are condensed and exhibit superfluidity. Furthermore, by controlling the pinning of the domain wall, we propose a realization of a reconfigurable spin transistor. The long-distance dissipationless character of spin superfluids can thus be exploited for manipulating soliton-based memory and logic devices.

Ferroelectric-dielectric superlattices consisting of alternating layers of ferroelectric ${\mathrm{PbTiO}}_3$ and dielectric ${\mathrm{SrTiO}}_3$ exhibit a disordered striped nanodomain pattern, with characteristic length scales of 6 nm for the domain periodicity and 30 nm for the in-plane coherence of the domain pattern. Spatial disorder in the domain pattern gives rise to coherent hard $x$-ray scattering patterns exhibiting intensity speckles. We show here using variable-temperature Bragg-geometry $x$-ray photon correlation spectroscopy that $x$-ray scattering patterns from the disordered domains exhibit a continuous temporal decorrelation due to spontaneous domain fluctuations. The temporal decorrelation can be described using a compressed exponential function, consistent with what has been observed in other systems with arrested dynamics. The fluctuation speeds up at higher temperatures and the thermal activation energy estimated from the Arrhenius model is $0.35\pm 0.21\mathrm{eV}$. The magnitude of the energy barrier implies that the complicated energy landscape of the domain structures is induced by pinning mechanisms and domain patterns fluctuate via the generation and annihilation of topological defects similar to soft materials such as block copolymers.

We use simulations of frictionless soft sphere packings to identify novel constitutive relations for linear elasticity near the jamming transition. By forcing packings at varying wavelengths, we directly access their transverse and longitudinal compliances. These are found to be wavelength dependent, in violation of conventional (local) linear elasticity. Crossovers in the compliances select characteristic length scales, which signify the appearance of nonlocal effects. Two of these length scales diverge as the pressure vanishes, indicating that critical effects near jamming control the breakdown of local elasticity. We expect these nonlocal constitutive relations to be applicable to a wide range of weakly jammed solids, including emulsions, foams, and granulates.

The notion of nonclassical correlations is a powerful contrivance for explaining phenomena exhibited in quantum systems. It is well known, however, that quantum systems are not free to explore arbitrary correlations—the church of the smaller Hilbert space only accepts monogamous congregants. We demonstrate how to characterize the limits of what is quantum mechanically possible with a computable measure, entanglement negativity. We show that negativity only saturates the standard linear monogamy inequality in trivial cases implied by its monotonicity under local operations and classical communication, and derive a necessary and sufficient inequality which, for the first time, is a nonlinear higher degree polynomial. For very large quantum systems, we prove that the negativity can be distributed at least linearly for the tightest constraint and conjecture that it is at most linear.

In this Letter we show that the vortex lattice structure in the Bose-Fermi superfluid mixture can undergo a sequence of structure transitions when the Fermi superfluid is tuned from the BCS regime to the BEC regime. This is due to the difference in the vortex core structure of a Fermi superfluid in the BCS regime and in the BEC regime. In the BCS regime the vortex core is nearly filled, while the density at the vortex core gradually decreases until it empties out in the BEC regime. Therefore, with the density-density interaction between the Bose and the Fermi superfluids, interaction between the two sets of vortex lattices gets stronger in the BEC regime, which yields the structure transition of vortex lattices. In view of the recent realization of this superfluid mixture and vortices therein, our theoretical predication can be verified experimentally in the near future.

We provide an analysis on non-Markovian quantum evolution based on the spectral properties of dynamical maps. We introduce the dynamical analog of entanglement witness to detect non-Markovianity and we illustrate its behavior with several instructive examples. It is shown that for several important classes of dynamical maps the corresponding evolution of singular values and/or eigenvalues of the map provides a simple non-Markovianity witness.

We propose a scheme to realize the two-axis countertwisting spin-squeezing Hamiltonian inside an optical cavity with the aid of phase-locked atom-photon coupling. By careful analysis and extensive simulation, we demonstrate that our scheme is robust against dissipation caused by cavity loss and atomic spontaneous emission, and it can achieve significantly higher squeezing than one-axis twisting. We further show how our idea can be extended to generate two-mode spin-squeezed states in two coupled cavities. Because of its easy implementation and high tunability, our scheme is experimentally realizable with current technologies.

The “free” water surface is generally prone to contamination with surface impurities, be they surfactants, particles, or other surface active agents. The presence of such impurities can modify flow near such interfaces in a drastic manner. Here we show that vibrating a small sphere mounted on an atomic force microscope cantilever near a gas bubble immersed in water is an excellent probe of surface contamination. Both viscous and elastic forces are exerted by an air-water interface on the vibrating sphere even when very low doses of contaminants are present. The viscous drag forces show a crossover from no-slip to slip boundary conditions while the elastic forces show a nontrivial variation as the vibration frequency changes. We provide a simple model to rationalize these results and propose a simple way of evaluating the concentration of such surface impurities.

We describe charge transport along a polymer chain with a generic theoretical model depending in principle on tens of parameters, reflecting the chemistry of the material. The charge carrier states are obtained from a model Hamiltonian that incorporates different types of disorder and electronic structure (e.g., the difference between homo- and copolymer). The hopping rate between these states is described with a general rate expression, which contains the rates most used in the literature as special cases. We demonstrate that the steady state charge mobility in the limit of low charge density and low field ultimately depends on only two parameters: an effective structural disorder and an effective electron-phonon coupling, weighted by the size of the monomer. The results support the experimental observation [N. I. Craciun, J. Wildeman, and P. W. M. Blom, Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 056601 (2008)] that the mobility in a broad range of (polymeric) semiconductors follows a universal behavior, insensitive to the chemical detail.

We present a novel mechanism of $s$-wave pairing in Fe-based superconductors. The mechanism involves holes near $d_{xz}/d_{yz}$ pockets only and is applicable primarily to strongly hole doped materials. We argue that as long as the renormalized Hund’s coupling $J$ exceeds the renormalized interorbital Hubbard repulsion $U^{\prime }$, any finite spin-orbit coupling gives rise to $s$-wave superconductivity. This holds even at weak coupling and regardless of the strength of the intraorbital Hubbard repulsion $U$. The transition temperature grows as the hole density decreases. The pairing gaps are fourfold symmetric, but anisotropic, with the possibility of eight accidental nodes along the larger pocket. The resulting state is consistent with the experiments on ${\mathrm{KFe}}_2{\mathrm{As}}_2$.

Quasiparticle interference (QPI) imaging of Bogoliubov excitations in quasi-two-dimensional unconventional superconductors has become a powerful technique for measuring the superconducting gap and its symmetry. Here, we present the extension of this method to three-dimensional superconductors and analyze the expected QPI spectrum for the two-component heavy-fermion superconductor ${\mathrm{UPt}}_3$ whose gap structure is still controversial. Starting from a 3D electronic structure and the three proposed chiral gap models $E_{1g,u}$ or $E_{2u}$, we perform a slab calculation that simultaneously gives extended bulk states and topologically protected in-gap dispersionless surface states. We show that the number of Weyl arcs and their hybridization with the line node provides a fingerprint that may finally determine the true nodal structure of the ${\mathrm{UPt}}_3$ superconductor.

The radiationless recombination of electron-hole pairs in semiconductors is detrimental to optoelectronic technologies. A prominent mechanism is Auger recombination, in which nonradiative recombination occurs efficiently by transferring the released energy-momentum to a third charge carrier. Here we use femtosecond photoemission to directly detect Auger electrons as they scatter into energy and momentum spaces from Auger recombination in a model semiconductor, GaSb. The Auger rate is modulated by a coherent phonon mode at 2 THz, confirming phonon participation in momentum conservation. The commonly assumed Auger rate constant is found not to be a constant, but rather decreases by 4 orders of magnitude as hot electrons cool down by $\sim 90\mathrm{meV}$. These findings provide quantitative guidance in understanding Auger recombination and in designing materials for efficient optoelectronics.

The structure and properties of the $1:1$ superlattice of ${\mathrm{LaVO}}_3$ and ${\mathrm{SrVO}}_3$ are investigated with a first-principles density-functional-theory-plus-$U$ ($\mathrm{DFT}+U$) method. The lowest energy states are antiferromagnetic charge-ordered Mott-insulating phases. In one of these insulating phases, layered charge ordering combines with the layered La/Sr cation ordering to produce a polar structure with a large nonzero spontaneous polarization normal to the interfaces. This polarization, comparable to that of conventional ferroelectrics, is produced by electron transfer between the ${\mathrm{V}}^{3+}$ and ${\mathrm{V}}^{4+}$ layers. The energy of this normal-polarization state relative to the ground state is only 3 meV per vanadium. Under tensile strain, this energy difference can be further reduced, suggesting that the normal-polarization state can be induced by an electric field applied normal to the superlattice layers, yielding an antiferroelectric double-hysteresis loop. If the system does not switch back to the ground state on removal of the field, a ferroelectric-type hysteresis loop could be observed.

Based on protein structural ensembles determined by nuclear magnetic resonance, we study the position fluctuations of residues by calculating distance-dependent correlations and conducting finite-size scaling analysis. The fluctuations exhibit high susceptibility and long-range correlations up to the protein sizes. The scaling relations between the correlations or susceptibility and protein sizes resemble those in other physical and biological systems near their critical points. These results indicate that, at the native states, motions of each residue are felt by every other one in the protein. We also find that proteins with larger susceptibility are more frequently observed in nature. Overall, our results suggest that the protein’s native state is critical.

In this Letter we investigate a direct relationship between a graph’s topology and the free energy of a spin system on the graph. We develop a method of separating topological and energetic contributions to the free energy, and find that considering the topology is sufficient to qualitatively compare the free energies of different graph systems at high temperature, even when the energetics are not fully known. This method was applied to the metal lattice system with defects, and we found that it partially explains why point defects are more stable than high-dimensional defects. Given the energetics, we can even quantitatively compare free energies of different graph structures via a closed form of linear graph contributions. The closed form is applied to predict the sequence-space free energy of lattice proteins, which is a key factor determining the designability of a protein structure.

Quantum entanglement is one of the most prominent features of quantum mechanics and forms the basis of quantum information technologies. Here we present a novel method for the creation of quantum entanglement in multipartite and high-dimensional systems. The two ingredients are (i) superposition of photon pairs with different origins and (ii) aligning photons such that their paths are identical. We explain the experimentally feasible creation of various classes of multiphoton entanglement encoded in polarization as well as in high-dimensional Hilbert spaces—starting only from nonentangled photon pairs. For two photons, arbitrary high-dimensional entanglement can be created. The idea of generating entanglement by path identity could also apply to quantum entities other than photons. We discovered the technique by analyzing the output of a computer algorithm. This shows that computer designed quantum experiments can be inspirations for new techniques.

Topological orders can be used as media for topological quantum computing—a promising quantum computation model due to its invulnerability against local errors. Conversely, a quantum simulator, often regarded as a quantum computing device for special purposes, also offers a way of characterizing topological orders. Here, we show how to identify distinct topological orders via measuring their modular $S$ and $T$ matrices. In particular, we employ a nuclear magnetic resonance quantum simulator to study the properties of three topologically ordered matter phases described by the string-net model with two string types, including the ${\mathbb{Z}}_2$ toric code, doubled semion, and doubled Fibonacci. The third one, non-Abelian Fibonacci order is notably expected to be the simplest candidate for universal topological quantum computing. Our experiment serves as the basic module, built on which one can simulate braiding of non-Abelian anyons and ultimately, topological quantum computation via the braiding, and thus provides a new approach of investigating topological orders using quantum computers.